Fire and Civilization

by Johan Goudsblom

According to mythology, people became truly "human" by learning to domesticate fire and cook food. Other great transformation - the birth of agriculture and the industrial revolution - represent huge leaps forward in our relations with fire. This book examines Homer and the Hebrew Bible, the Vestal Virgins and pioneering Roman fire brigades, the role of Hell-fire in Christianity's "civilizing campaign" and developments from the age of steam to "fire-powered" cars and nuclear fusion. Even today, bush and forest fires caused by short-sighted farming policies or sheer high spirits contribute to the disastrous international wood shortage. This work of wide-ranging scholarship both illuminates such current concerns, and makes readers look again at the whole course of human history. Johan Goudsblom is the author of "Dutch Society", "Sociology in the Balance", "Nihilism and Culture" and "Human History and Social Process".

Genres: History, Sociology, Anthropology, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

J. Goudsblom (1932) is emeritus hoogleraar sociologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Hij behoorde tot de oprichters en eerste redactie van het literaire tijdschrift Tirade. Zo bezien is deze eerste verschijning van Vuur en beschaving bij Van Oorschot een soort ‘thuiskomst'. Goudsblom bundelde aforismen in Pasmunt (1958) en Reserves (1998). Hij publiceerde tal van sociologische werken. Vuur en beschaving verscheen in 1992 gelijktijdig in het Nederlands en het Engels. Van de Engelse editie is een herdruk verschenen als Penguin. Het boek werd verder vertaald in het Duits, Spaans, Italiaans, Hongaars, Japans en Chinees.

Johan Goudsblom – known to his friends as ‘Joop’ – was Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam from 1968 to 1997. He first met Norbert Elias at the Third World Congress of Sociology in Amsterdam in 1956. He was influential in promoting Elias’s work while it was still almost unknown in the Netherlands and abroad. He was one of the editors of Human Figurations, the Festschrift presented to Norbert Elias on his eightieth birthday in 1977. Besides his numerous publications in Dutch, he has also published the following books in English: Dutch Society (1967), Sociology in the Balance (a critical comparison of Elias’s ideas with those of other twentieth-century sociologists; 1977), Nihilism and Culture (1980), Fire and Civilization (1992), and The Course of Human History: Economic Growth, Social Process and Civilization (with E.L. Jones and Stephen Mennell, 1996) and Mappae Mundi: Humans and their Habitats in a Long-Term Sociolo-Ecological Perspective (with Bert Vries, 2002). With Stephen Mennell he edited The Norbert Elias Reader (Blackwell, 1998) and Norbert Elias on Civilization, Power, and Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 1998). '

Reviews

[Sense of History]

In the 1980's and 90's the German sociologist Norbert Elias was very popular. His The Civilizing Process even got a Dutch translation in a very cheap edition. As a student I started reading it, but soon had to quit; Elias' writing style was rather unfathomable. Still, he gained quite an audience among sociologists and even more theoretically focussed historians. Joop Goudsblom, back in Amsterdam, was one of his followers and that very clearly is displayed in this work, in which Goudsblom very frequently refers to him.

I've always wondered why Elias' star has faded so much since the 90's. After reading Goudsblom, I think I know why. The theory of Elias in essence is a theory of progress, his underlying assumption is that the European civilization since the Middle Ages has gone through a continuous process of progress and more so, very top-down, from the nobility to the bourgeois and so to the common people. I'm probably doing no justice to Elias, but in essence this is what he says (alongside a specific more sociological framing). This eurocentrism, this top-down-focus and the progress paradigm lost much of their appeal in the 90's. Especially when new developments in historical science began to pop up, like World History or Global History, the unilateral attention to western civilization couldn't be upholded.

That is also why this work by Goudsblom, following Elias, is a bit obsolete. But, I must admit, Goudsblom's overview still is very titillating. He convincingly illustrates how important the process of command over fire has been for the human development. In this sense, it is still worth reading. (2.5 stars)

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Over het algemeen is het vruchtbaar om in te zoomen op bepaalde aspecten van de werkelijkheid: die methode zet de waarde van dat aspect in reliëf en zet ook verwante aspecten in een scherper licht. Dat heeft Goudsblom in dit boek uitstekend gedaan. Hij belicht vrij gedetailleerd en volgens de dan (ca 1995) bekende literatuur de ontwikkeling van vuurbeheersing door de mens en de grote impact ervan op de menselijke geschiedenis. Daarbij gebruikt hij vooral de theorie van Norbert Elias over het civilisatieproces als kader. En met succes. Hij legt bloot dat zeker in de aanvangsfase van de menselijke geschiedenis vuurbeheersing een ongelofelijk grote impact heeft gehad op de menselijke ontwikkeling. Nadeel van deze ééndimensionele aanpak is een vorm van tunnelvisie: zowat alles wordt in het licht van dit ene aspect gezien (vuurbeheersing dus), en daardoor wordt het belang ervan toch wel wat overschat. Bovendien leidt dit boek, net als de civilisatietheorie van Elias, aan een nogal eenzijdige Westerse invulling (het vooruitgangsparadigma is alom tegenwoordig). Niettemin, een zeer verdienstelijke pioniersstudie!

[Gretel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started our promisingly looking at the development of fire and humanities control of, but as it went on I found it quite problematic. Far too deterministic and lacking historical empathy. Interesting enough but definitely could have been better.