Norbert Elias

La pretensión implicada en este libro gira en torno a pensar si la racionalización como proceso de orientación de sentido y de consolidación de regularidades normativas y de observancias administrativas provenientes de las fuerzas sociales de las esferas de la vida social también se verifica en las prácticas culturales del rock (que parecieran estar orientadas, por lo menos en el plano discursivo, en oposición a las formas burocratizadas y rutinizadas de la vida social).

Méprises et tentatives d’annexion n’ont cessé de marquer la réception de l’œuvre du sociologue. Avec leur lot de contresens et de parti-pris. N’est-ce pas ce qui attend tout penseur qui se veut à contretemps, mieux qui se considère lui-même comme un « révolutionnaire » ou un « fondateur »  ? Sans doute. Mais le « cas Elias » paraît multiplier les difficultés. La perception étroitement disciplinaire de ses travaux ? Elle continue de faire obstacle à sa compréhension véritable. D’où la tentation de ravaler ses audaces analytiques à quelques poncifs.

In 'The taming of emotions' I described how, during the middle ages, the first guild associations struggled to discipline our more spontaneous and fierce impulses. In later centuries our early industrialists experienced great difficulty to control violence, abuse of alcohol, raving, obscene language and sexual intercourse in their factories. In our days these impulses, or rather their more offensive and outrageous manifestations, may have been tamed but what happened with the underlying drives and emotions. What happened with jealousy, disappointment, triumph, anger, sexual attraction, resentful gossip and power games? Have modern offices and factories now become graveyards of emotional tranquility and neutrality?

This book examines the politics of military families in relation to the tensions between the state, military organization, and private life.
It elaborates on the tensions between the advent of challenging worldwide deployment for the military and the prominence of the home front. The volume aims to understand the dynamics of conflict and change within triad figurations at the macro (society), meso (organizational), and micro (family) level and is guided by the following overarching research questions:
••What are the key issues in the three-party dynamics?
••What tensions exist in these dynamics?
••How do actors seek to arrive at a balance? What initiatives for change aremade?
With contributions from international scholars, who examine the workings of politics in military families at all three levels, the book argues that members within military families deal with shifting power balances and these are impacted by demands from organizations and the state.
This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, sociology, organizational studies and politics.

Norbert Elias’ Schriften über die Entwicklung der Selbstkontrolle und ihre Beziehung zur Staatsbilding werden im Lichte ethnologische und historischer Kritik ihrer Argumentation und ihrer Quellen untersucht. Es wird zu zeigen versucht, daß die Staatsbildung nicht entscheidend für die Selbst-Disziplin ist; daß Elias’ Sicht der Entwickling von Selbstkontrolle aif einer begrenzten Kennisnahme der historischen Evidenz über die mittelalterliche Persönlichkeit und ihr Verhalten beruht; und daß neben den ‘sich verlängernden Intedependenzketten’ viele andere Aspekte der Geschichte der europäischen Gesellschaft, wie z.B. Bürokratie und Individualität, untersucht werden sollten, um den modernen Typus von Selbst-Disziplin zu erklären.

For much of sociology’s history, few of its scholars have cared about Robert Malthus (1766–1834), and his principle that the human desire to procreate will always outstrip what nature can provide. Early interest (cf. Alexis de Tocqueville or Karl Marx; see Drolet, 2003) waned when increases in food supply during the 20th century seemed to prove Malthus wrong. But when the extent of environmental problems became more apparent towards the end of that century, the appreciation of Malthus changed. Perhaps the reverend was right about nature’s limits? As the book title reveals, Giorgos Kallis has no such doubt. Malthus’ error, according to Kallis, is not a failure to anticipate tractors and fertilisers, but assuming that nature is limited.

Stephen Mennell acted as General Editor for the entire series of 18 volumes published between 2006 and 2014 by University College Dublin Press (www.ucdpress.ie), on behalf of the Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam. An account of the editorial policies and practices adopted for the work can be found in vol.188, pp. ix–xiv.

This list gives the basic bibliographical details of each of the volumes, including the names of the collaborating editors for each volume. A separate file contains the details contents of all the volumes. In a third document can be found a list of all the previously unpublished works by Elias that were included for the first time in the Collected Works.

Finally, The Genesis of the Naval Profession was compiled by René Moelker and edited by him and Stephen Mennell from Elias’s papers, was published as a Supplementary Volume by UCD Press.

In diesem Aufsatz wird untersucht, wie Tiernutzung und Fleischkonsum zu einer umstrittenen Praxis werden konnten. Erst eine Analyse der Genese dieser moralischen Problematisierung ermöglicht ein Verständnis der komplexen soziokulturellen Hintergründe jener Dissonanz, die in der Sozialpsychologie unter dem Schlagwort des »Fleischparadoxes« untersucht wird. Die Geschichte dieser Problematisierung wird in vier Schritten nachvollzogen: 1) Zunächst wird argumentiert, dass das Auftreten des Paradoxes vor dem Hintergrund von Spannungen und Verschiebungen innerhalb des spezifisch modernen Diskurses über die Mensch-Tier-Differenz verstanden werden muss. Im Anschluss an Philippe Descola wird gezeigt, dass das Fleischparadox keinen grundsätzlichen ontologischen Bruch anzeigt, sondern mit sich verschärfenden Konflikten innerhalb der modernen naturalistischen Weltsicht einhergeht. Ergänzt wird dies durch Argumente Gesa Lindemanns, die auf den konstitutiven wie umkämpften Stellenwert der Tier-Mensch-Grenze für die Konzeption sowohl des modernen Individuums als auch der modernen Rechts-, Moral- und Gewaltordnung verweist. 2) In einem zweiten Schritt werden die zunehmenden Spannungen an der Tier-Mensch-Grenze mit Norbert Eliasʼ Theorie des Zivilisationsprozesses verknüpft. Eine solche Verknüpfung hat den Vorteil, dass die Veränderungen im Mensch-Tier-Verhältnis auf ein breites Spektrum historischer makro- und mikrosozialer Transformationen zurückgeführt werden können. Mit Elias lässt sich die wachsende affektive Aversion gegenüber Gewalt im Allgemeinen, aber auch die Verlagerung der Fleischproduktion »hinter die Kulissen« verstehen. Zugleich kann durch die Verortung der Zivilisationsdynamik in einem spezifischen sozialontologischen Rahmen der im Hinblick auf Elias vorgebrachte Ethnozentrismusvorwurf umgangen werden. 3) In einem dritten Schritt werden Transformationen der Wirtschaftsstruktur und die mit ihnen verbundenen Veränderungen der Kontaktmuster zwischen Menschen und Tieren betrachtet. Im Zuge von Urbanisierung und Industrialisierung ging der Kontakt zu Nutz- und Wildtieren für viele Menschen deutlich zurück, während sich parallel die Heimtierhaltung verbreitete. Im Verein mit einem generellen Wandel des Naturverhältnisses ermöglichte dieser Prozess eine zuvor ungekannte Sensibilisierung gegenüber Tierleid. 4) Das Aufkommen der Tierschutz-, später auch der Tierrechtsbewegung, sowie von vegetarischen und veganen Lebensstilen kann schließlich als ein Ausdruck der ontologischen Spannungen und der wachsenden Sensibilisierung gegenüber Gewalt und Tierleid interpretiert werden, der jedoch nur durch Vorstellungen gesellschaftlicher Veränderbarkeit und politischer Gestaltbarkeit sowie durch die Entstehung demokratischer Öffentlichkeiten möglich wurde. Nach ihrer Konstituierung und organisationalen Verankerung konnten diese Protest- und Lebensstilbewegungen dann selbst Motor einer weiteren Sensibilisierung und Problematisierung von Tierleid und Fleischkonsum werden.

The paper tries to develop the ideas os Durkheim and Elias departing from the problem of psychologism in sociological theory. Firstly in the moment of uprising of sociology as a scientific field, with Durkheim, and secondly, with the problems show by Norbert Elias in the first half of the XXth Century

I et interview kommenterede den tysk-britiske sociolog Norbert Elias (1897-1990) engang en bemærkning, som Zygmunt Bauman havde knyttet til hans værk. Bemærkningen gik ud på, at Elias måske var ”den sidste repræsentant for den klassiske sociologi, en forsker, der stræber efter den store syntese”. Elias var rasende over denne karakteristik, fordi han hellere ville være ”den første, der bryder en ny vej”.

De to udsagn tydeliggør ikke alene forskellen mellem Elias’ selvopfattelse og den måde, mange kommentatorer har betragtet ham på, men fastholder også et vigtigt kendetegn ved hans værk: Elias kombinerer nemlig på den ene side en syntese af de vigtigste elementer i det sene 1800-tals og det tidlige 1900-tals sociologiske tænkning med på den anden side en yderst selvstændig og intellektuel stringent anvendelse af denne syntese i forhold til et bredt spektrum af empiriske data.

Det er med andre ord i spændingsfeltet mellem tradition og nytænkning, Elias’ sociologiske arbejde udfolder sig; og det er blandt mange andre ting dette forhold, Robert van Krieken klarlægger i sin engagerede, men langt fra ukritiske introduktion til Elias og hans indsats og placering inden for det 20. århundredes sociologi.

Bogen henvender sig primært til et fagpublikum, men i og med, at den så levende beskæftiger sig med en samfundsforsker, der gennem hele sit værk søgte at besvare spørgsmålet: Hvad det i grunden vil sige at være et ’moderne’, ’civiliseret’ menneske, har den relevans for en langt bredere, samfundsinteresseret læserskare.

Oversat fra engelsk efter Norbert Elias af Tom Havemann.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Lawn Tennis Association introduced numerous policies to remove barriers associated with social exclusion in tennis clubs. Ethnographic research was conducted within one club to analyse the incidence of social exclusion, and consider the success of LTA policies in these regards. Results suggested the club made structural changes to receive LTA funding, such as removing exclusive membership and clothing restrictions, hiring coaches and establishing school-club links, yet its culture remained entirely exclusive and inaccessible to new members. For analysis, Elias and Scotson’s “Established-Outsider Relations” theoretical framework is applied: to discover who was excluded, how and why, and, to set the outcomes of power struggles between members in the wider social and historical contexts of changing LTA policies.

This article examines the social significance of Real Tennis among the Western European nobility during its heyday of the sixteenth century. Underpinned theoretically by Norbert Elias’s seminal empirical work The Civilising Process, this article seeks to identify the societal preconditions for the emergence of Real Tennis, and provide explanations for its diffusion across Western Europe and subsequent boom in popularity among the nobility. A critique is offered of the current body of literature written on Real Tennis, with an aim to address a general lack of focus on the game’s ‘social’ elements and how their development is linked with structural changes to the game over the centuries. The article then goes on to examine the ways in which Real Tennis became a symbol of prestige and a tool for social mobility among the increasingly status-competitive royal court nobility. Played during royal festivals, the game provided opportunities for nobles to engage in conspicuous consumption through architectural, clothing and gambling displays; having an entourage in accompaniment to the noble players; and, through the style of play and behavioural control, exhibiting self-restraint and foresight. Overall, an attempt is made to apply Elias’s theoretical framework to aid our understanding of the development of Real Tennis, a game that has never been characterised by overt ‘violence’ of the kind examined previously by other sociologists employing an Eliasian framework.

While forms of authority that descend from social or cultural tradition are commonly understood as archaic, traditional authorities often survive and occasionally even thrive during the formation of modern states. Chieftaincies do not only endure in the Ghanaian countryside but also proliferate in new neighbourhoods on the peripheries of Ghana’s fast-growing cities. We develop an explanation for the endurance of traditional authorities, based on extensive fieldwork in one recently developed neighbourhood in a previously uninhabited part of Greater Accra, where we conducted interviews and analysed documents from the archives of the chief’s Divisional Council. We show that the formation of a modern state has restricted the chiefs’ discretion as sovereigns but afforded them greater power as managers of the land and gatekeepers of the state bureaucracy. Traditional authority is not overwritten but rather refined, transformed and stabilized in the process of state formation.

Lynchages, décapitations, cadavres…Les images de violence, en libre diffusion sur Internet, sont souvent occultées par les médias français. Pourquoi montrer ou, au contraire, cacher certaines images ? Toute violence ne serait-elle pas bonne à voir ?

This book critically engages with NATO’s two main referent objects of security: civilisation and individuals. By rethinking the seemingly natural assumption of these two referent objects, it suggests the epistemological importance of an unconscious dimension to understand meaning formation and behaviour change in international security.
The book provides a historicised and genealogical approach of the idea of civilisation that is at the core of the Alliance, in which human needs, narratives, and security arrangements are interconnected. It suggests that there is a Civilised Subject of Security at the core of modern Western security that has constantly produced civilised and secure subjects around the world, which explains NATO’s emergence around a civilisational referent. The book then proceeds by considering the Individualisation of Security after the Cold War as another stage of the civilising process, based on NATO’s military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
https://www.palgrave.com/cn/book/9783319744087#aboutBook

Norbert Elias, What is Sociology? London: Hutchinson, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1978, 187 pp. Translated from German by Grace Morrissey and Stephen Mennell, from Was ist Sociologie? (Munich: Juventa, 1970).

Note that although the title of Elias's book may suggest that it is intended as a first-year introductory textbook (and both the German and British publishers probably hoped to sell it as such, it is in fact the nearest Elias ever came to a systematic exposition of his general theoretical stance. It is probably too demanding for most beginning students of sociology, although it is interesting to note that the German edition has remained in print and continues to sell.

Die sozialen Beziehungen zwischen Einheimischen und Fremden, Alteingesessenen und Zugezogenen verlaufen in den seltensten Fallen konfliktfrei. Zahlreiche Studien aus der Migrations- und Integrationsforschung führen vielmehr vor Augen, dass die neuen Bewohner:innen häufig diskriminiert und marginalisiert werden. Ein Erklärungsangebot fur derartige Vorgänge bietet die Figurationssoziologie von Norbert Elias, insbesondere das sogenannte Etablierten-Außenseiter-Theorem.

This article analyzes and evaluates Norbert Elias’s figurational approach to the study of civilization and the civilizing process in the context of other theorists, such as Guizot, Buckle, Burckhardt and Spengler. It delves into the semantics of the term “civilization”, which is notoriously ambiguous and multifarious, by exploring its etymology, history, spread and utility in various linguistic contexts (French, German, English). It also takes into account the politics of civilization and ideological usage in the colonialist enterprise of European imperialism. Elias’s original contribution to civilization studies turns out to be a uniquely figurational (or process-sociological) approach which views civilizations not as static but dynamic and developing. Societies move towards civilization through a civilizing process instigated by psycho- and sociogenesis. These processes gradually change society and how people perceive civility, etiquette and modes of morality. The civilizing process culminates into structured civilized behaviors that are closely related to the organization of Western societies into the form of states. Elias’s theory of civilization has severe deficits, such as its neglect of religion (institutionalized or otherwise) and its limited generalizability due to its mere focus on Western civilization. However, his figurational approach is still highly valuable and may be fruitfully utilized for civilizational investigations.

Keywords: Civilization, Kultur, Norbert Elias, civilizing process, sociogenesis, psychogenesis, figurational sociology

El trabajo busca desarrollar y contraponer las formas de entender las topologías de la dominación social y de la configuración de las subjetividades por parte de  Norbert Elías y Michael Foucault. Para ello, primero se presentará la propuesta de Elías en base al proceso civilizatorio, en la cual sus conceptualizaciones sobre la interdependencia social sostenida en sociogénesis y psicogénesis afectan a los individuos desde la cima de la pirámide social y desde dentro de los sujetos, configurando por ello un esquema topológico “arriba-adentro” de poder. Luego, se abordará la idea foucaultiana de dispositivo, buscando bosquejar en este caso algunos puntos generales sobre su teoría del poder, en la cual con su mirada de base microfísica y descentrada sobre la subjetividad, configura un esquema topológico “abajo-afuera” de dominación, muy distinto al de Elías. Por último, el trabajo cerrará con algunas conclusiones que nos permitan precisar las diferencias y convergencias de los autores analizados.

This paper takes as its starting point the premise that the conduct of people in organisations should not be understood simply in terms of externally imposed rules or codes, but in terms of the ‘practices that are deeply embedded and daily enacted’ in organisational practice. Assuming that those practices are in themselves ‘ethically neutral’, it examines two of their aspects: (1) the law’s construction of the corporation as having a legal personality in many respects similar to that of a natural person and (2) the social constitution of forms of organisational subjectivity displaying their own particular ethical character within long-term social processes, as well as (3) the ways in which they intersect.
The introduction defines ‘managerial ethics’ and engages with the problems accompanying the idea of ‘unethical’ behaviour, given that it is possible to see all human action as guided by at least some set of moral principles. A distinction is then made between two dimensions to the contradictions or conflicts between managerial conduct and widely-shared ethical principles. The first is based on a ‘thin’ conception of human conduct, presuming that what people do is largely situationally-defined, focusing on questions of institutional design, so that one would engage with the legal framework of organisational action, issues like the concept of the corporate legal personality, everyday organisational practices, etc. The other derives from a ‘thick’ conception of human psychology, in which human beings are understood as having a relatively stable set of habits and dispositions (habitus) which has emerged in the course of their biography and which drives the individual’s conduct as much, if not more so, than the demands and requirements of their immediate organisational context. Such an understanding of human psychology requires a discussion of the theorizations of processes of civilization and decivilization, the emergence of particular psychic structures which have changed over time, and which can only be understood in connection with changes in the forms taken by broader social relationships (van Krieken, 1998; 1999).
The paper will outline and develop the work done on corporate regulation and accountability, together with the studies of long-term processes of civilization and their application to management practices. The particular problem I will draw all these points together with is that of the internal contradictions which cut across both these dimensions of managerial ethics, the tensions between explicit normative standards and implicitly constituted practical forms of behaviour (the problem of “hypocrisy”), the ways in which otherwise ‘good’ men and women can still end up doing ‘bad’ things.
The concluding section examines the ways in which these two dimensions of the conflict between broader ethical principles and actual managerial behaviour are related to each other, how legal and institutional design and socially-constituted habitus interweave to generate the managerial conduct we see today. What I will be particularly interested in is the way in which we can avoid seeing whatever we find problematic about managerial conduct in terms of normative ‘failure’ or the failure of ‘virtue’ and instead be able to locate the bases of that conduct in contradictions between explicit ethical and implicit structural and cultural expectations, between the normative and the structural, between organisational and extra-organisational subjectivity, and to identify the overall long-term trends in the civilization of management.

This essay discusses the connections between the habitus, identity, and Elias's notion of "we-identity" and "we-feelings", stressing the importance of seeing them in processual terms – habitus formation and identity formation processes. These are then connected to the the dynamics of established–outsider relations and functional democratisation. It is emphasises that circles of mutual identification may narrow as well as widen. Illustrations of these processes are drawn from American, British and Australian history, and in particular by reference to the civil war and ethnic conflicts involved in the breakup of Yugoslavia, a process still in train at the time the article was written.

Full reference: ‘The Formation of We-Images: A Process Theory’, in Craig Calhoun, ed., Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, pp. 175–97.

Reprinted in Eric Dunning and Stephen Mennell, eds, Norbert Elias (Sage Masters of Modern Social Thought). London: Sage, 2003. II, pp. 367–86.

Praxis Sociológica, 9, 91-122, 2005 (ISSN: 1575-08-17) | El artículo pretende ofrecer una primera aproximación al estudio del proceso
civilizatorio en España apostando por una recepción activa del modelo del proceso de la civilización propuesto por Norbert Elias. Se consignan los contenidos fundamentales de diferentes códigos de buenas maneras (cortesía bajomedieval, cortesía moderna, prudencia, civilización y civilización reflexiva) que constituyen momentos relevantes en el proceso civilizatorio español y se realiza una propuesta
de ampliación recurriendo a la literatura de autoayuda como material empírico capaz de caracterizar el estado actual de dicho proceso civilizatorio.

This article addresses Norbert Elias's essay The Loneliness of the Dying (1982). In the first part the author reviews Elias's ideas on how the contemporary social structure has produced characteristic problems for dying. In our age, the phenomena and the reality of death are pushed behind the scenes of social life. The second part presents one of the most important theses in this paper, i.e. the idea of anamnestic reason. The author gives her reflection on the Eliasian concepts of communication, engagement, and balance of power. This We-I-Balance as a learning process should lead to rebalancing and redefinition of anamnestic reason / collective memory. In the third part the author briefly illustrates some similarities between Elias' category of death and two other ideas: nihilism by T. Różewicz and biopolitics by G. Agamben.

Norbert Elias, Civilisation and the Human Self-Image. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, xiv + 319 pp.

A paperback edition, under title Norbert Elias: An Introduction and with an Afterword covering Elias’s last works,  was published by Blackwell, 1992, xiv + 339 pp.

Norbert Elias: An Introduction was reprinted by University College Dublin Press, 1998, and is still in print: see www.ucdpress.ie

This study focuses on the issue of social exclusion in British tennis. It commences with a critique of current LTA policy, presenting exclusion as static, ahistorical and underpinned by false dichotomies of age and social class. Aspects of Norbert Elias’s theoretical approach are employed throughout as an analytical framework. Initially, the roots of exclusion in British tennis are sought through historical analysis. Aspects of the Civilising Process help direct attention towards wider social processes to explain the prevalence of exclusion, particularly in tennis clubs. Cost was a crucial factor in determining early access, but as tennis became more accessible to lower classes, codes of behavioural etiquette helped demarcate members along status lines. Into the mid-20th century, the globalisation, professionalisation and commercialisation of tennis pushed the LTA to adopt a more performance-oriented outlook, but this has come to oppose the more relaxed culture of tennis clubs. Thus, a power struggle emerged between these two institutions, and, underpinned by thirty interviews with leading figures in British tennis as well as extensive documentary analysis, the third section documents these developments from the 1980s. Crucially, tennis clubs remain largely amateur and voluntary-run organisations, yet are important locations for the implementation of the LTA’s demanding talent development objectives. These recent developments are understood with the help of Elias’s Game Models theory. The fourth section presents findings from a ten-month ethnographic study of social exclusion in a tennis club; a micro-analysis of club member relations underpinned by Elias’s Established-Outsider Relations theory. Overall findings suggest that social exclusion in British tennis is far more complex, multi-faceted and historically-rooted than what current LTA discourse presents. Differences in age and class are less central, and instead preconceived notions of social status based on longevity of membership, adherence to behavioural norms and playing standard are powerful determinants of inclusion.

Chapter 13: Emotions in Sports Stadia1 Mike S. Schäfer and Jochen Roose The ball changed possession, moving fast from one end of the field to the other. The tension mounted; it became almost unbearable. People forgot where they were standing. They were pushed, and ...