Download or read book Meetings, Manners, and Civilization written by Wilbert van Vree and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1999 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociologist Vree peers into the primordial obscurity before Robert's Rules and traces the evolution of behavior during councils, assemblies, parliaments, and conferences to the present within the framework of Norbert Elias' theory of civilizing processes. Rather than a comparative history, he presents a succession of case studies such as the militarization and demilitarization of meetings in agrarian societies, the emergence of a Protestant meeting order, and the professionalization of meeting manners.