Figurational Sociology

About: Figurational Sociology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 187 publications have been published within this topic receiving 4885 citations.

What is sociology

Abstract: 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.

Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process

Abstract: Norbert Elias, 1897-1990 Note on the text Introduction, Norbert Elias The Quest for Excitement in Leisure, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning Leisure in the Sparetime Spectrum, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning The Genesis of Sport as a Sociological Problem, Part 1, Norbert Elias The Genesis of Sport as a Sociological Problem, Part 2, Norbert Elias An Essay on Sport and Violence, Norbert Elias Folk Football in Medieval and Early Modern Britain, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning Dynamics of Sport Groups with Special Reference to Football, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning The Dynamics of Modern Sport: Notes on Achievement-Striving and the Social Significance of Sport, Eric Dunning Social Bonding and Violence in Sport, Eric Dunning Sport as a Male Preserve: Notes on the Social Sources of Masculine Identity and its Transformations, Eric Dunning Football Hooliganism as an Emergent Global Idiom, Eric Dunning Appendix Bibliography Index

Norbert Elias: An Introduction

Abstract: Part I: Introduction 1. Norbert Elias: A Determined Life in Uncertain Times Part II: The Civilizing Process 2. Manners 3. States and Courts 4. The Civilizing Process Overall: Sociogenesis and Psychogenesis Part III: Extensions 5. Established/Outsider Relationships and Functional Democratization 6. Sport and Violence 7. Involvement and Detachment: A Theory of Knowledge and the Sciences 8. The Development of the Social Sciences 9. Humanity as a Whole Part IV: Issues 10. Civilization and Decivilization 11. Some Principles of Process Sociology.

Towards a process-oriented methodology: modern social science research methods and Norbert Elias's figurational sociology

Abstract: This paper suggests that Norbert Elias's conception of process-oriented methodology consists of four stages: (1) explicating the researcher's theoretical and personal perspectivity; (2) reconstructing the figuration's rules and social structure using standardized data; (3) analysing the individual's placement within, perception of and ability to change the figuration, using open-ended data, and; (4) exploring the figuration's sociogenesis, using process-produced data. Having explicated this figurational methodological approach we will demonstrate how it can be used to illuminate contemporary discussions of: (a) the relationship between theory and data; (b) mixed methods research; (c) multi-level analysis; (d) process-produced data; (e) longitudinal research; and (f) methods of historical research.

Moral panic and social theory: Beyond the heuristic

Abstract: Chas Critcher has recently conceptualized moral panic as a heuristic device, or ‘ideal type’. While he argues that one still has to look beyond the heuristic, despite a few exceptional studies there has been little utilization of recent developments in social theory in order to look ‘beyond moral panic’. Explicating two current critical contributions — the first, drawing from the sociologies of governance and risk; the second, from the process/figurational sociology of Norbert Elias — this article highlights the necessity for the continuous theoretical development of the moral panic concept and illustrates how such development is essential to overcome some of the substantial problems with moral panic research: normativity, temporality and (un)intentionality.