norbert elias - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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23/09/13 Norbert Elias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Norbert Elias
Born 22 June 1897
Breslau (Wrocław), Silesia Province,
Prussia
Died 1 August 1990 (aged 93)
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Figurational Sociology
Notable ideas Habitus
Norbert EliasFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Norbert Elias (German: [eˈliː as]; 22 June 1897 – 1
August 1990) was a German sociologist of Jewishdescent, who later became a British citizen. He isespecially famous for his theory of civilizing (anddecivilizing) processes.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Work
3 The Collected Works of Norbert Elias in
English4 Select bibliography of earlier editions
4.1 Articles5 Further reading
6 External links
Biography
Elias was born on 22 June 1897 in Breslau (Wrocław) inPrussia's Silesia Province to Hermann and Sophie Elias.His father was a businessman in the textile industry and hismother, as usual at the time, a housewife. After passingthe abitur in 1915 he volunteered for the German army inWorld War I and was employed as a telegrapher, first atthe Eastern front, then at the Western front. After sufferinga nervous breakdown in 1917, he was declared unfit forservice and was posted to Breslau as a medical orderly.The same year, Elias began studying philosophy,psychology and medicine at the University of Breslau, inaddition spending a term each at the universities ofHeidelberg (where he attended lectures by Karl Jaspers)and Freiburg in 1919 and 1920. He quit medicine in 1919 after passing the preliminary examination(Physikum). To finance his studies after his father's fortune had been reduced by hyperinflation, he took up ajob as the head of the export department in a local hardware factory 1922. In 1924, he graduated with adoctoral dissertation in philosophy entitled Idee und Individuum ("Idea and Individual") supervised by RichardHönigswald, a representative of Neo-Kantianism. Disappointed about the absence of the social aspect fromNeo-Kantianism, which had led to a serious dispute with his supervisor about his dissertation, Elias decided toturn to sociology for his further studies.
During his Breslau years, until 1925, Elias was deeply involved in the German Zionist movement, and acted asone of the leading intellectuals within the German-Jewish youth movement "Blau-Weiss" (Blue-White). Duringthese years he got acquainted with other young Zionists like Erich Fromm, Leo Strauss, Leo Löwenthal andGershom Scholem. In 1925, Elias moved to Heidelberg, where Alfred Weber accepted him as a candidate for a
Influenced by
Influenced
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The plaque for Norbert Elias in
Wrocław
habilitation (second book project) on the development of modern science, entitled Die Bedeutung derFlorentiner Gesellschaft und Kultur für die Entstehung der Wissenschaft (The Significance of FlorentineSociety and Culture for the Development of Science). In 1930 Elias chose to cancel this project andfollowed Karl Mannheim to become his assistant at the University of Frankfurt. However, after the Nazi take-over in early 1933, Mannheim's sociological institute was forced to close. The already submitted habilitationthesis entitled Der höfische Mensch ("The Man of the Court") was never formally accepted and not publisheduntil 1969. In 1933, Elias fled to Paris. His elderly parents remained in Breslau, where his father died in 1940;his mother was deported to Auschwitz, where she probably was killed in 1941.
During his two years in Paris, Elias worked as a private scholar supported by a scholarship from the AmsterdamSteunfonds Foundation. In 1935, he moved on to Great Britain, where he worked on his magnum opus, TheCivilizing Process, until 1939, now supported by a scholarship from a relief organization for Jewish refugees.
In 1939, he met up with his former supervisor Mannheim at theLondon School of Economics, where he obtained a position asSenior Research Assistant. In 1940, the LSE was evacuated toCambridge, but when an invasion of Britain by German forcesappeared imminent, Elias was detained at internment camps inLiverpool and on the Isle of Man for eight months, on account of hisbeing German – an "enemy alien". During his internment he organizedpolitical lectures and staged a drama he had written himself, DieBallade vom armen Jakob (The Ballad of Poor Jacob) (eventuallypublished in 1987).
Upon his release in 1941, he returned to Cambridge. Towards theend of the war, he worked fro British intelligence, investigating
hardened Nazis among German prisoners of war (see his essay "The breakdown of civilisation", in Studies onthe Germans). He taught evening classes for the Workers' Educational Association (the adult educationorganization), and later evening extension courses in sociology, psychology, economics and economic history atthe University of Leicester. He also held occasional lectureships at other institutions of higher learning. Incollaboration with a friend from Frankfurt days, the psychoanalyst S. H. Foulkes, he laid the theoreticalfoundations of Group Analysis, an important school of therapy, and co-founded the Group Analytic Society in1952. He himself trained and worked as a group therapist.
In 1954 – at the very late age of 57 – he at last gained his first secure academic post, at University CollegeLeicester (which soon became the University of Leicester), first as Lecturer and later as Reader in Sociology.Along with his friend Ilya Neustadt, he made a major contribution to the development of the University'sDepartment of Sociology, which became one of the largest and most influential departments in the UnitedKingdom. He retired in 1962, but continued to teach graduate students in Leicester until the mid-1970s. Amongsubsequently famous sociologists whom Neustadt and Elias appointed as colleagues at Leicester, were John H.Goldthorpe, Anthony Giddens, Martin Albrow, Sheila Allen, Joe and Olive Banks, Richard Brown, MaryMcIntosh, Nicos Mouzelis and Sami Zubaida and Keith Hopkins. (Hopkins was subsequently Professor ofAncient History at Cambridge: his appointment to teach sociology in Leicester is one sign of the very broadconception Elias and Neustadt had of the discipline of sociology.) Students in the department included JohnEldridge, Chris Bryant, Chris Rojek, Paul Hirst, Graeme Salaman and Bryan Wilson. From 1962 to 1964, Eliastaught as Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana in Legon near Accra. After his return to Europe in1965, he spent much time as visiting professor in various German and Dutch universities, and from about 1977based himself in Amsterdam. His reputation and popularity grew immensely after the republication of TheCivilising Process in 1969. From 1978 to 1984 he worked at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at theUniversity of Bielefeld. Elias was the first ever laureate of both the Theodor W. Adorno Prize (1977) and theEuropean Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences (1987). Outside his sociological work he always alsowrote poetry.
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Elias died at his home in Amsterdam on 1 August 1990.
Work
Elias' theory focused on the relationship between power, behavior, emotion, and knowledge over time. Hesignificantly shaped what is called process or figurational sociology. Due to historical circumstances, Elias hadlong remained a marginal author, until being rediscovered by a new generation of scholars in the 1970s, when heeventually became one of the most influential sociologists in the history of the field. Interest in his work can bepartly attributed to the fact that his concept of large social figurations or networks explains the emergence andfunction of large societal structures without neglecting the aspect of individual agency. In the 1960s and 1970s,the overemphasis of structure over agency was heavily criticized about the then-dominant school of structuralfunctionalism.
Elias' most famous work is Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, published in English as The Civilizing Process(or, more accurately in the Collected Works edition – see below – as On the Process of Civilisation).Originally published in German, in two volumes, in 1939, it was virtually ignored until its republication in 1969,when its first volume was also translated into English. The first volume traces the historical developments of theEuropean habitus, or "second nature," the particular individual psychic structures molded by social attitudes.Elias traced how post-medieval European standards regarding violence, sexual behaviour, bodily functions, tablemanners and forms of speech were gradually transformed by increasing thresholds of shame and repugnance,working outward from a nucleus in court etiquette. The internalized "self-restraint" imposed by increasinglycomplex networks of social connections developed the "psychological" self-perceptions that Freud recognizedas the "super-ego." The second volume of The Civilizing Process looks into the causes of these processes andfinds them in the increasingly centralized Early Modern state and the increasingly differentiated andinterconnected web of society.
When Elias' work found a larger audience in the 1960s, at first his analysis of the process was misunderstood asan extension of discredited "social Darwinism," the idea of upward "progress" was dismissed by reading it asconsecutive history rather than a metaphor for a social process.
Elias came to write both in English and German. Almost all his work on the sociology of knowledge and thesciences (much of which would more conventionally be called "philosophy of science") was written in English.And so was his seminal work in the sociology of sport, collected in The Quest for Excitement, written byNorbert Elias with Eric Dunning, and published in 1986. Bielefeld University's Center for Sociology ofDevelopment in 1984 invited Norbert Elias to preside over a gathering of a host of his internationallydistinguished fellows who in turn wanted to review and discuss Elias' most interesting theories on civilisingprocesses in person.
In the same year, Elias established the Norbert Elias Foundation to administer his legacy after his death. Thecurrent members of the board of the foundation are Johan Goudsblom (Amsterdam), Hermann Korte (Münster)and Stephen Mennell (Dublin).
One of the most curious features of Elias's career is that, until he retired from the University of Leicester in 1962,he had published only one book, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, and no more than a handful of articles.And yet, by the time of his death in 1990, he had published 15 books and something approaching 150 essays.He had always written a great deal, but found it very difficult ever to be satisfied with the results, and was veryreluctant to release his work for publication. Still more curious, although he was such a perfectionist in hiswriting, he could rarely be persuaded to undertake such mundane tasks as reading and correcting the proofs.Thus, although his German works were well translated into English (for the most part by Edmund Jephcott), the
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original English editions contain many errors that could have been corrected by thorough proof-reading. In theearly twenty-first century, therefore, the Norbert Elias Foundation entered into agreement with UCD Press,Dublin, to publish new scholarly editions of Elias's work, running to 18 volumes.
The Collected Works of Norbert Elias in English
The new editions of Elias's works have been carefully revised, cross-referenced and annotated (with notesespecially about many historical people and events to which Elias makes reference), with a view to making themfar more accessible to the reader. Especially important are the three volumes of Elias's collected essays, many ofwhich have not previously been published in English – or were published in such a scattered way or in obscureplaces that they were hitherto little known. (Other essays can also be found in Early Writings, Mozart andother volumes.)
The 18 volumes are as follows:
1 Early Writings, edited by Richard Kilminster (Dublin: UCD Press, 2006).
2 The Court Society, edited by Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2006).
3 On the Process of Civilisation [note new title], edited by Stephen Mennell, Eric Dunning, JohanGoudsblom and Richard Kilminster (Dublin: UCD Press, 2012).
4 The Established and the Outsiders, edited by Cas Wouters (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008).
5 What is Sociology? edited by Artur Bogner, Katie Liston and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCDPress,2012).
6 The Loneliness of the Dying and Humana Conditio, edited by Alan and Brigitte Scott (Dublin: UCDPress, 2009).
7 Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process, by Norbert Elias and EricDunning, edited by Eric Dunning (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008).
8 Involvement and Detachment, edited by Stephen Quilley (Dublin: UCD Press, 2007).
9 An Essay on Time, edited by Steven Loyal and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2007).
10 The Society of Individuals, edited by Robert van Krieken (Dublin: UCD Press, 2010)
11 Studies on the Germans [note new title], edited by Stephen Mennell and Eric Dunning (Dublin: UCDPress, 2013).
12 Mozart, and Other Essays on Courtly Culture, edited by Eric Baker and Stephen Mennell (Dublin:UCD Press, 2010).
13 The Symbol Theory, edited by Richard Kilminster (Dublin: UCD Press, 2011).
14 Essays I: On the Sociology of Knowledge and the Sciences, edited by Richard Kilminster andStephenMennell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2009).
15 Essays II: On Civilising Processes, State Formation and National Identity, edited by RichardKilminster and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008).
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16 Essays III: On Sociology and the Humanities, edited by Richard Kilminster and Stephen Mennell(Dublin: UCD Press, 2009).
Forthcoming volumes
17 Interviews and Autobiographical Reflections, edited by Edmund Jephcott, Richard Kilminster, KatieListon and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press, October 2013).
18 Supplements and Index to the Collected Works [includes major unpublished essays on Freud and onLévy-Bruhl], edited by Stephen Mennell, Marc Joly and Katie Liston (Dublin: UCD Press, forthcoming Spring2014).
Supplementary volume
The Genesis of the Naval Profession, edited by René Moelker and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press,2007).
Select bibliography of earlier editions
Books (in chronological order, by date of original publication):
1939: Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen.
Erster Band. Wandlungen des Verhaltens in den weltlichen Oberschichten des Abendlandes andZweiter Band. Wandlungen der Gesellschaft. Entwurf einer Theorie der Zivilisation. Basel: Verlag
Haus zum Falken. (Published in English as The Civilizing Process, Vol.I. The History of Manners,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1969, and The Civilizing Process, Vol.II. State Formation and Civilization,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).2000: The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Revised edition of
1994. Oxford: Basil Blackwell].
1965 (with John L. Scotson): The Established and the Outsiders. A Sociological Enquiry into
Community Problems, London: Frank Cass & Co. (Originally published in English.)1969: Die höfische Gesellschaft. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen
Aristokratie (based on the 1933 habilitation). Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand. (Published in English
translation by Edmund Jephcott as The Court Society, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).1970: Was ist Soziologie?. München: Juventa. (Published in English as What is Sociology?, London:
Hutchinson, 1978).
1982: Über die Einsamkeit der Sterbenden in unseren Tagen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
(Published in English as The Loneliness of the Dying, Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).1982 (edited with Herminio Martins and Richard Whitley): Scientific Establishments and Hierarchies.
Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 1982, Dordrecht: Reidel.
1983: Engagement und Distanzierung. Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie I, edited by Michael Schröter,
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Published in English as Involvement and Detachment. Contributionsto the Sociology of Knowledge, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.)
1984: Über die Zeit. Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II, edited by Michael Schröter, Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp. (Published in English as Time. An Essay, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
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1985: Humana conditio. Betrachtungen zur Entwicklung der Menschheit am 40. Jahrestag eines
Kriegsendes (8. Mai 1985), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Not available in English).
1986 (with Eric Dunning): Quest for Excitement. Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process. Oxford:Blackwell.
1987: Die Gesellschaft der Individuen, edited by Michael Schröter, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
(Original 1939, published in English as The Society of Individuals, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
1987: Los der Menschen. Gedichte, Nachdichtungen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Poetry, notavailable in English).
1989: Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert, edited by Michael Schröter, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Published in English as The
Germans. Power struggles and the development of habitus in the 19th and 20th centuries,
Cambridge: Polity Press 1996.)
1990: Über sich selbst, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Published in English as Reflections on a life,Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
1991: Mozart. Zur Soziologie eines Genies, edited by Michael Schröter, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp. (Published in English as Mozart. Portrait of a Genius, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
1991: The Symbol Theory. London: Sage. (Originally published in English.)
1996: Die Ballade vom armen Jakob, Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag (Drama, not available in
English).
1998: Watteaus Pilgerfahrt zur Insel der Liebe, Weitra (Austria): Bibliothek der Provinz (Not availablein English).
1998: The Norbert Elias Reader: A Biographical Selection, edited by Johan Goudsblom and Stephen
Mennell, Oxford: Blackwell.
1999: Zeugen des Jahrhunderts. Norbert Elias im Gespräch mit Hans-Christian Huf, edited by
Wolfgang Homering, Berlin: Ullstein. (Interview, not available in English).
2002: Frühschriften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Early writings, not available in English.)
2004: Gedichte und Sprüche. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Translations of poems in English andFrench).
See also:
Stephen Mennell (1989) Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.Jonathan Fletcher (1997) Violence and Civilization: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias.
Cambridge: Polity.
Robert van Krieken (1998) Norbert Elias. London: Routledge.
Nathalie Heinich (2002) La sociologie de Norbert Elias. Paris: La Découverte.
Steven Loyal and Steven Quilley (eds) (2004) The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Eric Dunning and Jason Hughes (1013) Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge,Interdependence, Power, Process. London: Bloomsbury.
Articles
"Studies in the genesis of the naval profession", British Journal of Sociology, 1(4) 1950: 291-309.
"Problems of involvement and detachment", British Journal of Sociology, 7(3) 1956: 226-52.
"Sociology of knowledge: new perspectives. Part One", Sociology, 5(2): (1971): 149-68.
"Sociology of knowledge: new perspectives. Part Two", Sociology, 5(3): (1971): 355-70."Theory of science and history of science: comments on a recent discussion", Economy & Society, 1(2):
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(1972): 117-33.
"The Civilizing Process revisited: interview with Stanislas Fontaine", Theory & Society, 5: (1978): 243-
53.
"On transformations of aggressiveness", Theory & Society, 5(2): (1978): 229-42.
"Civilization and Violence: on the state monopoly of violence and its infringements". TELOS 54 (Winter
1982-83): 134-54. New York: Telos Press (http://www.telospress.com)
"The retreat of sociologists into the present", Theory, Culture & Society, 4: (1987): 223-47."On human beings and their emotions: a process-sociological essay", Theory, Culture & Society, 4(2-3):
(1987): 339-61.
"The changing balance of power between the sexes - a process-sociological study: the example of the
Ancient Roman state", Theory, Culture & Society, 4(2-3): (1987): 287-316.
"The Symbol Theory: An Introduction, Part One", Theory, Culture & Society, 6(2): (1989): 169-217.
"Technization and civilization", Theory, Culture & Society, 12(3): (1995): 7-42.
"Towards a theory of social processes", British Journal of Sociology, 48(3): (1997): 355-83.
"Power and Civilisation", Journal of Power, 1(2): (2008): 135-42.
Further reading
Robert Van Krieken, Norbert Elias, Key Sociologists series, London: Routledge, 1998.
Eric Dunning and Jason Hughes, Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence,Power, Process, Bloomsbury Academic, 2012.
Jonathan Fletcher, Violence and Civilization: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias,
Cambridge: Polity, 1997.
The Sociology of Norbert Elias, edited by Steven Loyal and Stephen Quilley, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
Stephen Mennell, Norbert Elias: An Introduction, Dublin: UCD Press, 1999.
External links
The Norbert Elias Foundation website (http://www.norberteliasfoundation.nl)(Includes all issues of the
Newsletter Figurations)
The HyperElias website (http://hyperelias.jku.at) (A complete list of all works by Norbert Elias, in alllanguages, published and unpublished, as well as many full text items and abstracts)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norbert_Elias&oldid=573661515"
Categories: 1897 births 1990 deaths People from Wrocław University of Heidelberg alumni
University of Freiburg alumni People from the Province of Silesia German sociologists
Jewish sociologists Group psychotherapists English people of German-Jewish descent British Jews
German Jews Jews who emigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism
Academics of the London School of Economics Academics of the University of Leicester
Bielefeld University faculty University of Breslau alumni German refugees Jewish refugees
Knight Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 20th-century philosophers
People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II Men sociologists
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