Reflexive habits: dating and rationalised conduct in New York and Berlin
Monika Krause and Alexandra Kowalski published in: Sociological Review, (61) 1 (2013): pp.21-40.
Please cite published version
Abstract
This paper builds on the work of Norbert Elias to examine how conduct varies across cultural contexts. We compare courtship practices in New York and Berlin and ask how people act during the course of ‘getting together’ with a sexual or romantic partner.
Drawing on interviews in both contexts, we find that conduct associated with the practice of ‘dating’ among New York respondents is more rationalised as indicated by a greater awareness of timing, a greater degree of intentionality and planning and a greater tendency to psychologise self and others. Berlin respondents report observations of themselves and others in less detail and tend to describe themselves as passive objects of the impersonal forces of love. Whereas conduct associated with dating is more reflexive in some ways, these forms of reflexive conduct are not themselves fully conscious or the object of reflection but have in turn become taken for granted and habitual. These findings challenge us to conceptualise habitus in a manner that does not reproduce the opposition between habit and reflexivity but allows us to use the concept as a tool to capture variations in how self-monitoring and habit are combined in modes of conduct.
Keywords: Elias, reflexivity, dating, habitus, habit, love, sexuality, rationalisation,
courtship
1

The sociological discussion about reflexivity in recent decades has tended to focus either on fundamental theoretical questions about human agency, or on historical trends. The debate has somewhat neglected how conduct varies across cultures. In this paper we recall the contribution of Norbert Elias and the figurational tradition to the discussion about reflexivity and we draw on this work to examine differences in the way in which people act in everyday life within different western contexts.
We investigate differences in conduct by comparing courtship practices in New York City and Berlin, building on a long tradition of using sexuality to explore cultural differences
(Mead, 1928, 1944). The comparison allows us to ask what kind of conduct, and what kind of selves are on display in a similar kind of behaviour across two different contexts: the act of ‘getting together’ with a sexual or romantic partner.
The comparison between New York and Berlin allows us to compare practices in two cosmopolitan cities within the Western world, which one might expect to share cultural features. It also allows us to gain a deeper understanding of an institution that has long puzzled observers of popular culture in the US: the US ‘date’, - a distinct form of courtship, specific both in the context of US history and in cross-cultural comparison.
In the United States, ‘dating’ has historically replaced the earlier practice of ‘calling’ since the 1920s. In ‘calling’, a man visits a woman’s house under supervision from the woman’s parents. In ‘dating’, the two partners make a plan to leave the house together. The rise of dating is associated with the relative distance from parental control that college campuses provide as well as with new urban forms of commercial entertainment (Bailey, 1988;
Illouz, 1997; Rothman, 1984; Wouters, 2004). ‘Dating’ persists in the United States even if

some still regard it as an illegitimate alternative to marriage, and even if, on the other hand, it is now complemented by even more informal practices of ‘hooking up’ (Glenn and
Marquardt, 2001; England, Shafer and Fogarty, 2008; Paul, McManus and Hayes, 2000;
Hamilton and Armstrong, 2009; Bogle, 2008).
We draw on participant observation, an analysis of discourses about dating in the US and courtship in Germany, and interviews in New York and Berlin. ‘Dating’ is a cultural form, which allows for explicit negotiation of mutual interest to very fine degree. It is not available in Germany. The availability (or not) of dating as a cultural form shapes conduct in interesting ways: Borrowing from the work of Norbert Elias (2000[1939]), we can describe conduct associated with dating as more ‘civilised’, or more ‘rationalised’.
As we discuss below, New York respondents show a fine-tuned awareness of timing, mention a greater degree of intentionality and planning and display a greater tendency to psychologise themselves and others. Respondents in Berlin on the other hand seem to negotiate timing to a lesser extent, they report observations of themselves and others in less detail and they describe themselves more as passive objects of the impersonal force of love.
Whereas conduct associated with dating among New Yorkers could be said to be more reflexive in some ways, these forms of reflexive conduct are not themselves fully conscious or the object of reflection but have in turn become taken for granted and habitual in that context. Dating for New Yorkers provides a taken-for-granted setting for highly reflexive conduct.
Conduct as a variable: Elias and the figurational tradition

Social theorists often treat the question of ‘how people act’ as one to be answered once and for all by one approach or another. Building on the classical tradition in sociology, and specifically Max Weber (2001[1905]), Norbert Elias (2000[1939]) laid the groundwork for comparative work on conduct by showing the modern self to be the contingent outcome of processes of modernisation.
For Elias, civilised acting is marked by a high degree of rationalisation, internalisation of control and psychologisation of self and other (Elias, 2000 [1939]). A high degree of affectcontrol demands the sacrifice of immediate pleasures for long-term ones and makes possible a certain degree of planning for the future. Less civilised acting projects itself as more impulsive and involves less explicit observation of self and others.
Elias highlights the historical specificity of reflexive conduct; he also emphasises that the new modes of acting continue to be embedded in the social relations that made them possible. Just as Weber argues against a one-sided emphasis on secularisation or the liberation of a pre-existing rational core in the ‘Protestant Ethic’ and insists that rationalisation is a social process, Elias’ emphasises the rise not of an autonomous individual but of a social constraint towards self-constraint.
If actors continue to be constituted by meaningful social relations in post-traditional societies, the question emerges whether and how conduct varies among social groups today.
Norbert Elias hinted at cross-national differences resulting from different processes of state-formation (Elias, 2000 [1939, p. 197, 1996 [1989]), and he also analysed differences between social groups in the same society (Elias, 2000 [1939]).

Comparative research in the figurational tradition following Elias remains distinctive in several ways (eg Kuzmics, 2000a, 2000b; Schalet, 2000; 2011; Wouters, 1987, 1998, 1999,
2004, 2011; Mennell, 2007; Gabriel and Mennell, 2011). First, it makes conduct itself the target of investigation. In this it differs from many of the important comparative studies in sociology that have tended to locate cultural differences in political institutions or in
‘culture’ understood as systems of meanings - thus they have conceptualised the difference as being relatively external to actors and the process of conduct. Other scholars, including those directly following up on the ‘Protestant Ethic’ have focused on relatively static attributes of actors such as attitudes and values (Lenski, 1961; Inglehart, 1977, 1990, 1997;
Inglehart and Abramson, 1995; Hofstede, 1984, 2001; Furnham et al., 1993; Inkeles and
Levinson, 1997; but see Lamont, 1992, 2000; Kalberg, 1987a; Derne, 1994).
Second, the figurational tradition takes the actor as an embodied being, with needs and drives, looking specifically at the management of bodily reactions and at affect control.
The concept of habitus in the way Norbert Elias has formulated it, links conceptions of the self and ways of acting that unfold over time and serves as a tool for comparative inquiry into embodied and, at the same time, social ways of being, acting, and thinking. Now prominently associated in the English-speaking world with its specific elaboration by Pierre
Bourdieu, Elias has taken the word habitus from German everyday language and from Max
Weber (Camic, 1986; Chartier, 1989).
The case of love and sex

In the ‘Protestant Ethic’ Weber focuses on the rationalisation of religious practice and the emergence of a modern work ethic. More recently, scholars have complemented the narrative about the emergence of the individual with an account of the development of the modern self through specific conceptions of love and sexuality (Foucault, 1979; Luhmann,
1998).
Early modern forms of reproductive unions in the West emphasised the economic aspects of marriage as well as the interests of the families involved. In contrast, bourgeois marriage was experienced from the nineteenth century onwards as love, the result of individual choice and commitment to a specific person. Romantic love made the individual the location of narrative as part of a larger process of divesting meaning from meaning systems to the individual (Giddens, 1992; White, 1981; see also Collier, 1997). A new kind of reflexive self emerged. As Giddens observed, ‘romantic love presumes some degree of selfinterrogation. How do I feel about the other? How does the other feel about me?’ (1992, p.
44).
Love has also been at the centre of claims about the social transformations of the contemporary world (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1992; Baumann, 2000,
2003; Hondrich, 2004) and about a specific form of reflexive selfhood (Swidler, 2001).
Developments in sexuality in the West since the 1960s have been interpreted as a second major step in the process of modernisation. Giddens argues that the search and construction of self- identity through experimental relationships is paradigmatic of late modernity (1991,
1992). Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) see the ‘ordinary chaos of contemporary love’ as a radicalisation of processes of individualisation that has its origins in the eighteenth

century. As a broad range of relationship and family forms become socially accepted, the individual has a new set of choices to make, and he or she is likely to make these decisions not once but at several points during his or her life.
The individualisation thesis has been criticised as overstating its case in various ways
(Jamieson et al ., 2002; Smart and Shipman, 2004; Gross, 2005; Duncan and Smith,
2006; Atkinson, 2008; Syltevok, 2010; Duncan, 2011). In the context of this paper, we argue that its merit lies in asking comparative questions about the self, but that it is not comparative enough. Theorists of reflexive modernisation or post-modernity make historical claims about the self (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994; Beck, Bonss and Lau,
2003). People in late-modern societies have become more reflexive and more selfmonitoring. Reading the accounts of Beck and Giddens, however, one might understand reflexive modernisation as a relatively uniform process, affecting all groups and geographies in the same way. Yet popular culture and journalistic accounts are full of references to the experience of people in their teens and twenties who find that the conventions of courtship still vary within and among western industrialised countries, across social groups but also across cultures and places.
Getting together in New York and Berlin
How do people get together with a romantic or sexual partner? We build on the discussion on love and reflexivity by considering cultural variation and by considering everyday practices. To examine courtship, and the US institution of dating in particular, we combined participant observation, and the analysis of historiography and discourses about

courtship and interview material. We lived in New York City for nine and seven years respectively. Like many students and young professionals who come to New York from abroad we felt we were confronted with a very peculiar cultural phenomenon called
‘dating’. The US Americans, whom we talked to about this would sometimes admit that
New York has a peculiar dating culture compared to other US cities – it is said to be particularly competitive, for example - but they would find it difficult to step outside the parameters of ‘dating’ itself and conceive of it as one particular form of courtship among other possible forms.
We learned about dating through interactions and failed interactions and through listening to years of our friends’ experiences. We analysed meanings of dating in public discourse and the research literature from the particular angle of (French and German) outsiders who were also insiders. We also interviewed young professionals and doctoral students in the social sciences and the humanities living in New York City (n=20) and Berlin (n=20) to explore how the availability or not of dating shapes conduct. We recruited respondents from personal networks; in each city we interviewed an equal number of men and women.
All respondents were white and described themselves as heterosexual. Ten of the New
Yorkers and ten of the Berlin respondents were single at the time of the interview; the others said they were ‘in a relationship’ or ‘with someone’.
Our sample is small and strategic, rather than representative. We chose a sample from those whom one might expect to be part of a shared global culture of young professionals. Our respondents are highly educated, young - between 26 and 31 years old -, and live in global

cities that are quite cosmopolitan and mixed compared to other cities in the US and
Germany respectively.
We asked respondents to tell us how they ‘got together’ with their most recent date, flirt, or sexual or romantic partner; we probed the details, turning points and key decisions described by respondents, as well as the meaning of terms like ‘date’, ‘boyfriend or girlfriend’, ‘relationship’ and ‘being together’. We then asked about other stories of courtship as well, acquiring a total of about 60 stories of ‘getting together’ for each group,
120 overall.
Because we asked respondents to tell us about events in the past, issues of memory-bias could have arisen and respondents might have shaped their stories to fit an image they wanted to project. Yet using interviews has considerable advantages compared to other approaches. Interviews target practice more directly than the etiquette and advice books usually analysed; they also allow unique insight into subjective interpretations and reflections. We asked respondents to tell us concrete stories in as much detail as possible in order to target the practice of courtship as it unfolds in the everyday. This is in contrast to previous research (eg Swidler, 2001) that has asked respondents reflect on major life- decisions.
What ‘dating’ means
Let us now report some of the meanings, which the term ‘date’ and ‘dating’ assume in the
American context. ‘Dating’ is a contested term, yet the underlying terms of that

contestation are nonetheless shared and relatively stable. We can explore the meanings by looking at a series of distinctions in which ‘dating’ is used.
A ‘date’ is different from a meeting with a friend or colleague in a seemingly deromanticised and desexualized context. Rather it is a planned meeting with a potential or actual romantic partner in which that romantic meaning is explicitly acknowledged. This meaning is evoked, when after reporting of a meeting, one is asked by a friend, ‘was it a date?’ A ‘date’ does depend on that romantic meaning being conscious to both partners, so the answer to that question might be ‘I don’t know’, meaning ‘it was romantic for me but I am not sure if it was romantic for the other person’.
‘Date’ in that sense is difficult to translate into other languages. In German, people generally do not differentiate between romantic and unromantic get-togethers, using the terms ‘meeting’ (
Treffen
) or ‘engagement’ or ‘appointment’ (
Verabredung ). In the rather unusual case that they do want to make the distinction, they might use the French word
‘ rendez-vous’ . In German, only the now very old- fashioned and out of use ‘ Stelldichein ’ comes close to the term ‘date’.
The distinction between formal dating and informal ‘hanging out’ is one that puzzles foreigners in New York City or foreign viewers of US films and TV series. One
Englishman, confronted with implicit expectation he did not quite understand, commented about the formality of meeting women in New York City ‘They do this crazy dating thing where there are exact rules as to how many times you have to take someone out before you are invited to their apartment’.

As a European woman in New York City, it is not uncommon to meet with a man for a film or a meal unthinkingly, only to then be given quite exact cues as to how the evening had gone – either in a positive assessment (‘I really enjoyed hanging out with you. I hope to see you again’), the awkward expectation of a kiss, or a mysterious end to all future conversations. In a German city, it would be very unusual to go to the cinema with someone and not stay in touch at least nominally; because both parties have had to pretend that ‘nothing’ is happening by way of romance, it is not then possible to suddenly exit from the relationship after one evening.
Dating is different from ‘hooking up’, which is sexual but more informal and separates sexual behaviour from the assumption of commitment (Glenn and Marquardt, 2001;
England, Shafer and Fogarty, 2008; Paul, McManus and Hayes, 2008; Hamilton and
Armstrong, 2009; Bogle, 2008). According to Bogle’s study (2008), hooking up has replaced dating on college campuses in the US, but many young Americans start to date upon leaving university as they transition into professional life.
Dating is romantic and/or sexual but it is distinguished from romance and sex inside marriage. Dating couples are distinguished from cohabiting and married couples in research
(eg Blackwell and Lichter, 2004). In that context, dating is sometimes acknowledged as a legitimate step towards marriage, but it is also sometimes viewed with suspicion as a sexual activity outside marriage and as a possibly threatening alternative to marriage. Indeed there is a discourse about the ‘rise of dating’ that is shaped by fears about what might happen when sex becomes entirely separated from marriage. Consider the following beginning of a recent article in the American Sociological Review
: ‘Scholars are often pessimistic about

adolescent dating, linking it to increases in depression, interpersonal violence, conflict with parents, school failure, associations with delinquents, substance use, and offending’
(McCarthy and Casey, 2008, p. 944). Here, dating as a romantic and possibly sexual activity is construed as a possibly harmful deviation from abstinence and celibacy.
Exploiting its status between the informal and the formal, people use ‘dating’ to express the subtle shades of commitment and seriousness in relationships. People may say ‘we are dating’ to distinguish the relationship from mere friendship and to say that the relationship has a sexual element. People may also say ‘we are dating’ to distinguish it from a mere casual hook-up and denote some kind of constancy. Or they might say ‘we’re just dating’ to mean ‘we have not decided to be in an exclusive relationship or get married’. ‘I am dating’ means ‘I am not married’ but it also means ‘I am not totally single or sexually inactive but I am engaged in meeting one or several potential partners’. ‘I am not dating right now’ usually means ‘I am taking a break from consciously engaging in meeting people in search for a potential partner’.
In contrast, in the German case, there is a relative dearth of vocabulary to describe practices of courtship. There are words for an individual’s pursuit of a potential partner, some casual
(‘ anmachen
’, ‘ anbaggern
’, roughly ‘to hit on’), some more serious (‘hinter jemandem her sein’, ‘sich fuer jemanden interessieren’, roughly ‘to pursue someone’) some old-fashioned
(‘ den Hof machen’ , ‘ nachstellen ’, roughly ‘to court’). There are also expressions for the result of courtship: people talk about ‘being together’, or ‘being in a relationship’, but there is no common word for the process of ‘getting together’. ‘Flirting’ has been adopted from the English but focuses only on the most playful aspects of the process of courtship.

‘ Paarungsverhalten ’ is equivalent to the English ‘mating’; it evokes animal behaviour and is only used ironically. Advice sections in magazines are titled ‘Love and Sex’, ‘Love, Sex, and Relationships’. In the past ten years Germans have introduced the English word
‘dating’, but largely to refer to the practices associated with online personal ads, which do not fit pre-existing patterns of courtship easily.
It is important to note that not all New Yorkers in their twenties are people who date. Not only are some people ‘not dating right now’, that is they are committed celibates, singles who have casual sex or married. Some New Yorkers, particularly young people from selective liberal arts colleges, reject the form as a whole as ‘tacky’. Some of the people we might have interviewed told us ‘we don’t do dating’, meaning ‘we just hang out with friends and may happen to fall in love in the process’.
Dating in New York City is part of a cultural repertoire that some people make use of and others reject. Even those New Yorkers who reject dating, however, have to navigate a terrain that is shaped by the availability of this form and the possibility that they might encounter someone who reads behaviour within this code and knows them to be able to do so as well.
The concept of the ‘date’ makes a distinction between a normal get-together and a gettogether with an explicit romantic potential. If a New Yorker is asked by a member of a gender that they define as sexually relevant if they are free on Saturday night for a meal in an expensive restaurant, he or she cannot ignore the message that this sends in a context, in which dating is practised, even if he or she would prefer to fall in love in other ways.

Rationalised conduct in courtship practices
Below we show based on our interviews how the availability of dating shapes conduct.
Conduct associated with the practice of ‘dating’ among New York respondents is more rationalised than that of the Berliners. While ‘dating’ asks people to exhibit greater selfcontrol, it also gives them more opportunities to negotiate romantic involvement explicitly at various stages.
Sequences and turning points
All stories contain a number of differentiated steps that usually do not all happen at the same time, such as the first time someone noticed another person, or the first kiss. But the
New Yorkers’ stories reflect a much richer and more fine-tuned sequence of events and situations than those of their Berlin counterparts. This greater range of turning points creates opportunities for New Yorkers to reflect on the kind of intimacy they want and to negotiate this with the other person.
Among the steps mentioned by New Yorkers were the following: an initial intentional contact-making, such as indicated by ‘I made a point of saying hello’; a first planned encounter, often referred to as a ‘date’; a second date and maybe a third, fourth or fifth one.
Steps also include a kiss on the mouth, a French kiss, fooling around, ‘dating’, having sex, going exclusive, saying ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’, and saying ‘I love you’.
The range of identifiable turning points is much smaller in the stories told by Berliners.
‘Getting together’ ( zusammen kommen ) collapses what New Yorkers experience as
‘dating’, ‘going exclusive’, and being ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’. It also includes all forms of sexual interactions, usually from the first kiss to petting and intercourse.

The first kiss is of overriding importance and functions as the one significant marker of change in the stories of our Berlin respondents. As one male respondent put it: ‘Kissing makes things easier, after kissing everything is often very simple’. The kiss marks the transition between the ‘before’ and the ‘after’. ‘Before’ people just know each other, pretending that nothing is happening. ‘Afterwards’ people have crossed into romantic territory and are ‘together’ in some way. In half of the Berlin stories the first kiss makes it clear that the two parties are ‘together’. ‘Being together’ means ‘trying it with each other’ or ‘being girlfriend and boyfriend’. ‘Being together’ usually already implies an assumption of exclusivity. In the other half of the Berlin stories the first kiss is followed by a short period of uncertainty about the status of a relationship, which is resolved either the next day or in the following week or two.
Because the process of ‘getting together’ is longer drawn- out, we find in the New York stories stages and turning points that do not appear in the Berlin data. A step unique to New
York for example is a kiss on the mouth which does not involve French kissing. Two of the
New York respondents told us of evenings that ended with a kiss on the mouth but did not proceed to a French kiss. Whereas some New Yorkers started ‘French kissing’ right away, no Berlin respondent reported a first kiss that did not proceed to a French kiss. The very term küssen, although formally equivalent to ‘kiss,’ in the Berlin stories refers exclusively to French kissing. When we asked respondents to specify what kind of kiss they meant, the answer was in each case dismissive of the very question. It is as though once the Germans have acknowledged romantic interest by a kiss on the mouth, there simply is no point in leaving it at that.

Whereas the first kiss is reported in most New York stories as a notable event in the development of an interaction, it does not have the same status as a unique turning point—it is one among many other events that transform the relationship. New Yorkers distinguish fooling around and intercourse. Fooling around is itself in several cases distinct from ‘oral sex’—all practices which just belong to one category, ‘sex’, in Berlin stories. Once a Berlin couple have started ‘having sex’, the distinctions around different practices are not as symbolically charged in this age group as in the New York stories.
Intentionality and planning in courtship
Consider the following two conversations about first kisses, one with Jeff i
- a 29-year-old
New Yorker - and one with Stefan - a 28-year-old doctoral student in international relations from Berlin:
Jeff: … ‘So we went out again, and this time I kissed her good night. We went to see a movie.’
Interviewer: ‘You are talking about a kiss on the mouth?’
Jeff: ‘Yes. A kiss on the cheek can have all kinds of meanings. I have other female friends; I kiss them on the cheek. For some people or in traditional dating situations a kiss on the cheek can be a romantic preliminary. I just wanted something that was clear …’
Interviewer: ‘I mean, was it a French kiss?’
Jeff: ‘Mmmm, no that would have been a little weird. You know there is a phrase in America we use: “He stuck his tongue down my throat.” That’s when you suffocate. It’s more sexual. I wanted something affectionate. It was a way to say that I was interested but wanted to take it slow.’
Stefan: ‘… it was on this said evening that we kissed each other in this club.
That evening nothing much else happened. I brought her home and we said we’d see each other again soon.’
Interviewer: ‘What kind of kiss was that?’
Stefan: ‘A real kiss. Yeah, yeah, sure. Tongue in the throat, of course. Yeah, yeah.’

Jeff volunteers an elaborate account of the middle way he chose between an old-fashioned kiss on the cheek and a French kiss judged too invasive. The kiss is decidedly de-eroticised; it functions as a sign of a certain type of interest. the question Jeff seemed to ask himself was not so much what he wanted to do but what kind of signal he wanted to give. Stefan, on the other hand, tells his story as though he unthinkingly proceeded to kiss his partner.
He seems not to have thought about the kiss as a ‘signal’ to be given or withheld.
Turning points for New Yorkers are often remembered as the product of individual decisions or with detailed descriptions of how meanings were negotiated in concrete interactions. New Yorkers speak of themselves as an ‘I’ interacting with another individual from the beginning of their story and throughout its course. New York respondents usually report a first step of intentional contact-making signalling a transition from being only generally aware of each other. Respondents report this in words such as ‘I made a point of going to say hello’, ‘I asked him for a date’, or ‘We decided to have dinner’. Also for later stages, small decisions are remembered and accounted for: for example, why one decided to end the evening, or why one decided to go to the other person’s apartment. Laura explains for example how she ended up in a colleague’s apartment on their first date:
‘He said: “Do you want to come over to the apartment? We’ll just order in?”, because it was really late. We were both working really late so I said:
“Sure, that would actually be nice.” Because sometimes it is odd because I never go to somebody’s house for a first date. I’m always really nervous … I probably should have been more cautious but I really trusted him already so
I was like: “Sure I’ll come over to your apartment”.
Laura here remembers that it was the other person who suggested meeting at home; she has an account of why she should not have done it and she also has an account of why she did it anyway.

Most New Yorkers report conversations with their partners about ‘going exclusive’, that is to stop seeing other people, and about calling each other ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’ for stories that went that far. For each of these transitions, respondents report on the interactions and reasoning that made them possible.
An element of recognised intentionality is built into the very concept of the ‘date’. One
New York respondent defined a date the following way: ‘A date is any time you get with someone alone, just to get to know each other but you want to be more than friends’. A date is thus defined in theory by the fact that both parties acknowledge awareness of the romantic potential of the relationship to each other. In practice, respondents report much ambiguity about whether any given encounter is in fact a ‘real date’, or, as they say, a ‘datedate’. In any given interaction, the concept of the ‘date’, foreign to our Berlin respondents, raises for New Yorkers the question of intentions and on this basis ambiguity is actively negotiated.
The scope for reporting decision making and interaction is narrower for Berliners, given what was said about the limited number of steps in which meanings basic to the definition of the relationship were negotiated. For those events that were described, Berlin respondents often used impersonal forms and organic metaphors to describe their course.
Berlin respondents tend to refer to themselves and their partner as an organic ‘we’.
Respondents describe how they are affected by a situation rather than how they and others shape and seek to control a situation.
The beginning of a story was in all but two Berlin cases reported with a sentence like ‘We knew each other from before’, ‘We were already friends’, which, independently of the

factual content which these statements convey, de-personalises and to some extent naturalises the initial contact-making. In a typical statement, Birgit, 28, when asked how she met her current boyfriend, replied ‘We studied together … We just saw each other every day anyway, so everything could happen by itself. It just increased naturally. It went quite harmoniously.’
Similarly, Tobias says about his last girlfriend: ‘It happened at a party, it was a coincidence.
Basically it was like that with all my girlfriends; it was not that I pursued them and then it worked. It was always these stories where I was surprised myself. I always felt it just happened.’ A similar logic is found when respondents report times during which ‘nothing happened’. Markus said ‘With Steffi, it was like I waited and waited and waited and nothing happened. And suddenly it all happened by itself.’
Half of the Berlin stories are about ‘getting together’ at parties where both respondents more or less ‘happened to be’. Yet even stories about evenings planned as one-on-one gettogethers tend to refer to the effect and weight of external circumstances. Lisa says of the beginning of her relationship with Stefan:
‘Then we went to a concert and for dinner and we stayed out until 5 o’clock in the morning. I did have a feeling that it was something special. Because even though you go out with many people without there necessarily being something in the air. … Normally you go out to the movies and then for a drink but not the whole night.’
This is the closest we come to a ‘date’ in the Berlin data. Yet Lisa chooses the first person plural, rather than singular in the first sentence. It is also significant that Lisa is interpreting the event with regard to its objective meaning rather than with regard to Stefan’s intentions or her own feelings about him: ‘It was something special’. The course of events is

interpreted with a view to a binary answer that is ‘out there’. Either ‘there is something in the air’ or there is not. The people in this story appear to be rather passive characters, with the course of events fundamentally beyond their reach.
Sometimes Berlin respondents describe the lack of actorhood as paralysing. Markus reflects on this when he says: ‘We just noticed we were both interested. But I couldn’t just tell her that on a walk. We had to go to a disco. We also needed other people to arrange this evening in the disco. We wouldn’t have gone to the disco just the two of us.’ Markus here explains how he felt he had no alternative between declaring his love out of the blue on a walk, which he found difficult, and ‘waiting’ for an occasion that presented itself as natural to get drunk and start kissing, which is what happened in that particular story.
Asking for a ‘date’, an explicitly romantic occasion, is not part of the repertoire of this set of respondents, and indeed an explicit acknowledgement to the other party of romantic interest before ‘something happens’ is fundamentally ‘uncool’. It thus often seems unclear to respondents how they could act on their romantic interest in another person. This means it may take them a long time to find out whether or not the other person is at all interestd in them.
Awareness of timing and sequence
As indicated by their stories, New York respondents are more aware of timing than their
Berlin counterparts and they are aware of smaller units of time. Most New York respondents spontaneously introduce their story by saying when it started – measured in the number of months or weeks that have elapsed - and how long it lasted if the relationship

had ended before the time of the interview. New York respondents used a rich vocabulary denoting sequence (‘In the beginning’, ‘Then’, ‘The following week’, ‘It was six in the morning’), duration (‘We saw each other a month, a month and a half before we slept together’), or a number of discrete encounters, dates or meetings which took place (‘I saw him maybe five times during that period’, ‘It was our fifth date or something.’)
New York narratives are detailed, and the chronology comes out clearly. This is the case whether they deal with an evening interaction, or the longer time-frame of the relationship as a whole. Temporal details about occurrence or duration were sometimes even mentioned when the memory of it was imprecise, or when the information was not meant to be precise.
Julian said for example: ‘I saw her maybe 50 or 100 times before actually speaking to her’.
Independent of the accuracy of the temporal information volunteered, the systematic provision of such information suggests that time is managed or negotiated among New
York respondents.
Berlin respondents rarely date the beginning of the story they are about to tell until they are asked specifically. In fact they rarely mention a beginning at all. Indications about time and timing are rare or vague. Typical statements include ‘We used to be roommates for a while’ or ‘We knew each other from the time we were in school together.’ The Germans use da and dann (then) as the main link between the parts of the story without specifying whether hours, days, weeks, or months have elapsed. Berliners sometimes also explicitly decline requests for temporal information. Susanne, for example, declined to give information about the timing of first sexual intercourse in the following terms: ‘I don’t know, I didn’t think about it, it was just very pleasant.’ ‘These things are most often difficult to recall

precisely’ said Simon, who was asked a question about when he and his partner started knutschen, a relatively coy version of ‘fooling around.’
Timing of steps is an important topic in popular discourse and in advice books on dating in the United States. In conversation, New Yorkers are often adamant that these rules are not really followed, especially not by sophisticated and experienced ‘daters’. Although these rules are not followed in any simple sense, knowledge about them constitutes a reference point for New York respondents’ action. Laura for example told us about a time when she emailed someone she had met on a date on the same evening: ‘I knew it was absolutely the wrong thing to do … it might strike someone a little intense if you just get back from seeing them and you email them “great to meet you”. Laura here is breaking the rule of
‘playing hard to get’ but her experience of the evening is still shaped by it: she knows about the rule, she thinks he knows about the rule and she assumes that each of them know that the other persons knows they know the rule, and that action can be interpreted in that light.
Psychologisation of self and other
New Yorkers, both male and female, report much more detailed observation of themselves and the other party than their Berlin counterparts of either gender. Self and other are presented as people who feel, notice, think, and sometimes strategise in specific ways and at specific moments and whose behaviour therefore is interpretable.
Even where intentions were unclear in the process of acting, New Yorkers spontaneously reflect upon intentions when they tell their stories. Verbal and non-verbal expressions are routinely considered by respondents from New York as ‘cues’, good or bad ‘signs’, or

‘signals’. Claire, for example told us why she emailed a man to ask for another date: ‘I did it because the guy was very soft-spoken. I didn’t really pick strong cues from him. Like he didn’t try to kiss me at the end of the date. So I didn’t pick up strong cues from him that he was like: “God this woman is really cool, I want to see her again.” I had little moments of like I wasn’t sure.’ What we see here is a detailed observation with regard to the other’s intentions or level of attraction.
New Yorkers also showed a higher awareness of the signals they send off. Another female respondent, Gina, explained why she decided not to engage in intercourse with her date.
‘I’m over conscientious of sending signals and I think all the women are.
What usually happens is that if you send the signal that you are not ready to sleep with the person it makes them have to work harder because they didn’t get what they wanted right away and it insures another date. … I sacrificed a short-term pleasurable experience for the possibility of having many of those pleasurable experiences over and over again in a long-term relationship. To me that is more valuable.’
These quotes reflect how hard New Yorkers work to interpret the other’s intentions and level of interest. They also show evidence of elaborate attempts to give the right signals that are readable within the code of dating. A good communication strategy entails affect control and long-term planning, similar to those identified by Elias as cases of the rationalisation of behaviour. Indeed, Gina explains her decision to delay intercourse as an instance of controlling the body in the interest of long-term strategic goals.
Berlin respondents rarely show that they attempt to interpret the meaning of behaviours and words, whether their own or their partners’. The frequent use of impersonal forms and the first person plural means that Berliners project themselves as less articulate about their impressions of their partner’s behaviour. The other is not a subject whose states of mind

need to be interpreted or guessed. She or he is the medium through which ‘nice’ or unpleasant situations are experienced. The following is a typical account of a first-person plural narrative: ‘When we were dancing, first we had a distance of half a metre between us, then we got closer and somehow we then were holding hands. Somehow it just happened like that’.
Berlin respondents appear less attentive to their own inner life during and after interactions.
If they report feelings and inner monologues, these relate to a few important turning points; they do not tell us about a continuous process of self-monitoring.
Observers often note that dating in the US is highly formalised and rule-bound. Wouters
(2004) has argued that courtship in the US retains more external controls than the European countries he studied. Americans continue to attach a higher value to marriage as the ultimate goal of courtship and there are stronger formal prohibitions regarding teenage sex
(Schalet, 2000). Wouters is also right about the continuing force of male-dominated patterns of sexuality, such as the double standard regarding ‘purity’ that asks women to delay intercourse. This results, for example, in an emphasis on female-on-male oral sex, a practice that, within that discourse, allows a woman to give pleasure to the man and maintain her reputation as ‘hard to get’.
Yet the New Yorkers who date also display very high levels of internal control: actors monitor their own behavior constantly and express their affect in a very deliberate and controlled manner. They control their own sexual impulses and romantic attachments. This self-restraint allows for a greater degree of control and advance planning, as Elias has argued is generally true for civilised acting. People (increasingly women as well as men)

can act on an interest in another person by asking someone for a date for example. They do not need to hang out until the bar closes, hoping that ‘something happens’. People can communicate their interests (or lack thereof) more directly and take active control of the situation. If someone is not interested in another date with someone, he or she will say, ‘It was nice to meet you but I think we should just be friends’.
In New York, mutual expectations in the beginning of a relationship are discussed rather explicitly, creating a range of options for both partners to consider. It is possible to see several people at the same time and have sexual relations with them, and talk about this fact in polite society. In a New York office, it is not inconceivable that one might say in the presence of one’s boss ‘I am dating’, whereas the same content, said in the only way it is possible to say in the German language (‘I am trying out several sexual partners at the moment’), might raise some eyebrows. Finally, as a single person, in the New York context, it is possible to ask to meet your friends’ single friends very directly and engage in dating as a sort of leisure activity. In Berlin, by contrast, there may be more room for spontaneity, romantically and sexually, but there is less room for explicit strategic planning and open negotiation.
Conclusion
The availability of dating as a cultural form shapes conduct in significant ways. New York respondents show a fine-tuned awareness of timing, mention a greater degree of intentionality and planning and display a greater tendency to psychologise themselves and others. Respondents in Berlin on the other hand seem to negotiate timing to a lesser extent,

report observations of themselves and others in less detail and describe themselves more as passive objects of the impersonal force of love.
These actors may well differ in what they value or believe in. Indeed, some Berlin respondents express a preference for an organic process of falling in love. Successful courting is described as ‘natural’, ‘semi-automatic’ and ‘unplanned’ and respondents feel that this is the way it should be. As one respondent put it: ‘It was great, we didn’t play any games. I don’t like to play games’. Kalberg (1987a; 1987b) has argued that Germans make a stronger distinction between political and professional life on the one hand and the private sphere on the other hand and have a more emphatic conception of friendship compared to the US. In the case of romantic relationships, we can see another dimension of this attempt to distance the personal from the purely instrumental concerns Germans associate with political and economic life, but the variation cannot be captured solely in terms of different values or ideas. The difference we find is also a difference in the way people act.
There are gender differences within each group. This is particularly true for the American sample; here women tend to be particularly concerned not to appear too eager in the negotiations. They reflect on their behaviour in relation to gender-specific norms of sexual purity and see it as their role, for example, to delay intercourse to maintain male interest
(see also Wouters, 2004). This is in line with an argument that sees a certain kind of reflexivity as a burden born by dominated groups (see eg Adkins, 2004; DuBois, 2007
[1903]).
There is a difference among the two groups that is true across genders, however. The Berlin men are as ‘passive’ as the Berlin women with regard to explicitly signalling intentions.

The New York men second-guess themselves more than the Berlin men with regard to the strategic implications of the ‘next move’.
New York respondents act more reflexively than Berliners. And: New York respondents act in a highly reflexive way but they are not reflexive about being reflexive. The process of self-monitoring has become a second nature to them. They take the conventions of dating as much for granted as our Berlin respondents rely on the conventions of their own forms of courtship.
These findings suggest that a number of clarifications might be useful as social theory continues to move away from philosophical debates about human conduct towards an empirical analysis of the way conduct varies. First, it is important to distinguish questions about reflexivity as the basic capacity for some form of self-observation shared by all humans, from questions about different degrees and forms of reflexive acting. Reflexivity might to some extent be an essential element of being human in any socially meaningful sense anywhere and anytime (Mead, 1934; Archer, 2003, 2007). It is important to emphasise that both sets of respondents we interviewed here are articulate about their experiences and preferences and that both observe themselves, even if that means - in the case of the Berliners – that they do so mostly to ensure that they remain within the conventions of romantic courting and do not act too overtly strategically in pursuing someone. Both groups are reflexive - but the New Yorkers are more reflexive. There remains variation in ways of reflexive acting within the western world that could be explored further.

Second, we should not assume that reflexive conduct and habitual conduct do not necessarily exclude each other. The tendency to see reflexive conduct and habitual conduct as opposites owes much to the influence of the Enlightenment project, which hoped to make action fully conscious and railed against the influence of habit and unthinking tradition. Weber relies on this opposition in some of his writings, when he compares traditional action to modern action (Weber 1978 [1922]: 22-28). Those who are sceptical of rationalism at times reformulate the opposition, when they insist on the force of habit as opposed to reflexivity. But we can see from our interviews that habit and reflexivity can be linked in practice (see also Sweetman, 2003).
Third, we can separate the concept of habitus as a set of dispositions that actors bring to a situation in principle from the emphasis on the unconscious; that is we can separate habitus from an automatic focus on habit. Whereas Bourdieu, in the context of the debates he was engaging with at the time, has mainly used the concept of habitus in order to emphasise the unconscious and non-reflective aspects of practice (Bourdieu, 1980), habitus as a tool for examining conduct can in principle capture both habit and reflexive acting. A habitus is a set of dispositions, which might include several disparate elements. Indeed, as Bourdieu himself emphasised a highly reflexive ‘homo economicus’ can be one of the values that habitus can take. That is, combining the second and the third point, rather than just say habit and reflexivity are always linked, we can develop tools for empirically examining variation in the way different degrees and forms of habit, embodiment and reflexivity are combined in different people and different practices. Further comparative research – be it

between different social groups, nations, or cities – could explore the variations in the ways people mate, but also in the way people study, work, or pray along these lines. i
1 Pseudonyms are used throughout.
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