Puig, Nicolas

Civilizing Eastern Behaviors: A Few Civilities in Common Usage in Contemporary Cairo - 2006.


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This study, guided by Elias’s sociology, examines the regulation of behavior and the emergence of new codes of civility in the urban setting of today’s Cairo. Elias’s sociological approach is applied to daily life rather than on secular trends. Rather than looking at behavior in terms of good manners, social interaction and its varied logics––its roles of adjustment, game, hesitation, and invention––are used to clarify this aspect of social intercourse. Differing from the analyses of the integration of norms by individuals, the point is to isolate some of the elements that govern the individual’s behavior toward others.