The sociology of Norbert Elias / edited by Steven Loyal and Stephen Quilley.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Norbert Elias has been described as a great sociologist and over recent years there has been a steady upsurge of interest in his work. Yet despite the fact that he was active for nearly sixty years from the 1920s to the 1960s it was only in the 1980s that English translations of his works became widely available and the importance of his contribution to the sociological endeavour was fully recognised in the English speaking world. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the key aspects of Elias's work and then applies an Eliasian approach to key topics in contemporary sociology such as race, class, gender, religion, epistemology and nationalism. The editors have brought together a distinguished group of international sociologists and this book will not only change the course of Elias studies but be a valuable resource for both students and scholars alike.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of contributors (p. ix)
• Acknowledgements (p. x)
• 1 Towards a 'central theory': the scope and relevance of the sociology of Norbert Elias (p. 1)
• Part I Sociology as a human science: Norbert Elias and the sociology of knowledge
• 2 From distance to detachment: knowledge and self-knowledge in Elias's theory of involvement and detachment (p. 25)
• 3 Ecology, 'human nature' and civilizing processes: biology and sociology in the work of Norbert Elias (p. 42)
• 4 Between the real and the reified: Elias on time (p. 59)
• Part II Processes of stratification: figurations of race, class and gender
• 5 Aspects of the figurational dynamics of racial stratification: a conceptual discussion and developmental analysis of black-white relations in the United States (p. 75)
• 6 Decivilizing and demonizing: the remaking of the black American ghetto (p. 95)
• 7 Elias on class and stratification (p. 122)
• 8 Elias on gender relations: the changing balance of power between the sexes (p. 142)
• Part III The formation of individuals and states
• 9 Not so exceptional? State-formation processes in America (p. 157)
• 10 Armed peace: on the pacifying condition for the 'cooperative of states' (p. 175)
• 11 Changing regimes of manners and emotions: from disciplining to informalizing (p. 193)
• 12 Elias and modern penal development (p. 212)
• 13 Elias, Freud and Goffman: shame as the master emotion (p. 229)
• Part IV Religion and civilizing processes: Weber and Elias compared
• 14 Weber and Elias on religion and violence: warrior charisma and the civilizing process (p. 245)
• 15 Christian religion and the European civilizing process: the views of Norbert Elias and Max Weber compared in the context of the Augustinian and Lucretian traditions (p. 265)
• Index (p. 281)