Norbert Elias And Modern Sociology

This book endeavours to bring the sociology of Elias to a new and wider audience through offering accessible explanations of some of his key ideas.

What is Sociology? presents in concise and provocative form the major ideas of a seminal thinker whose work--spanning more than four decades--is only now gaining the recognition here it has long had in Germany and France. Unlike other post-war sociologists, Norbert Elias has always held the concept of historical development among his central concerns; his dynamic theories of the evolution of modern man have remedied the historical and epistemological shortcomings of structualism and ethno-methodology. What is Sociology? refines the arguments that were first found in Elias' massive work on the civilizing process, in which he formulated his major assertions about the interdependence of the making of modern man and modern society. It is Elias' contention that changes in personality structure--embodied in phenomena ranging from table manners and hygiene habits to rites of punishment and courtly love--inevitably reflect and mould patterns of control generated by new political and social instututions. Elias' rejection of a dichotomy between individual and society, and his use of psychoanalysis, political theory, and social history, help restore a fullness of resource to sociology.

Offering a fascinating survey of Elias's life and writings, Dennis Smith traces the growth of his reputation. He is the first author to confront Elias's work with the contrasting theories of Talcott Parsons, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman. He also illustrates how Elias's insights can be applied to understand Western modernity and social and political change. Smith shows why Elias is important for sociology, but he is also clear sighted about the limitations of Elias's approach.

This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the key aspects of Norbert Elias's work.

Few sociologists of the first rank have scandalised the academic world to the extent that Elias did. Developed out of the German sociology of knowledge in the 1920s, Elias’s sociology contains a sweeping radicalism which declares an academic ‘war on all your houses’. His sociology of the ‘human condition’ sweeps aside the contemporary focus on ‘modernity’ and rejects most of the paradigms of sociology as one-sided, economistic, teleological, individualistic and/or rationalistic. As sociologists, Elias also asks us to distance ourselves from mainstream psychology, history and above all, philosophy, which is summarily abandoned, although carried forward on a higher level. This enlightening book written by a close friend and pupil of Elias, is the first book to explain the refractory, uncomfortable, side of Elias’s sociological radicalism and to brace us for its implications. It is also the first in-depth analysis of Elias’s last work The Symbol Theory in the light of selected contemporary developments in archaeology, anthropology and evolutionary theory.

Offering a fascinating survey of Elias's life and writings, Dennis Smith traces the growth of his reputation. He is the first author to confront Elias's work with the contrasting theories of Talcott Parsons, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman. He also illustrates how Elias's insights can be applied to understand Western modernity and social and political change. Smith shows why Elias is important for sociology, but he is also clear sighted about the limitations of Elias's approach.

Few thinkers have contributed more to the understanding of modern civilization than Norbert Elias. Given the significance and relevance of his ideas in explaining social reality, this book seeks to make his complex concepts more accessible. A biographical account of his life (1897-1990) facilitates the comprehension of Elias's concepts. Elias's most famous work, "The Civilizing Process", is the focus of this discussion of his theoretical frameworks, with class structure, the patterns of behavior, and the role of the state as key factors. The book also dedicates special treatment to figurational sociology, an important research field linked best to Elias's output. Elias was an innovator. He criticized accepted concepts and introduced numerous new constructs (habitus is perhaps the best known) discussed in this book. Respective chapters review Elias's theory of knowledge, the concept of de-civilization—with an emphasis on violence, his analysis of nations and nationalism, and emotions—and his focus on shame. Elias borrowed ideas from iconic figures in philosophy and the social sciences such as Edmund Husserl, Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and Talcott Parsons. This book describes the characteristic way Elias interprets them. The book concludes with an overview of the most significant critiques of Norbert Elias's work.