Figurations

Links to pdf copies of Figurations, the newsletter of the Norbert Elias Foundation, can be found here.

Elias is, to my mind (but then what the fuck do I know?), one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century, alongside Pierre Bourdieu (have a look at Deborah Reed-Hanaway's Locating Bourdieu for an examination of Elias's influence on Bourdieu's work). His figurational or process sociology manages to combine vertical and horizonal (or synchronic and diachronic) analyses of society in a manner that Marxists would perhaps recognize as dialectical, but without any of the mumbo-jumbo Hegelianism and with plenty of empirically-based research (rather than sitting in a library all day cherry-picking the research of others). Eliasians offer a dynamic, insightful sociology of the emotions, of literature, of philosophy, of power, of gender (and of sport, curiously enough) that I would recommend to anyone willing to entertain genuine doubts about their own worldview.


Elias's wiki page is here, but it doesn't do his work justice.