Cas Wouters

Cas Wouters was strongly influenced by and contributed to the sociological domain of process or figurational sociology. His theory of informalisation implies that a long-term process of formalisation – of formalising manners and disciplining people – had been dominant from the sixteenth up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, after which a process of informalisation has prevailed: behavioural and emotional alternatives increased, together with demands on emotion management or self-control. Wouters proceeded to elaborate this theoretical perspective in a variety of studies of the late-nineteenth and twentieth-century social and psychic processes, focusing mainly on emotion regulation, dying and mourning, sexuality, and the emancipation of women and children. In 2004 Wouters published Sex and Manners, Female Emancipation in the West 1890-2000. His systematic and empirical approach has been an important contribution to this field of study and is highly appreciated throughout the ranks of his fellow workers and students.

In the 1960s, Wouters studied sociology at the University of Amsterdam with Professor Joop Goudsblom. Wouters wrote his dissertation Informalization about the obvious changes of the western customs and manners in the 20th century. He describes the changing behavior of different generations and summarizes this in his theory of informalization. The question about, how these changes in manners and regulations of emotions can be interpreted and explained is in its core the same that Norbert Elias addressed in his most important work The Civilizing Process (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation) regarding the changes between the 15th and 19th century. Wouters uses Elias’ theory as a framework while critically observing and analyzing it. The dissertation was published in 1990 as Van minnen en sterven and translated into German as Informalisierung.

Casparus Adrianus Petrus Maria "Cas" Wouters (born 1943 in Sint-Michielsgestel) is a Dutch sociologist. He studied sociology in Amsterdam. At present he is a researcher at Utrecht University, affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR).