Apr 04 2006
Study Notes of Norbert Elias
Study notes for class assignment, The Civilizing Process.
Norbert Elias:
1897, Breslau, Germany to 1990 Amsterdam
Sociologist, British citizen after escaping Nazi Germany in 1933.
Main work, The Civilizing Process, first published in 1939 in German. Didn’t gain recognition until after English translation published in 1969.
Figurational sociology/process sociology: Not static state but dynamic process of social subjects. The inter-relations between macro (state) and micro (individual, pyschological) levels.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the overemphasis of structure over agency was heavily criticized about the then-dominant school of structural functionalism.
“large social figurations or networks explains the emergence and function of large societal structures without neglecting the aspect of individual agency” (wiki)
Personal: Jewish, Zionist intellectual, mother died in Auschwitz, interned by the British for 8 month in 1941 (for being German).
Academic predecessors: Weber, Freud
Successors: Foucault (unpublished translation of The Lonely and the Dying); Bourdieu, whose recent work has increasingly taken on Elias’ conceptual framework and vocabulary.
Criticism: a case study of western/pre-/modern/centralized societies, e.g. no pre-state society case.
Reading the book is like watching Seinfeld: always what-ifs and what-is-wrong-with?
Additional research on Weber:
1846-1920
Died before embarking on a speaking tour to Soviet Union
Participated in establishing Weimar Republic
Lawyer, Political Economist, Political Scientist/Sociologist
Magna Opus: Economy and Society
The desire to understand capitalism:
Germany started off later than GB.
Weber’s father was successful in his business.
Weber was a genius, father had a salon.
Comparative study of what promoted capitalism.
Very functionalist view: something has to drive capitalist development, has to be an external force.
Religion/culture study of the Orient: Judiasm, Hinduism, Confuscious.