News
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 first issue, with constributions by Peter Burke, Olle Edström, Barbara Evers, Johan Goudsbloom, Andrew Linklater, Joseph Maquire, , Peter Westbroek and Gary Wickham is now live online.
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.
Wednesday February 1st 2012 14:33
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.
Tuesday September 13th 2011 11:00
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.
Tuesday June 14th 2011 11:48
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
Tuesday July 5th 2011 11:34
A large number of abstracts has already been submitted for the Copenhagen conference, but the organisers – Lars-Bo Kaspersen and Norman Gabriel – have nevertheless extended the deadline until 25 January to enable intending participants to gather their thoughts after Christmas. Revised details of the conference are pasted below.
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 three-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; Abram de Swaan, University of Amsterdam; Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin; Johan Goudsblom, University of Amsterdam; Søren Nagbøl, Aarhus University; Nina Baur, TU Berlin; Stefanie Ernst, Universität Magdeburg; Stephen Quilley, Keele University.
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 new deadline for submitting abstracts of papers is 25 January 2012. 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)
Sponsors: The Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam The Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen The Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Tuesday January 10th 2012 15:04
LSE conference, 6 - 8th April 2011British 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’
Tuesday February 1st 2011 12:52
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?
Tuesday February 1st 2011 12:52
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
Tuesday August 3rd 2010 15:26
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.
Thursday March 24th 2011 16:40
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
Thursday April 29th 2010 17:37
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.
Sunday July 25th 2010 17:50
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.
Sunday April 25th 2010 21:33
This conference will bring together specialists in International Relations and sociologists, together with some representatives of cognate disciplines – such as history, political science and criminology – to explore central issues concerning the possible emergence of a single global society.
Further details are available in this
PDF.
Sunday April 25th 2010 21:31
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
Saturday August 6th 2011 20:50
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
Monday September 20th 2010 15:25
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
Monday September 20th 2010 00:21
Focus
This conference aims to investigate the relevance of the figurational or ‘process sociology’ of Norbert Elias for current sociological theory and research. The organising committee, consisting of social scientists from several Dutch universities and a renowned Australian expert, hope to attract scholars from around the world to join us in discussing and rethinking Norbert Elias’s sociology for the twenty-first century. How can figurational sociology contribute to current sociological debates? What is the place of Elias in today’s social scientific landscape? How can the insights and concepts of figurational sociology be developed further? Are Elias’s critiques of mainstream sociology still valid? Is figurational sociology a paradigm in itself, or rather a perspective to be used alongside others?
In recent decades, Norbert Elias has acquired a place in the pantheon of modern classical sociologists. His work is well known outside of the direct circles of his students, friends and collaborators in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Many of Elias’s insights have been incorporated in current sociological work. Elias is now recognised as pioneer in such divergent fields as relational sociology, historical sociology, the sociology of sports, culture, organisations, and emotions.
The conference will be held at the University of Amsterdam, where Elias spent the last decade of his long and productive life. The Netherlands, and the University of Amsterdam in particular, became an important international centre for figurational sociology. However, in the past decade, figurational sociology has lost its dominant position at the University of Amsterdam, increasingly becoming one paradigm among many.
For this conference, we have invited four plenary speakers: two young sociologists who have used Elias’s work in new and creative ways, and two established scholars who are well-versed in process sociology. The conference will be preceded by a short intensive course on Elias and process sociology, which will be open to interested PhD candidates from the Netherlands and beyond. This course will be taught by renowned figurational sociologist Robert van Krieken (University of Sidney) in conjunction with Bart van Heerikhuizen (UvA). Professor van Krieken will also take part in the panel discussion at the end of the conference.
The paper sessions for this conference are organised around themes that are both central to the work of Elias, and at the heart of present-day sociological debates: sociology and history; bodies and biology; emotions and affect; and national habitus and cross-national comparison. Separate calls for papers for each of these topics can be found below.
Aims
1. We shall edit a special issue of the journal Human Figurations, with selected papers from this conference. This special issue is expected to come out in 2013.
2. The short intensive course preceding the conference is intended to attract and inform young researchers with an interest in figurational/process sociology and more generally in relational sociology.
3. By bringing together different ways of working with Elias’s legacy, the conference seeks to arouse interest in new ways of using this legacy, among students and academics, and to specifically look for ways to link Eliasian sociology with current sociological debates. The aim is to contribute to the elaboration and expansion of an open sociology: a broad and open approach, a preference for comparative and historical questions, mixed methods, an interest in the sociology of emotions, and a marked disregard of disciplinary boundaries.
4. Finally, we hope to strengthen, consolidate, and expand the international network of scholars with an interest in relational and process sociology.
Call for Papers
1. Sociology and History
Organisers: Marcel Hoogenboom (University of Utrecht) and Rineke van Daalen (Universitu of Amsterdam)
Almost without exception, the founding fathers of sociology put great emphasis on the importance of history in sociological analysis. Comte, Marx, Weber, Elias and even Durkheim – without hesitation all would have endorsed Norman Gottwald’s maxim that ‘history without sociology is blind, sociology without history is empty’. Yet after 1945, mainstream academic sociology did not give much attention to history, nor to long-term social change. Norbert Elias’s historical sociological approach reconnected sociology to the dynamic classics and distanced itself from American functionalism.
For young sociologists in the 1970s, this came as a relief. The boundaries between sociology and history became more diffuse; historical sociology and social history bloomed. But in contemporary sociology, especially in the Netherlands, an historical perspective is virtually absent, and the distance between sociology and history has grown. At best, the development of a certain social phenomenon is treated as some kind of ‘historical background’ instead of seen as a fundamentally formative force and explanatory principle.
This session focuses on questions like: Do sociologists need history? Do sociologists and historians need each other? In what ways can sociologists incorporate history into their work? What do they miss by ‘hodiecentrism’, restricting their research to static relations in the present? What could historical sociological analysis contribute to dominant debates in current sociology? Why has historical sociology become a relatively unimportant branch of sociological research and teaching?
2. Bodies and Biology
Organiser: Rogier van Reekum (University of Amsterdam)
Social scientific theorising and research have recently seen a marked increase in attention for bodily practices and processes. Parallel to that development, there has been a return of interest in biology: both regarding its impact on actual behaviour, and regarding the relationship between biology and long-term historical processes. This seminar aims to investigate the relevance of the body and biology for social science. Elias, for his part, developed a strong focus on bodily processes and the ways in which these were themselves transformed through (very) long-term processes. The control of the body is a major element in the civilising process. Elias stressed the embeddedness of habitus formation within wider chains of dependence and longer phases of change. How can appreciation of the bodily aspects of social practice and (very) long-term processes help us in our sociological theorising and research? If so, can insights from evolutionary biology be successfully utilised? We invite anyone working on these issues to submit a paper. We are open to both empirical research and theoretical explorations.
3. Emotions
Organisers: Christien Brinkgreve (University of Utrecht), Jacob Boersema (University of Amsterdam), Don Weenink (Wageningen University)
Emotions are a crucial part of social life, and in that respect also an important topic for sociology. Emotions are individually embodied but always embedded in social relations, referring to others, and formed in relations and interactions with others.
Emotions are also social in the sense that, in Arlie Russell Hochschild’s terms, people use the ‘feeling dictionaries’ and ‘feeling bibles’ that are characteristic of the societies in which they live. But emotions are elusive. How can sociologists give emotions the sophisticated attention they deserve? Which is their specific domain, the sociological niche between other disciplines, in the study of emotions? In the work of Norbert Elias emotions play a crucial role, and the way he connected relations and emotions has been very inspiring for a whole generation of sociologists. But his focus is on the social regulation of emotions.
In recent decades, there has been much research in psychology and the neurosciences that can be also useful for sociology. What insights from these disciplines are relevant for sociologists studying emotions? How can they incorporate these insights, particularly but not only with regard to the study of long-term social processes? We invite people working on these themes and issues to submit a paper – we are open to theoretical reflection and empirical research, with a preference for the combination of both.
4. Sociological comparison and national habitus.
Organisers: Giselinde Kuipers (University of Amsterdam & Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Johan Heilbron (Erasmus University Rotterdam & Centre de sociologie européenne, Sorbonne–Paris)
National comparison has always been central to process sociology. In The Civilizing Process, Elias contrasted Germany and France, to better understand the dynamics of state formation and civilisation. Later, Elias’s comparative approach was expanded to Europe, North America, and Asia. Similar social processes – state formation, civilisation, informalisation, globalisation – often develop and work out differently in different national contexts. Comparison, therefore, allows researchers to uncover underlying mechanisms of social processes.
National comparison also allows us to recognise and understand the specificities of different nations. In The Germans, Elias coined the notion of ‘national habitus’ to explain how, in the course of state formation, inhabitants of a particular nation become more similar in outlook and emotional make-up.
This panel invites both theoretical and empirical papers concerned with national comparative research from the perspective of figurational or process sociology. Especially in Europe, where large-scale quantitative comparative research has become the dominant form of social research, we feel process sociology can make a timely and critical contribution.
We are specifically interested in two issues. First, we are looking for papers engaging with national comparison in the current age of increasing globalisation and trans-nationalism. How do national contexts and trans-national processes interact and intersect? What do we compare when we compare nations in the twenty-first century? Second, we look to revitalise and expand the concept of ‘national habitus’. How can we understand national difference and specificity not only at the level of institutions and processes, but also at the level of embodied, everyday practice?
Monday November 21st 2011 12:20
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.
Monday June 14th 2010 20:35
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.
Friday August 6th 2010 22:28