Etiquette and mental health

A concept of civilization was developed by Elias, whereby increased self-control over behaviour and emotions was the mark of civilization and could be used as a method to differentiate societies.  Elias saw this as the outcome of increased interconnectedness between members of society, caused by the emergence of monopolies and central governance which removed people from coercion allowing a more sophisticated division of labour to arise.  Key outcomes of this process were an increase in hygiene behaviours and a reduction in violence. This last effect has been more recently elaborated on by Pinker in his 2011 book.

As a part of his research Elias looked at historical etiquette manuals. These manuals offered prescriptive normative guidance on how to behave in various situations. There is much to say about etiquette and historical transitions in what counts as good manners and how central and stylised such good manners were to societies. But my present concern is whether there is a link between etiquette and our current interest in mental health. Let me explain:

We have all noticed two things in recent years. First, a growing awareness of the diversity of mental health challenges in modern society along with their impacts. Second, an increased focus on the ethical status of individual identity within societal contexts. I think it is also possible to note a third issue and that is a general decline in shared etiquette. By this last I mean that we address one another differently, more casually, than we did in the 1970s, when I was born. Our adherence to authority and hierarchical social structures has waned. It is rare for people to say <excuse me> before pushing past you on the street. If you are lucky they might say it afterwards. And so on. Please note, I am not making a value judgement here. Some of these things are likely beneficial in ways we could not imagine in the 1970s. Others, perhaps, less so.

Here is one argument that might be sustained. With the decline in etiquette and shared norms around social structures, social life has become much more stressful and mental health issues have flourished as a consequence

Here is another argument. Etiquette and shared norms around social structures may have civilized us, in Elias’s terms, leading to a reduction in violence and an increase in hygiene through normative social coordination. But a cost of civilization, as a process, might have been the suppression of behaviours that would now carry a mental health ascription. If etiquette were powerful, truly seeing one another, truly connecting might have been difficult. We could connect in the mercantile, economic way that Elias envisaged. But not as individual entities, such that our individuality and all that this brings might be obscured. As our etiquette has reduced, the possibility for a full throated expression of ourselves has become possible because we loosened self control. As life is difficult, and none of us are truly equipped for all of it, variation in mental health has become increasingly visible in the population. 

Our current concerns with the ethical status of individual identity within societal contexts might be a consequence of this full throated expression. Where Elias's civilizing process crafted norms, and deployed etiquette to fit people as individual data points to a model, now each data point is equally to be valued and we are exhorted to take an idiographic approach to understanding ourselves. This seems like a move to deal with visible mental health, to inclusively value all that we are.

But if we run with this second argument I think there is an additional observation to make. Whilst there is a focus upon individuality, there is also a focus upon groups of individuals identifying as equivalent to one another. Following the statistical metaphor above, we have moved from shared etiquette causing us all to conform to one fitted line to clustering our population as in hierarchical linear modelling. We can fit lines within each cluster, and make minimally nomothetic statements about how to understand these narrowly defined types. And within each cluster there is an etiquette about how to appropriately recognize membership and coordinate. This leads to a kind of Balkanization of society, with each cluster claiming the right to pursue their own path.

It is possible that this view of etiquette contains a concept of self control, but in a different sense to that from Elias. The etiquette within these clusters is based on identity and the control of presentation. It is an etiquette of branding, attaching a value proposition to membership and managing it in the same way as a business might. It is a way of taking ownership of difference and rendering it minimally normative. This is not unlike the concept of fictive kinship, in which kinship psychology is activated by markers of similarity. In groups deploying these methods uniformity of dress, the use of terms such as <sister> or <brother> to refer to members, and so on all help to mimic a kin based grouping and cement a unity of purpose. Clusters suppress less variance than shared etiquette, but they still suppress some in this way.

The unity of purpose for a cluster may simply be sharing specific difficulties of modern life. Being out in the open, without the cover of shared societal etiquette, will make this appealing. But other purposes may emerge, including coordinating to access resources and I think we see this in the increasingly specified concerns for such groupings in the settings of commerce, governance and public service. These concerns are often grouped under the term inclusivity which is perhaps to be seen as an attempt to engineer a new etiquette for the broader population. This is a political solution to variation in mental health.