Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology

Eric Dunning is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology, University of Leicester. He is one of two people ever to have co-published with Norbert Elias, and the only one surviving to this day. A pioneer in the sociology of sport, his recent publications include Sport, Critical Concepts in Sociology, and Norbert Elias: Sage Masters of Modern Social Thought, both four volumes (2003).Jason Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, and Deputy Head of the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University. His first book, Learning to Smoke (2003), was awarded the 2006 European Norbert Elias prize. His more recent publications include two four volume reference works, Visual Methods and Internet Research Methods (both 2012).

Dunning and Hughes have certainly done an important service in introducing those readers primarily familiar with Elias’s classic essays to the breadth of Elias’s work, drawing out the central social theory embedded within such prolific writing . . . Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology makes a strong and convincing case that Elias’s larger historical-theoretical oeuvre and underlying sociological model deserves more sustained attention by both card-carrying sociologists and other scholars of the “human sciences”.

• Introduction: Sociology and its DiscontentsWorking With EliasSome Basic Concepts of Figurational SociologyElias's Central TheoryThe Development of Knowledge and the Sciences as Social ProcessesProblems of Method and Values in the Development of Sociological KnowledgeElias and 'The Habits of Good Sociology'Conclusion: A Relational 'Turn'? The Future Prospects of Figurational Sociology