Cas Wouters

Casparus Adrianus Petrus Maria "Cas" Wouters (Sint-Michielsgestel, 1943 – 5 September 2025) was a Dutch sociologist. He studied sociology in Amsterdam and worked as a researcher at Utrecht University, affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research.

Academic background 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 described 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 was 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 used Elias' theory as a framework while critically observing and analyzing it. His dissertation was published in 1990 as Van minnen en sterven. It was translated into German as Informalisierung.

Wouters was strongly influenced by and contributed to the sociological domain of process or figurational sociology, the discipline which Nobert Elias developed and his followers refined. Wouters used The Civilizing Process to explain changes of social behaviour in the twentieth century, the so-called "age of informalisation". Like Elias, he used books about etiquette to explain social changes, but also other primary sources.

Wouters was a regular contributor to Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift and the Norbert Elias Foundation.

Wouters' 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 elaborated 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 was an important contribution to this field of study.

In 2019, with Michael Dunnin, Wouters edited the book Civilisation and Informalisation: Connecting Long-Term Social and Psychic Processes. This reader includes two parts: "Civilisation and Informalisation - the book" (with six chapters written by Cas Wouters), and "Civilisation and Informalisation" (with six chapters written by Jonathan Fletcher, Michael Dunning, Raúl Sánchez García, Arjan Post, Wilbert van Vree, and Richard Kilminster).

Wouters wrote articles in English, Dutch, Spanish and German, on changes in relationships between men and women, the dying and those who live on, and on related, more general social and psychic processes.

Wouters died by euthanasia on 5 September 2025, at the age of 81.

Selected bibliography

Books 1983 (with Bram van Stolk; 2nd ed. 1985): Vrouwen in tweestrijd - Tussen thuis en tehuis : relatieproblemen in de verzorgingsstaat, opgetekend in een crisiscentrum. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus. Translated into German as Frauen im Zwiespalt (Suhrkamp 1987). 1990: Van minnen en sterven. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.