Richard Kilminster is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds. His research interests are in sociological theory and the sociology of knowledge. He is an authority on the life and work of Norbert Elias. The present book compliments the author’s The Sociological Revolution: From the Enlightenment to the Global Age (Routledge 1998, reprinted 2000) which relates Elias’s perspective to mainstream sociology.

• 1. Understanding Elias 2. Origins of Elias’s Synthesis 3. Norbert Elias and Karl Mannheim 4. The Civilizing Process: The Structure of a Classic 5. Involved Detachment: Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Elias 6. The Symbol Theory: Secular Humanism as a Research Programme 7. Concluding Remarks: The Fourth Blow to Man’s Narcissism?

Richard Kilminster is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds. His research interests are in sociological theory and the sociology of knowledge. He is an authority on the life and work of Norbert Elias. The present book compliments the author’s The Sociological Revolution: From the Enlightenment to the Global Age (Routledge 1998, reprinted 2000) which relates Elias’s perspective to mainstream sociology.

• 1. Understanding Elias 2. Origins of Elias’s Synthesis 3. Norbert Elias and Karl Mannheim 4. The Civilizing Process: The Structure of a Classic 5. Involved Detachment: Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Elias 6. The Symbol Theory: Secular Humanism as a Research Programme 7. Concluding Remarks: The Fourth Blow to Man’s Narcissism?

Richard Kilminster is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds. His research interests are in sociological theory and the sociology of knowledge. He is an authority on the life and work of Norbert Elias. The present book compliments the author’s The Sociological Revolution: From the Enlightenment to the Global Age (Routledge 1998, reprinted 2000) which relates Elias’s perspective to mainstream sociology.

• 1. Understanding Elias 2. Origins of Elias’s Synthesis 3. Norbert Elias and Karl Mannheim 4. The Civilizing Process: The Structure of a Classic 5. Involved Detachment: Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Elias 6. The Symbol Theory: Secular Humanism as a Research Programme 7. Concluding Remarks: The Fourth Blow to Man’s Narcissism?