Norbert Elias Foundation

Radically revised edition of The Symbol Theory

20% discount if ordered direct from UCD Press

Norbert Elias, The Symbol Theory, edited by Richard Kilminster (Dublin: UCD Press, 2011 [Collected Works, vol. 13]). xxvi + 193 pp. ISBN: 978-1-906359-10-2. €60.00 [for 20 per cent discount, order online direct from the publisher: www.ucdpress.ie.]

This - the last book Elias completed before his death - is the thirteenth volume of the Collected Works to be published, and also volume 13 of the series. It contains much that is new. Elias wrote it when he was already effectively blind, and the dictated text was not easy to follow. Now Richard Kilminster has made the numbered sections into separate chapters and given each of them a thematic title - which, at a stroke, makes apparent the overall architecture of a remarkable book.

The Symbol Theory situates the human capacity for forming symbols in the long-term biological evolution of Homo sapiens, showing how it is linked through communication and orientation to group survival. Elias proceeds to recast the question of the ontological status of knowledge, moving beyond the old philosophical dualisms of idealism/materialism and subject/object. He readjusts the boundary between the 'social' and the 'natural' by interweaving evolutionary biology and the social sciences. The Symbol Theory provides nothing less than a new image of the human condition as an accidental outcome of the blind flux of an indifferent cosmos.

Elias was still dictating a new Introduction to the book over the weekend before he died (on Wednesday 1 August 1990). It was published in an incomplete version. Now, however, it has proved possible to retrieve from 'floppy disks' the last parts he wrote - indeed the last academic statements of his life - and incorporate them into a trenchant new version of the Introduction. Among other things, he makes passing remarks about his friend Pierre Bourdieu and, of special interest, launches a devastating critique of Jacques Derrida.

Finally, in the course of reconstructing the Introduction, Kilminster gleaned information from two of his last student assistants, Mieke van Stigt and Willem Kranendonk, about Elias's way of working in the last phase of his life. He dictated to an ever-changing team of assistants, who had to read back to him whatever the last passages were, whereupon Elias would begin dictating again. Sometimes the assistants were not always sure for which of several ongoing projects the new text was intended! This new evidence goes a long way to explaining why some of Elias's very last work can seem rambling and repetitive. But the new edition of The Symbol Theory makes clear that this is a misleading impression: Elias's intellect remained keen and sharply focused until the very end.

Johan Heilbron delivers Uhlenbeck Lecture: But what about the European Union of Scholars?

Johan Heilbron was invited to give the 29th Uhlenbeck Lecture at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), Wassennaar. The prestigious annual lecture was delivered before an audience of past and present NIAS Fellows on 9 June 2011.

Among the existing analyses of European integration, Heilbron noted, there is a noticeable dearth of research by scholars into their own modes of association. That is not because the subject is unworthy of attention. Aside from a single market and a political union, European institution building has unmistakably extended into the domain of scholarship and science as well. This emerging field of transnational research is often depicted as the continuation of a European tradition of higher learning, exemplified by medieval universities and early modern academies. But the time-honoured European heritage also includes the counter-force of rival nation states and distinctly national academic systems. How, asked Heilbron, against this ambiguous historical background, has the current process of European integration affected the world of scholars? What patterns of exchange and collaboration have emerged? And how do these relate to developments in other parts of the world?

Johan Heilbron holds posts as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris and at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he formerly held the Norbert Elias Professorship.
 

Norbert Elias and Figurational Sociology: Prospects for the Future

Copenhagen, 2–4 April 2012

Call for papers

Department of Political Science & Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2–4 April, 2012.

The focus of this two-day conference will be on the development of figurational sociology in relation to other disciplines. In ‘What is Sociology?’, Elias argues that sociology needs to develop new ways of ‘thinking’ about its relationship with other disciplines like biology and physics. But since that time, we have seen a rapid expansion of these academic disciplines, yet there has not been sufficient time to consider the theoretical implications of what this would mean for the future development of a figurational sociology.

This conference will bring together sociologists, together with other important and relevant cognate disciplines – such as history, political science and economics – to explore attempts that integrate different disciplinary perspectives. Keynote speakers include Richard Kilminster, University of Leeds (confirmed), Abram de Swaan, University of Amsterdam (tbc), Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin (confirmed), Andrew Linklater, Aberystwyth University (tbc), Nina Baur, TU Berlin, Institute of Sociology (tbc), Stefanie Ernst, Universität Hamburg (tbc), Steven Quilley, Keele University (tbc)

It will address these issues by focusing on the following themes:

The first day will explore the ‘boundaries’ and relationships between figurational sociology and the following disciplines:

1) Politics
2) Economics
3) History
4) Psychology
5) Biology
6) Anthropology

The second day will further discuss the major themes that emerge from this ‘boundary’ work across disciplines, considering some of their strengths and limitations in relation to the following:

1) Survival Units
2) Organisational Sociology and Economic Sociology
3) Civilizing Processes
4) Informalising Processes
5) The expanding Anthroposphere (Environmental issues)

The conference will consist of plenary sessions with keynote speakers, followed by themed parallel sessions. The deadline for submitting abstracts of papers is 16 December 2011. These should be no more than 150 words and submitted to the conference email address: mcs@ifs.ku.dk
 

We look forward to seeing you in Copenhagen!

Lars Bo Kaspersen, University of Copenhagen, LBK@ifs.ku.dk

Norman Gabriel, University of Plymouth, norman.r.gabriel@plymouth.ac.uk

Practicalities and formalities

Registration: Please, register by sending a mail to Mette Cruse Skou mcs@ifs.ku.dk with your name, affiliation, address, phone number and email address.

Conference  fee: 50 euro covering lunches, coffee/tea and fruit. Students: 15 euro. The conference fee needs to be paid at the conference venue /registration desk when the conference starts.

Venue: University of Copenhagen, CSS (Social Science campus), Øster Farimagsgade 5, Copenhagen K – see http://polsci.ku.dk/english/contact/How_to_find_us/

Accommodation: There are plenty of hotels in Copenhagen. However, we have reserved rooms at two hotels close to the venue and the city. You need to book your own hotel room by mail or phone.

Ibsens Hotel
Vendersgade 23
DK-1363 København K.
T: 33 13 19 13
F: 33 13 19 16 
E: hotel@ibsenshotel.dk
Reservation: +45 33 95 77 44

Prices:
Single Room: 985 DKK per room per night (includes breakfast).
Double Room: 1.240 DKK per room per night (includes breakfast).

Hotel Kong Arthur
Nørre Søgade 11
DK-1370 København K.
T: +45 33 11 12 12
F: +45 33 32 61 30
E: hotel@kongarthur.dk
Reservation: +45 33 95 77 22

Prices:
Single Room: 1.225 DKK per room per night (includes breakfast).
Double Room: 1.520 DKK per room per night (includes breakfast).

Don’t forget to mention that you are participating in conference organized by University of Copenhagen (Department of Political Science/ Sociology)

Organizers:
The Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam
The Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
The Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
 

Copenhagen conference deadline extended to 25 January

LSE conference, 6 - 8th April 2011

British Sociological Association allocates a second session to Elias and figurational sociology

From Katie Liston and Jonathan Fletcher (Convenors) 

We are pleased at last to be able to notify participants, and especially those who have offered papers, that the British Sociological Association has now allocated a second session to Elias and figurational sociology at the conference at the LSE on 6–8 April 2011 marking the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the BSA.

Details of the two sessions are given below. The first, as originally planned, will focus principally on Elias’s position as an outsider in British sociology. The second, additional, session includes papers on a wider set of concerns.

Those who are planning on attending this conference might also be interested in the sociology of sport stream, information on which is available on the conference website.

The presenters identified here below should now contact the BSA office directly to register for the conference, ideally by the end of January. The BSA office has already received has over 700 bookings and the maximum capacity (per day) is 960 delegates.

You can book online at www.britsoc.co.uk/events/conference. In the meantime, abstracts should also be forwarded directly to Liz Jackson (liz.jackson@britsoc.org.uk) to complete the stream programme.

Open Stream 2: ELIAS

Session 1: Wednesday 6th April 2011 at 09:30–11:30

John Goodwin and Jason Hughes: Ilya Neustadt, Norbert Elias and the development of sociology in britain: formal and informal sources of historical data

Eric Dunning: Long-term patterns of sports-related violence: some figurational observations and related concepts

Marc Joly: Norbert Elias’s networks in the field of British Sociology before his appointment in Leicester

Norman Gabriel: Collar the lot! Norbert Elias on the Isle of Man

Hermann Korte: Norbert Elias at the University of Leicester

 
Session 2: Wednesday 6th April 2011 at 12:00–13:30

Marjorie Fitzpatrick: The hidden agenda for ‘absolutist’ monarchical power in the eighteenth century court society in England: the libretto of Handel’s Messiah

Matt Clement: Trade Unions: A Significant Social Figuration?

Abram de Swaan: On genocidal perpetrators

Miguel Fernadez Llanos: Norbert Elias meets Karl Marx at the British Museum: towards the civilizing process model of models

Michael Dunning: Figurational Sociology and the Study of British ‘Islamist Terrorism’

 

2012: ISA and IIS both announce major conferences

Delhi and Buenos Aires

As you may be aware both the International Institute of Sociology (IIS) World Congress (Delhi between 16–19 February) and International Sociological Association (ISA) Forum (Buenos Aires between 1–4 August) are being held in 2012.  Obviously this is not ideal – especially for people resident in Europe, but also for anyone whose funds will not run to two such gatherings in a year – and we are wondering if it is feasible to organise sessions in India and Argentina.

The IIS has just issued their call for proposals for regular sessions and we have to establish if there would be sufficient interest to request one or more sessions. 

Consequently can you contact Robert van Krieken (robert.van-krieken@sydney.edu.au) and Stephen Vertigans (s.vertigans@rgu.ac.uk) before 28 February 2011 if you would be likely to submit a paper?  It would also help us when deciding on potential themes if you could give us an indication about the possible topic.  Further details of the conference can be found at http://www.iisoc.org/iis2012.

The details of the ISA programme in Buenos Aires have yet to be issued.  To assist us in responding when the call for papers is issued, can you again let us know whether you are thinking about attending this conference?

Just published: Norbert Elias, Mozart and Other Essays on Courtly Art

Norbert Elias, Mozart and Other Essays on Courtly Art, edited by Eric R. Baker and Stephen Mennell, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Dublin: UCD Press, 2010). 200 pp. ISBN: 9781906359096

Like his father Leopold, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was dependent on a court aristocracy in whose eyes he was little more than a domestic servant. Unlike his father, however, his personal makeup was already that of the freelance artist who sought to follow the flow of his own artistic conscience and imagination rather than the courtly conventions and standards of the day. In Mozart: the Sociology of a Genius, Elias paints a portrait of this extraordinarily gifted artist born into a society that did not yet possess either the concept of ‘genius’ or (at least in music) that of freelance artist. The apparent contradictions of his character – the refined elegance of his compositions and the coarseness of his lavatorial humour – reflect his uncomfortable and eventually tragic straddling of two social worlds.

The volume also includes two long essays on related topics, previously unpublished in English.

‘The fate of German Baroque poetry: between the traditions of court and middle class’ asks why even such notable poets of the Baroque period in Germany as Martin Opitz and Christian Hofman von Hoffmanswaldau later fell into neglect, in contrast to their contemporaries in England and France – such as Milton, Marvell, Racine and Corneille. The reason, says Elias, was that in Germany courtly conventions and feelings were rejected much more radically by the middle-class writers of the age of Goethe and Schiller.

Elias’s essay ‘Watteau’s Pilgrimage to the Island of Love’ was only published posthumously, and is not included in the German Gesammelte Schriften. It concerns Watteau’s painting also known under the title of The Embarkation for Cythera, seen as the quintessence of the courtly style and fête galante genre. Watteau’s work too fell into disfavour at the time of the Revolution, but then became the centre of attention once more among the French Romantics.

This volume includes a full colour reproduction of the Louvre version of The Embarkation for Cythera, and, like other volumes in the series, has been thoroughly re-edited and annotated.

List Price: €60.00
Discount Price if ordered directly from the publisher (www.ucdpress.ie): €48.00

Locations for BSA conference

Locations for BSA conference

On Wednesday 6 April, conference registration starts at 8:30 at the Peacock Theatre, LSE, which is on the right-hand side of Kingsway (facing north from Aldwych), on the corner with Portugal Street.

The two Elias sessions, at 9:30-11:30 and 12:00-13:30, are in Room 214 in the New Academic Building, which is just a short distance further up Kingsway, on the corner with Sardinia Street (the street that leads into Lincoln's Inn Fields).

A map of the LSE campus can be downloaded at http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/conference/useful.htm
 

Wellington Street, where we are having lunch afterwards in the Café Rouge, is in the Covent Garden area just a short walk over the other (west) side of Kingsway. It can be reached via various minor streets, but if you prefer not to take the risk of getting lost, just walk down Kingsway to the Aldwych, turn right (west) to where it meets the Strand, and then turn sharp right up Wellington Stret until you spot the Café Rouge. Neither route is a great distance.

XIII Simpósio Internacional Processo Civilizador

Universidade Nacional da Colômbia (UNAL) 9 - 12 November 2010

XIII Simpósio Internacional Processo Civilizador

9-12 November 2010

Universidade Nacional da Colômbia (UNAL)

Bogotá, Colombia

The deadline for abstracts is 19 May 2010. Abstracts should refer to one of the following themes: Sport and leisure; Education and Culture; Latin America; Theoretical debates

Contact address: simposioelias2010@gmail.com

Conference – Reinventing Norbert Elias: for an open sociology

Amsterdam, 22–23 June 2012

Latest Volume of Collected Works Published

The Loneliness of the Dying and Humana Conditio

Norbert Elias, The Loneliness of the Dying and Humana Conditio, edited by Alan and Brigitte Scott, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Dublin: UCD Press, 1 April 2010 [Collected Works, vol. 6). 192 pp. ISBN 9781906359065 (hardback)

The latest volume of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias in English, edited by Alan and Brigitte Scott of the University of Innsbruck, contains two of Elias’s shorter books.

The Loneliness of the Dying is one of his Elias’s admired works. Drawing on a range of literary and historical sources, it is sensitive and even moving in its discussion of the changing social context of death and dying over the centuries. Today, when death is less familiar to most people in everyday life, the dying frequently experience the loneliness of social isolation.

Humana Conditio, written in 1985 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, has never before been published in English. ‘Human beings’, writes Elias, ‘have made the reciprocal murdering of people a permanent institution. Wars are part of a fixed tradition of humanity. They are anchored in its social institutions and in the social habitus of people, even the most peace-loving’. Although Elias, like most people at the time, failed to foresee the end of the Cold War, his discussion of ‘hegemonic fevers’ remains highly relvant to understanding present-day international relations. Elias’s meditation on the human lot ranges over the whole of human history to the future of humanity.

The volume is published at the list price of €60.00, but can be purchased at the discount price of €48.00 if it is ordered online direct from the publishers at www.ucdpress.ie.

Beyond Dichotomous Thinking: The Society of Individuals. The Legacy and Continuing Relevance of Norbert Elias’s Sociology.

7–8 October 2010, Polo delle Scienze Sociali, Università degli studi di Firenze,

Call for papers. Cambio is pleased to announce the first Italian conference on Norbert Elias to be held at the Polo delle scienze Sociali, Facoltà di Scienze Politiche ‘C. Alfieri’ in Florence on 7–8 October 2010.

The conference will mark the twentieth anniversary of Norbert Elias’s death on 1 August 1990. 

The central focus of the conference will not be on the most widely known aspect of Elias’s work, the theory of civilizing and decivilizing processes, but rather on his characteristic rejection of polar dichotomies.

Workshops titles include: Individual and Society, Nature and Culture, Global and Local, Order and Change.

Abstracts due before 30 March 2010. See PDF for full details of conference, including workshops and details of how to submit abstracts.

Globalisation and Civilisation in International Relations: Towards New Models of Human Interdependence

9–10 April 2010, UCD School of Sociology, Dublin, Ireland

The British Sociological Association launches new Study Group - Sociology, Psychoanalysis and the Psychosocial

Inaugural meeting; 28 October, London.

The British Sociological Association is launching a new Study Group on  Sociology, Psychoanalysis and the Psychosocial. The inaugural meeting will  be held on 28 October 2011 at Birkbeck College, University of London, 30  Russell Square, at 11.00 to 18.00. Speakers will include Stephen Mennell (on "Sociology needs an historical  social psychology: Norbert Elias's final critique of Sigmund Freud"). For further details, download the conference flyer from the BSA website http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/ForthcomingEvents.htm

Podcasts from International Conference, Dublin, April 2010

now available

The podcasts of the Dublin conference (Globalisation & Civilisation in International Relations: Towards New Models of Human Interdependence' International Conference, 9-10 April) are now available on the UCD SSRC website.

Listen here

Call for Papers: Norbert Elias and British Sociology

A special session on “Norbert Elias and British Sociology” will be held at the 60th anniversary conference of the British Sociological Association, on 6-8 April 201 at the London School of Economics.

The session will focus on the reception and continuing influence of Norbert Elias in British sociology, from his arrival in London in 1935 to the present day. Themes to be covered include: (1) the early years at the LSE to his eventual appointment at the University of Leicester; (2) Elias’s relationship to the British sociological establishment; (3) the development of the sociology of sport and the “Leicester School”; and (4) the current status of his legacy in British sociology in the broader context of globalization.

The session is being organised by Katie Liston and Jon Fletcher. If you would like to contribute a paper, please send an abstract to Katie and Jon by 1 October 2010, at the following addresses:

Katie Liston: k.liston@ulster.ac.uk

Jon Fletcher: jonathan.fletcher@me.com

XVII World Congress of Sociology 2010

11–17 July 2010, Gothenburg, Sweden

The Figurational Sociology Working Group will have five sessions at next year’s ISA World Congress in Göteborg. They will be convened by Robert van Krieken (University College Dublin) and Stephen Vertigans (Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen).

For details of sessions, please download PDF.

For the first time, we shall be organising a business meeting for the group, to be followed by the more customary dinner together. The agenda for the meeting will include a discussion on the possible establishment of an online journal for the group.

We hope that there will be a very large gathering in Göteborg of people with a figurational bent from all parts of the world.

Journal: Human Figurations

Third issue live online

Human Figurations: Long-term Perspectives on the Human Condition is a new journal supported and sponsored by the Norbert Elias Foundation. The unifying theme of the journal Human Figurations is a broad concern with long-term processes of the development of human society and the human condition.

The third issue is live online and contains contributions from Bruce Malizsh, José Esteban Castro, Charles A. Jones, Helmut Kuzmics, Matt Clement and Jason Hughes.

More information about the journal is below. If you'd like to submit a paper for consideration please email humanfigurations@me.com.

While Elias is best known for his theory of civilizing processes, he wrote on an astonishing range of topics, including violence, war, sport, ageing and dying, time, work, art, music, poetry, utopias and the relations between the sexes. Fundamentally, he advanced what have been called both a 'post-philosophical' theory of knowledge and the sciences, and an 'historical social psychology'. His conception of the discipline of sociology was far broader than that which has now become institutionalized in the rather narrow departments of sociology in contemporary universities. In consequence, he inspires researchers from many disciplines, especially people working in the interstices between conventional disciplines: history (especially world historians and social historians), criminology, international relations, anthropology and political science. Human Figurations will attract contributions from across these fields, the unifying theme being a broad concern with long-term processes of the development of human society and the human condition.

AT LAST!

ELIAS’S MASTERPIECE OUT IN THE COLLECTED WORKS

Norbert Elias, On the Process of Civilisation: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, translated by Edmund Jephcott, edited by Stephen Mennell, Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom and Richard Kilminster (Dublin: UCD Press, 2012 [Collected Works, vol. 3]). xxii + 654 pp. ISBN: 978 1 906359 04 1. €60.00

In this sumptuous new volume, which has been several years in preparation, earlier editions have been completely revised, with many corrections and clarifications. We predict that even readers who know The Civilising Process well will find the new edition a revelation.

But first, why the change of title? Why not the familiar The Civilising Process? As the editors explain:

‘One should think twice before publishing a new edition of an already famous book under an unfamiliar title. Dreadful examples are Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, which became The Autumn of the Middle Ages, and Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past, which became In Search of Lost Time – in both cases the new title was more literal but also infinitely more pedestrian in English than the old. The board of the Norbert Elias Foundation nevertheless decided that this volume of the Collected Works should be issued not as the familiar The Civilising Process but under the new title On the Process of Civilisation. This is a more literal translation of Über den Prozess der Zivilisation but not, we hope, more pedestrian. … There are two good reasons for amending [the title], both of them related to widespread misunderstandings to which the original English title has apparently given rise ... First, the emphasis in the original German title is – and should also be in English – on the word ‘process’, not on the word ‘civilisation’ or ‘civilising’. Second, by extension, some readers have inferred from the definite article in The Civilising Process that Elias believed that a singular civilising process had occurred uniquely in the course of the last half-millennium or so of European history. … But Elias made many asides both here and in his later writings to stress that civilising processes were found in other parts of the world and in other periods of human social development. He repeatedly asserted that other instances of civilising processes could be observed in other continents and other periods throughout the development of human society.’

One of the most immediately striking features of the new edition is that, probably for the first time in any language, it includes full-colour plates of all of the 14 pictures from the Mittelalterliches Hausbuch to which Elias refers in his celebrated discussion of ‘Scenes from the life of a knight’. The rather astonishing fact that Elias did refer to as many as 14 of the pictures we owe to Patrick Murphy, who meticulously worked through the text alongside reproductions of the Hausbuch. Patrick has also contributed an appendix, written with Stephen Mennell, about the drawings. In retrospect, it seems obvious that no one could fully understand Elias’s discussion without being familiar with the drawings themselves.

Besides carefully checking and correcting the text, the editors have inserted numerous explanatory notes and cross-references to other parts of Elias’s writings. The explanatory notes are especially important in the long discussion of state-formation processes, where Elias seems to have written on the assumption that every reader would come equipped with a comprehensive detailed knowledge of European medieval and early modern history, especially of France and Germany. That assumption was probably never realistic, and has long since to be safe for later generations of English speaking readers. The notes will help to navigate the reader through the maze of the distant past and among unfamiliar monarchs (many with very similar names!).

One other new feature, among many, needs to be mentioned. Elias often hid away important discussions in extended notes which, tucked away at the end of the book in tiny print, were probably rarely studied by the exhausted reader. In line with modern practice, these have now been transformed into appendices (and sometimes themselves annotated). There are as many as 27 of these new appendices, for which the editors have created titles. They include, for example: ‘On feudalism in Europe and Asia’; ‘On law and political development’; ‘On the Chinese form of centralisation’; ‘On British national character’; ‘On the strength of tensions, population pressure and international economics in hegemonic states’; ‘Some American authors on habits and fears’; ‘On ideology, Realpolitik, and American sociology’. Even included is a long note that Elias dictated for the Dutch translation of the book.

The next volume to be published, in July 2012, will be:

Norbert Elias, What is Sociology?, translated by Grace Morrissey, Stephen Mennell and Edmund Jephcott, edited by Artur Bogner, Katie Liston and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2012 [Collected Works, vol. 5]). xviii + 236 pp. ISBN: 978-1-906359-05-8. €60.00

The new edition will include a ‘missing chapter’ on Marx and another shorter text on ‘The sociogenesis of the concept of “society” as the subject matter of sociology’ never previously published in English, both translated for this edition by Edmund Jephcott. The translation of the original book made by Grace Morrissey and Stephen Mennell in the early 1970s (the first translation into English of Elias’s major works) has been substantially revised in the light of later translations – especially by Edmund Jephcott – of other works.

Buy online: Copies of any of the volumes of the Collected Works may be purchased online at a 20 per cent discount, post free, directly from the publishers, at www.ucdpress.ie.

Twentieth Anniversary of Elias's Death

Podcast

Norbert Elias died on 1 August 1990. To mark the twentieth anniversary, the German radio station WDR3 (Westdeutscher Rundfunk 3. Programm) broadcast a fifteen-minute programme in its daily ZeitZeichen series.