Listening to Ordinary People
The process of civilisation that is at work leads to a hypercomplex society and new forms of governance
This article sets out the principal lines of the book by Alain de Vulpian in which he examines humanity’s on-going process of civilisation.
Since the end of the 40s, a considerable volume of ethnological field research has been developed in the democracies of Europe and in North America. It focuses on changes in the ways people interact with the social and economic systems within which they live their everyday life. One of the fathers of this line of research is the American social scientist David Riesman. Throughout my professional life, over more than fifty years, I have participated in the development of these researches. Now freed from managerial responsibility for my team, I have had time to re-analyse this mountain of data and re-examine the lines of force of the anthropo-sociological transformation that we are now living through.
I have reached the conviction that we are in the epicentre of a developmental process of civilisation that is carrying us elsewhere, transforming western culture in depth and possibly preparing the way for a worldwide civilisation. What do I mean by a developmental process of civilisation? Norbert Elias, the great German sociologist, gave body to this concept of a « chain reaction of chain reactions » that involves power holders, institutions, organisations, communications, ordinary people, manners, customs, the social fabric, technologies that are emerging or becoming established, and so on. It transforms a civilisation and gives life to a new society. No-one has designed, desired or piloted this chain reaction of chain reactions. It has occurred spontaneously, it is continuing and is now spreading to other regions of the planet.
