Meetings, Manners and Civilization

In Dutch society, gathering together to talk and argue about the communal future has become an increasingly important means of social integration. This study argues that, as a means of distinction for the elite, the stylization of meetings has replaced the stylization of eating and drinking. The restraint of physical violence was the sine qua non of meetings, and the long-term development of meetings coincides with the organization of violence within basic entities, tribes, villages, towns, nation states and confederations, which are, in effect, meeting units.