27

Newsletter of the Norbert Elias Foundation

CONTENTS PEOPLE

People 1 • Roger Chartier has been appointed to From the Norbert Elias Foundation the Collège de France. The title of his University of Chester Norbert Elias Prize 2 chair is ‘Écrit et cultures dans l’Europe Book launch 2 moderne’, and he will be giving his Norbert Elias Ghana Artist’s Stipend 2 inaugural lecture on 11 October, 2007. Collected Works of Norbert Elias 2 • Pieter Spierenburg is now Professor Desperately seeking pigeons 2 of Historical Criminology at the Eras- Looking forward to the ISA World Congress of Sociology, mus Universiteit Rotterdam. Göteborg, 2010 3 Involvement and Detachment: A Reflection on the • Reinhard Blomert has been appointed Leicester conference 2006 – Andrew Linklater 3 editor of Leviathan, a journal for social The Shoe-lace Breaching Experiment – Ingo Moerth 4 sciences – sociology, politics and eco- The Impact of Elias’s Work on Organisational Research and nomics. It is based in Berlin, with an Management Development – Ralph Stacey 6 office in the research institute WZB Review Essays (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin). Elias, The Genesis of the Naval Profession – Abram de Swaan 8 • Jack Goody, The Theft of History – Katie Liston 10 In January 2007 Abram de Swaan reached the age of 65, the mandatory A. N. García Martínez, El proceso de la civilización – Sofia Gaspar 12 retirement age at all universities in The Recent Books and Essays 13 Netherlands. On Friday, 26 January, Book Announcements 17 he gave a valedictory lecture to a large Bibliographical Retrospect 18 audience in the grand auditorium of Work in Progress 18 the University of Amsterdam, and was Recent Conferences subsequently honoured in speeches The Art of Polyphony: Group Analysis as a Model for the by the Rector of the university and Civilising of Conflicts 19 several colleagues. The valedictory X Civilising Process Symposium, Brazil 19 lecture was given in Dutch, while the Forthcoming Conferences English translation was simultaneously Completion of Elias Gesammelte Schriften, projected on a screen. The original text, Marbach 14–15 September, 2007 20 entitled ‘Wijsheid achteraf’ [Wisdom in hindsight], and containing a personal Civilising and Decivilising Processes: A Figurational Approach restrospective upon his career as a soci- to American Studies, Frankfurt, 22–24 November, 2007 20 ologist and writer, is published in the Obituaries Dutch literary review De Gids CLXX, Peter Reinhart Gleichmann, 1932–2006 21 nr. 2 (February 2007), pp. 87–102. On Anne Witz, 1952–2006 23 the occasion De Swaan was presented with a Liber amicorum, entitled Gren- zeloos nieuwsgierig: Opstellen voor Book launch cation, entitled Encounters, and in An en over Abram de Swaan (Boundlessly On 4 July the first Dutch edition of Anthology of Contemporary Ghanaian curious: Essays for and about Abram de Quest for Excitement (Sport en span- Poems. He designed the cover of the Swaan, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker 2007), ning. De zoektocht naar sensatie in book. edited by three of Bram’s former PhD de vrije tijd, Bert Bakker), will be students, Annet Mooij, David Bos and launched during the congress cel- Bernard Akoi-Jackson is currently Sonja van’t Hof. ebrating the fifth anniversary of the a Master of Fine Art student at the Mulier Instituut, the Dutch institute Department of Painting and Sculpture, for research in the social sciences on College of Art, KNUST, Kumasi. His sport. Joop Goudsblom will give a talk proposed thesis/project topic is ‘Okadii on ‘Norbert Elias and the Sociology of Dijii: Ga Concepts of Signification and Sport’ (in Dutch). For more information their Relevance as Idioms of Contem- on the congress, see http://www.mulier- porary Art Practice’. instituut.nl/congres. Collected Works Norbert Elias Ghana Artist’s Norbert Elias Stipend The following volumes were published The third winner of the Norbert Elias by UCD Press in February 2007: Ghana Artist’s Stipend is Bernard Akoi-Jackson. In his twenties, he grew Involvement and Detachment Bram de Swaan receiving the Liber amicorum up loving the arts and spent eight of Collected Works vol. 8 his childhood years in Selebi-Phikwe, Edited by Stephen Quilley Botswana, where his interest in litera- ISBN: 1904558429 ture and theatre was initiated. Upon his Price: £ 45.00 / € 60.00 return to Ghana, he took a course in FROM THE NORBERT visual art in the Presbyterian Boys’ Sec- An Essay on Time ELIAS FOUNDATION ondary School in Legon. Here too, his Collected Works vol. 9 interest in drama was further nurtured Edited by Steven Loyal and Stephen University of Chester by the existence of a vibrant school Mennell Norbert Elias Prize drama club. ISBN: 1904558410 With the support of the Norbert Elias Price: £ 45.00 / € 60.00 Foundation, the Department of Sport He gained admission into the College and Exercise Sciences at the Univer- of Art, Kwame Nkrumah University of The texts have been carefully corrected, sity of Chester has instituted an annual Science and Technology, at Kumasi, passages omitted from earlier versions prize for the best thesis submitted for where he obtained first-class honours restored, and explanatory notes sup- the MSc in the Sociology of Sport in the Bachelor of Fine Art in paint- plied where necessary. Involvement and and Exercise (of which Katie Liston ing. His undergraduate thesis/project, Detachment contains full-colour images is Programme Leader). The prize is to which was a study in non-static art, was of two paintings discussed at length by be known as the University of Chester entitled ‘Statements (An Installation): Elias, Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait and Norbert Elias Prize. The first winner is A project inspired by the concepts of Velázquez’s Las Meninas. Steven Cock, who wrote an outstand- time and space in contemporary paint- ing thesis on ‘Swimming and Bathing ing’. He did his national service in art UCD Press can offer substantial dis- in the Civilising Process’, of which an therapy at the Pantang Hospital, a psy- counts to readers of Figurations who abstract is printed later in this issue of chiatric institution in Accra, Ghana. wish to buy copies direct from the Figurations. After the university con- publishers. Readers far across the globe gregation in Chester cathedral on 30 As a painter of eclectic mannerisms, his from Dublin may find, however, that March 2007 at which the degree was fascination is in mixed-media, concep- the cost of postage may outweigh the conferred, the prize was presented to tual art and non-static forms. He writes discount. Contact [email protected] for Steve Cock by Stephen Mennell. drama and poetry and is artistic direc- further details. tor of Christ@Work, a Christian youth choreo-visual and theatre arts group. He Desperately seeking recently directed the group’s production pigeons of ‘Ananse Must Die!’ – a contempo- Eric Dunning recently recalled having rary folkplay written by Cecil Jones written an article with Norbert Elias Abban, the president of Christ@Work. on the popular working-class hobby Bernard’s poem ‘Eternal Link’ won of pigeon racing, sometime in the late the first prize in the first ever literature 1960s, which he thought had been competition organised by the Goethe published in an American magazine, Institute, Accra in 1999. This poem was probably Newsweek. If that were so, later included a Goethe Institute publi- it should be included in the forthcom-

2 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 ing three volumes of Elias’s essays in now indicated that the RC20 Board is and South America, Asia, Africa and the Collected Works. There has been happy to include among its Working Oceania, in relation to an ever-broader no difficulty in retrieving the draft of Groups one on Figurational Sociology range of parts of the globe. this article from a typescript in the (although we may want to discuss the Elias archives: it consists of 800 words name). RC20’s website is: http://www. Please send comments, suggestions and packed with insights. But we have had isa-sociology.org/rc20.htm. offers to help to Robert van Krieken at no success in finding out when and where it was actually published. We We now need to get some discussion Department of Sociology & Social have established, with the help of their going about what we are going to do Policy archivist in New York, that the piece for 2010, what kinds of sessions we University of Sydney A26 did not appear in Newsweek. It would would like to run, who would like to NSW 2006 appear that it did not appear in Time organise and chair them, who would Australia magazine, because there is an online like to function as the ‘chair’ of this Tel: +61-2-9351 2641 index of its contents going back to working group, or set up a website, and Mobile: +61 402 409 144 1923. Eric is amazingly vague about so on. In order to set the ball rolling, in email: [email protected] exactly when and where the little essay approaching the RC20 Board, we made web: http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/ may have appeared, but it looks as the following claims (below) about robert/rvk.html though it was in 1967–8, give or take a what we would do leading up to the few years. Or perhaps it was only sub- 2010 Göteborg ISA World Congress: mitted for publication but never actu- INVOLVEMENT AND ally published. The obvious resources The areas in which this RC20 Working DETACHMENT: A REFLEC- of the internet and library searches have Group will be providing the opportunity TION ON THE LEICESTER already been tried. But if any reader of for sociologists from around the world to CONFERENCE 2006 Figurations can pin down this phantom present the results of their recent research publication, we shall be immensely include, but are not restricted to: Andrew Linklater grateful. Please send any information to University of Wales, Aberystwyth [email protected]. a) the question of processes of civilisa- tion in stateless societies, and such an Elias maintained that one of the pur- analysis might enrich contemporary poses of Sociology was to enable LOOKING FORWARD TO social anthropology; human beings to exercise higher levels THE ISA WORLD CONGRESS of control over uncontrolled social OF SOCIOLOGY, b) the analysis of the current dynam- processes (including warfare) but GÖTEBORG, 2010 ics of processes of civilisation, and the he rejected partisan scholarship. He extent to which it should be understood appears to have shared Marx’s hope that Many readers of Figurations will have as improving control over human rela- human beings will eventually come to participated in previous ISA World tions, in areas such as the sociology of make more of their history under condi- Congresses, especially the very suc- emotions, the sociology of sport, media tions of their choosing while rejecting cessful Figurational Sociology sessions and communications, education, etc.; the efforts to link theory and practice at the 1994 Bielefeld congress, but that animated much of the Marxist also in Montreal (1998) and Brisbane c) the study of the ‘barbarism of civi- tradition. At the conference on ‘Elias (2002). It was unfortunate that plans lisation’, decivilisation or ‘dyscivilisa- in the Twenty-First Century’ which for a presence at the 2006 congress in tion’, the analysis of totalitarian states, was held at the University of Leicester, Durban failed to materialise; we were genocide, colonialism and post-coloni- 10–12 April 2006 [see Figurations 25], trying to upgrade from an ‘Ad Hoc alism; Eric Dunning maintained that Elias Group’ to a more permanent ‘Working hoped that progress in detached socio- Group’ status, but administratively fell d) comparative studies of civilisation logical inquiry would inform practical between two stools. We now have good around the globe, in relation to the wide inquiry. The commitment to ‘practical news about plans for a ‘figurational diversity of forms of state formation engagement’ invites a discussion of presence’ at the ISA World Congress of and cultural development, in regions the position that figurational sociology Sociology in Göteborg in 2010. such as Asia, South America and Africa, should take on what counts as morally as well as the social scientific analysis desirable as opposed to morally repre- For some years we have all been inter- of globalisation and the expansion of a hensible practical involvement. Related ested in establishing a more secure foun- ‘world society’. issues include the extent to which at dation for figurational/process sociologi- least one branch of figurational inquiry cal research activity in the ISA, and hap- The bulk of the work done in figu- should promote connections with ‘criti- pily this has now come to fruition. rational sociology so far has been in cal’ approaches to the study of society Western Europe, and the Working and politics. The President of ISA Research Com- Group will work towards the stimula- mittee 20 on Comparative Sociol- tion of research undertaken from this What Eric Dunning called Elias’s ogy, Prof. Mattei Dogan (Paris) has perspective by scholars from North humanism at the Leicester conference is

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 3 apparent in his claims about the desira- Horkheimer’s observations about the in any of the ‘official’ bibliographies bility of a world which extirpates force possibility of building human solidar- of Elias’s work (except recently in as far as possible; and arguably it is evi- ity around concerns with the need to the HyperElias©WorldCatalogue). It dent in his quiet support for extending alleviate kinds of suffering which are was not included in the corresponding the circle of emotional identification feared more or less everywhere. Per- volume of the German Gesammelte to include as many people as possible. haps, to use the language of the Frank- Schriften. Nor has it hitherto been One might note his claim in Involve- furt School, an embodied cosmopoli- discussed within the German- or Eng- ment and Detachment (2007, p. 13) tanism which starts with the body and lish-speaking academic community of that it ‘should be recognised as a basic its vulnerabilities has been immanent in scholars interested in the work of Nor- human right that human beings can live most social systems at most times. bert Elias. The only previous reference out their natural lives to their limits, if to (a manuscript version of) this text by that is their own wish, and that people How far it has been expressed as an Norbert Elias was made by Hermann who use or advocate and threaten the ethical ideal, and how far it has influ- Korte in his paper on ‘The ethnologi- use of force as a means of shortening enced human conduct, has varied cal perspective of Norbert Elias’ at the other peoples’ lives have therefore to enormously, and not least because of conference on ‘Norbert Elias and be regarded as criminals or as insane’. what Elias called the dualisms between Anthropology’ at Metz in 2000 (see But the normative dimensions of Eli- insiders and outsiders which have Figurations 14), published in French as’s sociological project were largely shaped all periods of human history. translation as ‘‘Le regard ethnologique implicit rather than developed in a sys- Variations in support for embodied cos- de Norbert Elias’, chapter 1 in Sophie tematic philosophical manner. mopolitanism and on its ‘immanence’ Chevalier and Jean-Marie Privat, eds, require detached sociological analysis. Norbert Elias et l’anthropologie: ‘Nous Elias’s claim that all societies must But one strand of figurational sociology sommes tous si étranges …’ (Paris: devise ways to ensure that their mem- can explore social variations in connec- CNRS Editions, 2004 – see Figurations bers do not kill, maim, or in other ways tion with an explicit normative stance; 23). But even Korte acknowledges that harm each other time and time again it can do so while striving to ensure he ‘was unable to find out when the text in the course of satisfying their most that moral commitments do not distort was really published’, and his citations basic physical and psychological needs empirical inquiry and produce only therefore pertain to the provisional highlights themes that can be used to convenient findings. Such an approach manuscript version and not to the actual make connections between figurational can advance the quest for sociologi- published text. sociology and critical social theory. cal investigation with an emancipatory And as with individual societies, it may intent. More specifically, it can promote I re-discovered the ‘officially’ pub- be argued, so with the various global links between figurational sociology lished version of this text in January economic and political interconnections and Frankfurt School critical theory, 2007, by following a different trail: the which have brought virtually all human and it might even work to unify modes hint on the manuscript context (and beings into contact with each other. of sociological and critical analysis also on the Die Zeit context) in a 1985 A recurrent question in the history of which appeared in a remarkable period report by Michael Schröter,2 and then international relations is how far human at the University of Frankfurt approxi- digging up the published text with the groups can agree that certain forms of mately eight decades ago. help of Mrs. Andrea Beekmann, the harm (the slaughter of the ‘innocent’ in archivist of Die Zeit in Hamburg. war, for example) should be prohibited. What might be called ‘embodied cosmo- THE SHOE-LACE BREACH- The text testifies to Elias’s ‘profes- politanism’ starts with the premise that ING EXPERIMENT: sional sociological gaze’ even when different social groups may be able to NORBERT ELIAS AS he was only being a tourist, and it may find some common ground in the desire ETHNOMETHODOLOGIST be described as a premature breaching to eradicate forms of mental and physi- experiment. Harold Garfinkel, recog- cal pain which are intelligible more or An almost unknown text on nised as the founder of ‘ethnometho- less everywhere since they are grounded a breaching experiment dology’, invented the term and used in corporeality and vulnerability; the Ingo Moerth the method of ‘breaching experiments’: approach starts with the supposition that Johannes Kepler University, Linz, experiments in which his students the mutual intelligibility of suffering Austria breached the taken-for-granted assump- can underpin the most basic displays of tions underlying everyday situations, human sympathy and solidarity. In November 1967 a short article thereby generating consternation and by Norbert Elias was published (in embarrassment among other people Support for this ethical standpoint can German) in the regular travel section present. But Garfinkel’s experiments be found in the writings of Adorno, of the German weekly journal Die were not widely known until after the specifically in his claim that while Zeit.1 It is entitled ‘Die Geschichte mit publication in 1967 of his book Stud- societies do not agree on the nature of den Schuhbändern’ (‘The story of the ies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood the good life, most can agree on certain shoe-laces’), and until recently it has Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967, espe- forms of the ‘bad’ society that should remained rather unknown – at least cially chapter 2, ‘Studies on the routine be resisted. They can also be found in in the sense that it has not been listed grounds of everyday activities’), after

4 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 which they were widely copied. But ‘Sociology and Psychiatry’; on a pri- ending in various situations in Spain, Elias’s little breaching experiments, vate trip to Paris (probably in spring France, England, Germany, and Swit- testing the reactions to his (at first acci- 1966); during a visiting professorship zerland. He strolled around in all these dentally and then deliberately) untied in Münster (autumn 1965 to January contexts with intentionally untied and and trailing shoe-laces, were conducted 1966); and on a semi-private journey trailing shoe-laces. The results of these in 1965–6, and in that sense they are to Switzerland (in the early autumn of purposefully conducted breaching ‘premature’! 1966) to negotiate the re-issue of ‘Über experiments are reported as follows: den Prozeß der Zivilisation’ by the Bern The context publisher Francke. (1) Spain: Torremolinos 1965 (upper After retiring as Reader at Leicester in village): In the mostly touristic con- 1962, and completing his subsequent On the text text of ‘upper’ Torremolinos the loose appointment as professor at the Uni- Elias starts his reflections on being a shoe-laces were sometimes noticed, versity of Ghana at Legon near Accra ‘sociologist on the move’ by emphasis- but never communicated, which he in the summer of 1964 – and around ing the inevitability for him of taking a explained by a predominantly anony- the same time having been awarded sociological point of view, in addition mous Gesellschaft context, brought the pension of the full Professor at to all the ‘merely’ touristic perspectives, about by a predominance of tourism. Frankfurt that he would probably have such as ‘indulging in beaches, muse- become had it not been for the rise ums, ruins, landscapes’ and so on. The (2) England: London 1965 (Regent of Hitler – Norbert Elias obviously additional perspective is provided by Street, Bond Street): Here Elias con- enjoyed his new emeritus existence his ‘sociological spectacles’: ‘I cannot ducted three experiments, all of which and spent a considerable amount of help it: I am fascinated by the people, lasted three hours. He got nine reac- his spare time travelling as more or their differences, their behaviour, their tions, mostly by older ‘citizens’, as less private tourist, or with ‘tourism’ way of life ...’. Norbert Elias notes: ‘In England mostly extensions of journeys to give lectures elderly gentlemen reacted by com- or participate in conferences. He con- The key experience took place in Tor- municating with me on the danger of tinued to travel and spent a consider- remolinos (probably in May or June stumbling and falling’. This might be able amount of time away from home 1965), when Norbert Elias strolled interpreted as an established ‘soci- until the last years of his life, including around the small original fishermen’s ety-context’, where the anonymity is holidays in Greece, Morocco, the Sey- village, wondering about the people’s overruled by engaged and experienced chelles, and East Africa. The rediscov- everyday life and world, and conceptu- citizens watching the public space. ered contribution to Die Zeit reflects ally applying an exclusive Gemein- these experiences as a leisure-time schaft model to their social life, dis- (3) France: Paris 1966 (Champs traveller and tourist – probably really tinguishing it from Tönnies’s model of Elyseés, Boulevard St Michel, relaxed travelling for the first time since ‘Gesellschaft’, and feeling more or less Montparnasse): Here Elias conducted he became a refugee in 1933. excluded from their community. three experiments of three hours, but with much less reaction. Only two In his paper, Hermann Korte gives Eventually he experienced signs includ- people communicated directly with valuable background information to this ing him as addressee of communication, him about the visible shoe-lace prob- mainly ‘touristic’ context. Korte trav- without – at the beginning – knowing lem, both sitting in street cafés on the elled with Norbert Elias to Greece – the the context: ‘I had the impression of Champs Elyseés, besides a youngster Mani peninsula in the Pelopponese – in women shouting after me. Then a little who shouted directly ‘prenez garde’ late autumn 1966, and there by accident girl approached me laughing, but hid (‘take care’) into his ear, much to the (in the small village of Gerolimena) her head, and was running back to her amusement of the young man’s group they met Wolfgang Boller, the then mother ... Finally I understood through of companions. As an explanation of editor of the travel section of Die Zeit. an older girl: she pointed to my shoes, this different reaction, perhaps a dif- After discussing travelling experiences where the left shoe-laces were untied ferent character of ‘public space’ in at a dinner they enjoyed together in a and trailing.’ France may be relevant: mere observa- harbour tavern, Norbert Elias agreed to tion in contrast with engagement and write an article on the theme ‘A travel- By retying the loose shoe-laces, Elias direct intervention. ling sociologist’, which was afterwards had the feeling of being included in completed in January 1967 (manuscript the village community – at least for a (4) Germany: for instance Münster version) and finally published Novem- moment, and based on the community 1965: Here the ‘society-context’ ber 1967. aspect of the everyday reality in the mentioned above was – according to village: people took notice and nodded Norbert Elias – watched and communi- In the published Die Zeit text, Elias approval of his rectifying something cated not by gentlemen, but mostly by therefore refers explicitly to mainly that had a disturbing appearance. women: ‘In Germany older men only touristic or spare-time experiences: looked at me somewhat contemptu- when on holiday in Spain (Torremo- After reflecting on this experience Nor- ously, whereas women reacted directly linos, in the spring of 1965); while in bert Elias started a series of breaching and tried to “clean up” the obvious dis- London in 1965 to give a lecture on experiments, beginning ad hoc, and order, on the tram as well as elsewhere.

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 5 Here in most cases a short conversa- [experimenting with shoe laces] needs those reflections in the wider organisa- tion, comprising more than the obvious more testing. It makes fun, but it could tional, psychological, sociological and “shoe-lace disorder” took place, such be improved to meet the challenges of philosophical literatures. It is in locat- as a short warning about what might a really up to date scientific method’ ing their reflections in the wider litera- happen if he didn’t take care of the (quoted by Korte). ture and in making sense of their own basic problem’. experience that students find the work The full German text of the Die Zeit of Elias to be of great importance. As (5) Switzerland: Bern 1966: Here Elias article can be found at http://hyperelias. Elias did, so do we take the view that experienced the most elaborate conver- jku.at/1967.htm#BM1967Ager1, and an there is no detached way of understand- sation about dangers related to untied English translation will be included in ing organisations from the position of shoe-laces, including admonitions Essays on Sociology and the Humani- the objective observer. Instead, organi- about dangers of eating grapes and ties, volume 16 of the Collected Works sations have to be understood from using trains. He explicitly states: ‘This of Elias (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008). something of a detached perspective, in was probably an exception, from which Notes terms of one’s own personal involve- no conclusion on a Swiss national char- 1. Norbert Elias, ‘Die Geschichte mit ment with others in the co-creation of acter can be drawn.’ den Schuhbändern - Soziologe auf the patterns of interaction that are the Reisen’, Die Zeit, 17 November 1967, organisation. Discussion p. 55. See http://hyperelias.jku.at/1967. The Die Zeit text is remarkable in four htm#BM1967Ager1. An English trans- The programme seeks to provoke respects: lation will be included in Essays on participants into critical reflection of Sociology and the Humanities, volume taken-for-granted views of what organi- (1) As an anticipation of what Garfinkel 16 of the Collected Works of Elias sations are and how they change. As was to call a ‘breaching experiment’, (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008). staff, we provide this provocation in the used to uncover underlying assumptions form of what some of us call the theory of everyday life. The breaching character 2. Michael Schröter, Bestandsaufnahme of complex responsive processes. From of Norbert Elias’s shoe-lace experiments der wissenschaftlichen Manuskripte this perspective, organisations are might be considered as rather low, but von Norbert Elias, Bochum 1985 thought of as patterns of interaction they are still among the very first exam- (Abschlussbericht zum 1. Arbeitsgang between people that are iterated as the ples in print of such an approach. des Forschungsprojektes ‘Vorberei- present. Instead of abstracting from the tung einer deutschsprachigen Edi- experience of human bodily interaction, (2) As a contribution to and illustration tion zentraler Arbeiten von Norbert which is what we do when we posit of the classical ‘community vs. society’ Elias’, durchgeführt mit Unterstützung that individuals create a system in their problem as defined by Ferdinand Tön- der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung unter der interaction, the perspective of com- nies. Elias enlarges the classical dichot- Leitung von Hermann Korte an der plex responsive processes stays with omy by hinting at public spaces, which Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaft der the experience of interaction which can be defined as either community Ruhr-Universität Bochum). produces nothing but further interac- or society, according to participating tion. This position clearly reflects the groups and individuals. thought of Elias in that we are moving THE IMPACT OF ELIAS’S from thinking in terms of the spatial (3) As puzzle-piece leading up to his WORK ON ORGANISA- metaphor of systems to a temporal important 1974 essay ‘Towards a TIONAL RESEARCH AND processes way of thinking, where the Theory of Communities’, in Colin Bell MANAGEMENT DEVELOP- temporal processes are those of human and Howard Newby (eds): The Sociol- MENT relating. Organisations are then under- ogy of Community (London: Frank stood as the simultaneously coopera- Cass, 1974, pp. ix-xli), emphasising Ralph Stacey tive–consensual and conflictual–com- the varying community-character of University of Hertfordshire petitive processes of relating between social spaces, measured by the respec- people. It is through these ordinary, tive reaction within the social space to The Complexity and Management everyday processes of relating that a (mildly) breaching experiment and Centre at the Business School of the people in organisations cope with the intervention. University of Hertfordshire has been complexity and uncertainty of organisa- conducting a research programme tional life. As they do so, they perpetu- (4) As methodological reflection on on organisational change since 2000. ally construct their future together as qualitative approaches to reality. In This programme leads to the degrees the present. the manuscript version Norbert Elias of either Master of Arts by research or writes: ‘The results of my inquiry are Doctor of Management. It is necessar- Complex responsive processes of relat- not really conclusive. Maybe the social ily a part-time programme because the ing can be understood as acts of com- world cannot be divided so sharply into research method is a basically reflexive munication, relations of power, and the communities and societies as assumed one that requires students to reflect rig- interplay between people’s choices aris- according to the needs of “orderly orously on their own current experience ing in acts of evaluation. people”. In addition, my method of their work in organisations, locating

6 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 Acts of communication gestures of society to oneself. Self is ogy and every act of negating an ideol- this emergent ‘I–me’ dialectic so that ogy immediately leads to another one. It is because human agents are con- each self is socially formed while at the Ideology is thus not abstracted from scious and self-conscious that they are same time interacting selves are form- experience, understood as direct inter- able to cooperate and reach consensus, ing the social. Communication, then, is action between bodies, and it is not, while at the same time they conflict and not simply the sending of a signal to be therefore, located in some ‘whole’ that compete with each other, in the highly received by another, but rather complex actually exists outside of experience. sophisticated ways in which they do. social, that is, responsive, processes of Norms (morals, the right, the ‘ought’) Drawing on the work of the American self formation in which meaning and are evaluative criteria taking the form pragmatist, George Herbert Mead, one the society-wide patterns emerge. This of obligatory restrictions which have can understand consciousness – that view has strong resonance with Elias’s emerged as generalisations and become is, ‘mind’ –as arising in communica- claim that society emerged in the ongo- habitual in a history of social interac- tive interaction between human bodies. ing interplay of many, many intentions. tion. We are all socialised to take up Humans have evolved central nervous Relations of power the norms of the particular groups and systems such that when one gestures the society to which we belong and to another, particularly in the form of Drawing on the work of Elias, one this restricts what we can do as we par- vocal gesture or language, one evokes understands how the processes of ticularise the generalised norms in our in one’s own body responses to one’s communicative interacting constitute moment by moment specific action situ- gesture that are similar to those evoked relations of power. Elias showed how ations. Elias’s work shows in detail how in other bodies. In other words, in their such power relationships form figura- norms constitute major aspects of the acting, humans take the attitude, the tions, or groupings, in which some are personality structures, or identities, of tendency to act, of the other and it is included and others are excluded and interdependent people. Values (ethics, because they have this capacity that where the power balance is tilted in the ‘good’) are individually-felt volun- humans can know what they are doing. favour of some groupings and against tary compulsions to choose one desire, It immediately follows that conscious- others. These groupings establish pow- action, or norm rather than another. Fol- ness (knowing, mind) is a social proc- erful feelings of belonging which con- lowing Dewey, we understand values to ess in which meaning emerges in the stitute each individual’s ‘we’ identity. arise in social processes of self forma- social act of gesture-response, where These ‘we’ identities, derived from the tion, which give meaning to life, open- the gesture can never be separated from groups we belong to, are inseparable ing up opportunities for action. Mead the response. Meaning does not lie in from each of our ‘I’ identities. As with describes these as cult values, which the gesture, the word, alone but in the Mead, then, we can see that processes need to be functionalised in particular gesture taken together with the response of human relating form and are formed contingent situations and this inevitably to it as one social act. by individual and collective identities, involves conflict. Together the volun- which inevitably reflect complex pat- tary compulsion of value and the oblig- Furthermore, in communicating with terns of power relating. This provides atory restriction of norms constitute each other as the basis of everything an insightful way of understanding ideology. Ideology is the basis on which they do, people do not simply take what happens in activities of mergers people choose desires and actions and the attitude of the specific others with and acquisitions which threaten the it unconsciously sustains power rela- whom they are relating. Humans have very identities of people and so raise tions by making a particular figuration the capacity for generalising so that great anxiety and resistance. of power feel natural. We can see, then, when they act they always take up that complex responsive processes of the attitude of what Mead called the Choices arising in acts of evaluation human relating form and are formed by generalised other. In other words, they values, norms and ideologies as integral always take the attitude of the group or In their communicative interacting and aspects of self/identity formation in its society to their actions – they are con- power relating, humans are always simultaneously individual and collec- cerned about what others might think making choices between one action tive form. of what they do or say. This is often and another. The choices may be made unconscious and it is, of course, a pow- on the basis of conscious desires and The consequences of taking a complex erful form of social control. According intentions, or unconscious desires and responsive processes perspective to Mead, self-consciousness is also a choices, for example, those that are social process involving the capacity habitual, impulsive, obsessive, com- Thinking in this way has two important humans have to take themselves as an pulsive, compelling or inspiring. In consequences. object of subjective reflection. This is other words, human action is always a social process because the subject, evaluative, sometimes consciously First, no one can step outside of their ‘I’, can only ever contemplate itself as and at other times unconsciously. The interaction with others. In mainstream an object, ‘me’, which is one’s percep- criteria for evaluating these choices are thinking, an organisation is thought of tion of the attitude of society towards values and norms, together constituting a system at a level above the individu- oneself. The ‘I’ is the often spontaneous ideology. We are thus using the notion als who form it. It is recognised that and imaginative response of the socially of ideology in the sense of Elias who this organisational system is affected formed individual to the ‘me’ as the argued that we always act on an ideol- by patterns of power and economic

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 7 relations in the wider society and these come of their gestures will frequently aged participants on our program to are normally thought of as forces, produce surprising outcomes. Global explore a number of areas of work in over and above the organisation and patterns emerge in local interaction, in organisations, as indicated by the fol- its individual members, which shape a self organising manner, in the absence lowing examples of successful theses: local forms of experience. Individuals of any plan or blueprint for that global and the social are posited at different pattern. It follows that one can only Executive Coaching as the Differentiat- levels and causal powers are ascribed really understand an organisation from ing Patterning of Power to that social level. In the kind of pro- within the local interaction in which The Leader: An emergent, participative cess terms I am trying to use, there are global tendencies to act are taken up. role no forces over and above individuals. This means that the insights and find- The Practical Side of Complexity: All we have are vast numbers of con- ings of the research must arise in the Implications for leaders tinually iterated interactions between researcher’s reflection on the micro Developing Leadership: Learning what human bodies and these are local in the detail of his or her own experience of cannot be taught sense that each of us can only interact interaction with others. It follows that Reconciling Local Initiative with with a limited number of others. It is in the research method is ‘subjective’ or, National Policy in Teacher Professional the vast number of local (in this specific rather, a paradox of detached involve- Development technical sense) interactions that wide- ment. The term involvement refers to Spontaneity and Power: Theatre spread, global patterns of power and the inevitable emotion that is aroused improvisation in processes of change in economic relations emerge. The wide- in the experience of interacting with organisations spread patterns emerge as repetition and others in order to accomplish some National Healthcare Strategy and the potential transformation at the same joint task. It is impossible for any of us Management of Risk in a National time. We can then get highly repetitive to completely avoid every form of emo- Health Services Trust patterns iterated over long time periods. tional engagement but quite possible Organisation Development and Power The general comments we make about that heightened anxiety, in conditions Relations in an NHS Trust such patterns refer to what is emerging of not knowing, will submerge us in Leadership Power and Ethics in the rather than to any force over and above highly emotional, or ‘involved’, think- Educational Sector those in whose interaction it is emerg- ing which could take ‘magico-mythical’ The Experience of Power, Blame and ing. In their local interaction people forms. Clearly, such thinking cannot Responsibility in the Health Sector will always be particularising, taking up qualify as research. However, if we can The Relevance of Theatre and Improvi- these generalisations in their local inter- never completely avoid involvement, sation to Consulting for Organisational actions, and they may not be aware of then it follows – as Elias claimed – that Change doing so. No one can step outside inter- it is impossible for any of us to achieve action to design that interaction, and fully detached thinking about the action Ralph Stacey is Professor of Manage- from this perspective it does not make of engaging with others. In relation to ment and Director of the Complexity sense to think of leaders setting direc- human action, then, the approach and and Management Centre at the Busi- tions or designing widespread patterns thinking called for is paradoxically ness School of the University of Hert- of interaction which they can then real- detached and involved at the same time. fordshire, Hatfield, UK. ise. When leaders set directions or for- mulate organisational designs, they are Research, from this perspective, is not in effect articulating what Mead means an activity which is separate from prac- REVIEW ESSAYS by the generalised other and cult values. tice because the reflective practitioner is, What happens as a result of doing this on the view so far presented, inevitably Norbert Elias, The Genesis of the depends upon how people take such also a researcher: both are engaged in Naval Profession, edited and with an generalisations and cult values up in reflecting upon their own experience. It introduction by René Moelker and their local interaction with each other. follows that research is closely linked Stephen Mennell. Dublin: UCD Press, to the iteration and possible transforma- 2007. xii + 172 pp. ISBN: 1904558801 Second, there is no overall programme, tion of identity. This is because identity (hb). £40.00 / €50.00. design, blueprint or plan for the is the answer to the questions: Who am organisation as a ‘whole’. Designs, I? Who are we? What am I doing? What In the Elias archives at Marbach, René programmes, blueprints and plans exist are we doing? What is going on? How Moelker discovered a note by Elias, only insofar as people are taking them do we now go on together? Effective written many years ago, listing a pos- up in their local interactions. Any state- research is potentially transformative of sible seven chapters of a book about ments that the most powerful make identity and is therefore bound to expose the origins of the profession of naval about organisational designs, visions vulnerability and raise existential anxiety officer and its wider relationship espe- and values are understood as gestures with all the emotion this brings with it. cially to English society. The Genesis calling forth responses from many, of the Naval Profession – a new book many people in their local interactions. The response of the students by Elias! – is the nearest approximation The most powerful can chose their own that can now be made to creating the gestures but will be unable to choose The perspective outlined above, with book that Elias might have written. It the responses of others, so that the out- the clear influence of Elias, has encour- contains five, not seven, chapters:

8 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 1. Gentlemen and Tarpaulins – the who in the 1970s worked on the devel- stage play) of Drake and Doughty, we essay by Elias published in the British opment of the professions (psychother- come to realise Elias’s complementary Journal of Sociology, 1950. apy in my case) and took their cue from strategy: interpreting the microsocio- 2. Tensions and Conflicts, part of which Elias’s work on the subject. But the logical episode by locating it in the consists of a different version of the master who is at work in these pages macrosociological process of a com- essay ‘Drake and Doughty’ published was unmistakably a grandmaster. At petition between classes in Britain and in Dutch translation in De Gids in 1977, first sight it seems that these are histori- of rivalry between nations, Britain and together with passages from unpub- cal studies, mostly documented pains- Spain in this case. lished typescripts. takingly, written with much subtlety 3. The Development of the Midshipman and argued with panache. But even In other words, we must describe the – hitherto unpublished. though these essays can hold their own ‘Eliassche Methode’ – and I am sure 4. Achieving Maritime Supremacy as historical contributions, there can Elias would agree – as: ‘to reveal macro – hitherto unpublished. be no doubt that they are at the same structures by investigating micro struc- 5. Three hitherto unpublished frag- time exemplary and intended to be so, tures and interpreting micro structures ments: ‘The Growing Costs of the to be paradigmatic to use a more recent by locating them in the encompassing Naval Establishment: Elizabeth and expression, for the Eliasian approach to macro structures; and this in a perpetual Cromwell Compared’; ‘On Institu- historical – or if you wish ‘figurational’, to and fro’. tions’; ‘The Last Act: Elias’s Scenario or if you wish ‘processual’ – sociology. for a Play about Drake and Doughty’ I would call this brand of sociology, But that sure isn’t easy. It requires vast with a dig at our Dutch rational-choice erudition across many quite divergent The book was launched at the Kat- rivals, ‘verklarende sociologie’, or fields of knowledge. It also demands tenburg naval base in Amsterdam, on ‘explanatory sociology’. The author a sure and detailed grasp of the par- 23 April 2007. The event was chaired does not hide this programmatic inten- ticular subject-matter. And even then, by René Moelker, and the speakers tion when in many asides he provides one needs an intuitive sense for what comments on the subject matter under particular fact and which major devel- discussion that are of a much broader opment to connect at any given point in theoretical scope. the argument. In this little book we can see the grandmaster at work. The same tendency also becomes manifest in a little private note that the Maybe the best proof that a text is truly editors unearthed from the archived excellent is when the reader puts the papers. It was surely not meant for a book down and follows his own line of wider audience and therefore reveals thought inspired by his reading. Thus something of Elias’s intimate ambi- my thoughts wandered to one of those tions. The heading reads: ‘Die Eliassche late late night TV movies in which a Methode’. You don’t speak like that in submarine goes on a special mission. public – you leave that to your follow- The young captain, quite handsome in were his co-editor Stephen Mennell, ers if you have any. And Elias would his impeccable uniform, straight from the historian Dr Gijs Rommelse of the be the last to do so. But as the editors the naval academy, goes by the book, Netherlands Institute of Military His- rightly observe, this note contains a dead set at accomplishing the task tory in Den Haag, and Professor Abram key phrase, which they quote on p. 18: entrusted to him by the lords of the de Swaan. After the speeches, Stephen ‘Makrostrukturen durch die Untersu- Admiralty. The boatswain cautions him: Mennell presented a copy of the book chung von Mikrostrukturen sichtbar zu the ship and its crew are headed for cer- to the Inspector-General of the Neth- machen’ [in the editors’ translation: ‘to tain destruction. But the captain cannot erlands Armed Forces, Vice-Admiral reveal macro structures by researching be dissuaded. In the ensuing claustro- Michiel Van Maanen. – or maybe rather ‘investigating’ (AdS) phobic, hydrophobic disaster, there is In his speech, Bram de Swaan said: – micro structures]. And the editors in mutiny and finally the boatswain, invar- their excellent and most illuminating iably aided by one black sailor and one A more fitting environment than the Introduction go on to point out that Hungarian immigrant telegraph opera- naval base cannot be found for today’s these studies in the genesis of the naval tor, saves, if not the ship, at least a good joyous celebration. We have before profession are in fact investigations part of the crew, while at the very last us a most carefully and tastefully pro- into the civilising processes that made moment the enemy warship goes down duced book, The Genesis of the Naval Britain into an empire, and this in a in flames and waves. Hurray … for Profession, composed of dispersed and comparative vein, including also brief Norbert Elias. The tensions he depicted mostly unpublished writings by Norbert studies of the French and Spanish, and have lasted to the present day, a least in Elias. The two essays that had indeed even the Dutch constellation. Hollywood productions. appeared at earlier dates, in the BJS in 1950 (57 years ago) and in De Gids in But when we read the tale (and in But once we get the idea, we can apply 1977 (30 years ago) were familiar to fact, it is told as a tale and even used the Eliassche method to many other me. I was one of the many sociologists for the first outline of a scenario for a figurations. Remember Tom Wolfe,

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 9 when he was still the genius reporter what he did indeed call ‘mechanisms’. of The Right Stuff (New York: Farrar, The most famous case in point is, of Straus and Giroux, 1979), his big book course, ‘the monopoly mechanism’ in on American space explorations. There, the second part of The Civilising Proc- the overriding conflict was between ess (2000 edn, pp. 268–77). But in those crazy, daredevil jet pilots, sea- this study of The Genesis of the Naval soned by the combat experience of Profession Elias identifies several such many campaigns, who were selected ‘mechanisms’, for example on page 116 to fly the first space shuttles, and who where he describes ‘another of these were set against the cold, calculat- elementary screw mechanisms which ing engineers who wanted computers play such an important part in every rather than humans to control these first historical development’. First of all, flights. Today’s astronauts are fully cer- note the engineer’s tendency to apply tified scientists with a thorough training an effective tool (a screw movement) in as jet pilots, who in emergency situa- all sorts of different machines: ‘every tions are now expected to take over the kind of historical development’. In a automated controls. This was predicted, later version of this early draft Elias or rather retrodicted, by a 50-year-old might have wanted to replace the word study about seafaring Englishmen four ‘screw’ by ‘ratchet’. The core idea centuries ago. Elias did get his stuff is that conditions in one sector must right. Wolfe’s Chuck Yeager is Elias’s advance to a certain level for conditions environment and what could not be said Francis Drake. Clearly, Wolfe and Elias in another sector to move ahead, and under the circumstances. know a good story when they see it. vice versa: Elias is talking about the hither and thither in the expansion of The parts of Elias’s study on the naval But a similar analysis, admittedly the commercial and the naval fleet (and profession that have now been pub- with a little less drama, just a patient’s I quote): ‘Each move forward from the lished are completely silent on one death, suicide or murder case here or one side had to be followed, sooner or theme that was most germane to those there, could be told about the struggle later, by a move from the other; and if isolated seafaring societies and para- between medically trained psychiatrists one branch moved too far ahead of the mount in his own life: homosexuality. and therapists formed in the humani- other, in the long run it was bound to These were after all companies of boys ties over the treatment of patients in fail.’ Listen to the words: ‘it had to be and men, males only, tightly packed mental asylums. And what about the followed …’ And: ‘it was bound to fail together in cramped quarters without confrontation between prestigious …’ We’re talking machinery here. And any access to female companion- surgeons or oncologists in the cancer there is much more of that in this little ship, sometimes for many months at a ward and this little crew of researchers book and in Elias’s oeuvre as a whole. stretch. Young boys, often no more than from the human sciences who set out to nine or ten years of age, mingled inti- investigate the mental care for cancer ‘Mechanisms’ such as these can also mately with adult men in their prime. patients? I am talking about a project be described in formal terms. But Elias The theme of homosexuality among on a cancer ward in which I participated would not have it. When I once pro- soldiers and sailors has now been much long ago. The research team lost, and posed that to him, he reacted somewhat studied and is even a topic à la mode. In their report is – after 30 years – still glumly: ‘What would that add to it?’ At the England of the 1950s, for a German suppressed. They could have known the time, I was taken aback and left it at Jewish immigrant without a reputation what was coming to them if they had that. But now I would have answered: it and without much of a job, for Norbert read their Elias more closely. At least would have connected your ideas with Elias, that was very different. Maybe, they were not summarily executed as other schools of sociology and with just maybe, this void, this absent theme, Doughty was. other disciplines in the human and natu- explains why so little of the study was ral sciences. published and so late. Closing the book, Allow me a few unconnected final mus- and looking at its cover, I contemplate ings. Having laid the book aside and musing the splendid portrait of the handsome, on its contents, watching its beautiful young cadet, a boy still, and I face the Although Elias is invariably read as a cover, there is an afterthought. I am ‘return of the repressed’. humanist scholar with a literary bent reminded of Leo Strauss (Persecution and a penchant for the grand, all- and the art of writing, Chicago: Uni- encompassing panorama, he was in versity of Chicago Press, 1952), a con- Jack Goody, The Theft of History. fact also a mechanic of sorts, always temporary of Elias who lived through Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, looking for the mechanisms that many of the same vicissitudes, without 2006. x + 342 pp. ISBN 978-0-521- made history tick, like a watchmaker ever being a kindred spirit, and who 87069-6 (hb); 978-0-521-69105-5 (pb) patiently reconstructing clockwork. encouraged us to interpret the thinkers Loathing a mechanistic view of events, of the past while keeping in mind what According to summary on the back he himself identified and reconstructed had to be said in their times and social cover of this book, The Theft of History

10 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 builds on the author’s previous work to For Goody, the idea that the West ‘wins 71). Goody was also ‘unhappy at this extend his critique of what he sees as out’ (p. 154) in written histories is a notion of “fieldwork” (driving out to a the Eurocentric or occidentalist biases prime example of ethnocentrism, and village with chauffeur and students) and of much of western historical writing, eurocentrism in particular. ‘The more at what I [Goody] saw as the non-com- and the consequent ‘theft’ by the West extravagant ethnocentric claims involve parative, eurocentred kind of sociology of the achievements of other cultures. not only presenting contemporary or he [Elias] practised’ (ibid.). recent advantage as virtually perma- The doyen of British social anthro- nent, but interpreting that advantage pology, Sir Jack Goody, first set out in terms of the evolving aspects of For these reasons, the task of reviewing his critique of Elias at the conference European society alone, at least since the adequacy of the text in its entirety is ‘Sommes-nous civilisés? – bilan du the sixteenth century and often long made more difficult, not least because XXe siècle’ held in Paris in April 1998 before’ (p. 154). For him, The Civilis- of Goody’s central assumption that the (see Figurations 10), and restated them ing Process is one example of this very title refers to the take-over of history two years later at the conference in problem because of the limitations and by the West. Therefore, he sets out Metz on ‘Norbert Elias and Anthropol- self-congratulatory nature of Elias’s from the outset to right what he regards ogy’ (see Figurations 14). From these approach to human cultures generally, as a ‘wrong’, that is, to turn our sup- presentations were derived several particularly those cultures at a lower posed Eurocentric historical perspec- publications: the Metz paper is to be level of civilisation. It is here that the tive (particularly European versions of found (in French translation) in Sophie origins of Goody’s criticisms lie – the time, largely Christian) on its head. He Chevalier and Jean-Marie Privat, eds, concept of civilisation has a moral concludes the book by reiterating that Norbert Elias et l’anthropologie: undertone for him – and the fact that his ‘special problem has been with the ‘Nous sommes tous si étranges …’ Elias concentrates primarily on Euro- attempts at periodisation that historians (see Figurations 23), and variations on pean variants of the civilising process have made, dividing historical time the argument appear in ‘Elias and the becomes ‘the rod with which to beat the into Antiquity, Feudalism, the Renais- anthropological tradition’, Anthropo- back’ of Elias (and other figurational sance followed by Capitalism … Here logical Theory, 2, 2002: 401–12 and sociologists) because Goody insists on the question of imposing concepts has ‘The “Civilising Process” in Ghana’, understanding Elias’s ‘endeavours in very different, teleological, implica- Archives européennes de sociologie 44 a totally different, evaluative, frame tions’ (2006: 286). Goody proposes ‘an (1) 2003: 61–73. of reference’ (p. 156). One conse- anthropo-archaeological approach to quence of this, for example, is Goody’s modern history’ to replace the domi- Here we are particularly concerned misrepresentation of Elias’s ideas nation of European ideas in accounts with chapter 6 of Goody’s new book, on state formation and pacification; of the world’s history – ‘there was a entitled ‘The theft of “civilisation”: Goody sets out, quite unnecessarily, strong element of teleology behind the Elias and Absolutist Europe’, in which to demonstrate that ‘there is nothing European claim that its tradition dis- he reiterates his earlier criticisms of particularly European about this notion tinguished itself in earlier times when Elias’s work. For a younger academic of the role of the state’ (p. 164). This its subsequent superiority was seen such as me, who is beginning to grapple is to miss the point about pacification as having its origin (p. 287) – yet his with the intellectual depth and scope of entirely. Similarly, Goody points to response to those scholars (like Elias), Elias’s work, it is frustrating on one level the impossibility of reconciling Elias’s who, in his view, appear to have fallen – though not at all surprising on another ‘Whiggish approach’ (p. 165) with the foul of the search for the singularity of – that Goody appears not to engage with emergence of Nazism and the ensuing early Europe, is but to express a prefer- any of the responses by figurational soci- Jewish Holocaust. One of the reasons ence for ‘more regular evolutionary ologists such as Mennell, Goudsblom, for this irreconcilable notion is that, change rather than for a sudden revolu- and especially Dunning (whose essay according to Goody, Elias was intent on tion of a putative kind’ (p. 297) and not ‘Some comments on Jack Goody’s “Elias ‘imposing a pseudo-historical, pseudo- to abrogate ‘critical parts of the devel- and the anthropological tradition”’, was psychological, pseudo-philosophical opmental process to the west’. printed immediately after Goody’s in the concept of Naturvolk on what he saw’ same issue of Anthropological Theory (p. 179). The inaccuracy of this inter- It is confusing, then, that Goody (2 (4) 2002: 413−20 – though Goody pretation of Elias’s work notwithstand- espouses the necessity of a sociological does not cite it) to his earlier critiques of ing, it would also be appropriate to ask grid without predetermined categories Elias’s work. Similarly, it appears that whether Goody is intent on imposing a of the kind Antiquity, capitalism, feu- much of what he has to say in his latest pseudo-philosophical notion of civilisa- dalism and so on, when Elias himself work reiterates others’ criticisms of Eli- tion through his own work. Certainly, has sought, using a detour via detach- as’s ideas (for example, Anton Blok’s Goody’s personal recollections of Elias ment, to understand the very social remarks in Elias’s presence at a confe- reveal as much about Goody as they do, processes at the centre of complex rence in Amsterdam in 1981, discussed in part, of Elias – ‘I found the idea that developments on the continent of in Mennell, Norbert Elias, pp. 228–34). one could gain any profound insight Europe. Thus, while he claims that his All that being said, it is worth summa- from a casual collection of African book is not so much about world his- rising briefly the thrust of his argument “art” from itinerant traders to be highly tory per se but rather about the ways in The Theft of History. questionable’ (Goody, 2006: 178, n. that European scholars have perceived

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 11 it, the problem for him has been in brings together in a systematic way the sociology of knowledge and the sci- trying to comprehend and explain the whole perspective of the sociologist. ences, What is sociology?, The Symbol comparatively detached analysis of This broad and profound work is an Theory and The Society of Individu- the concept of civilisation provided by unprecedented attempt to reactivate the als – to explore the processual nature Elias. reception of Elias’s approach in Spain. of social reality and the unintended This is, in my opinion, the greatest consequences of action, Elias’s notion Katie Liston achievement of this book; in addition, of homines aperti in opposition to the University of Chester it contains useful reviews of almost classical view of homo clausus, and all Elias’s works, and also provides a also to demonstrate the conceptual and Alejandro N. García Martínez, El didactic exposé of the author’s entire methodological support for figurational proceso de la civilización en la soci- theory. For this reason, it is a valuable sociology. This section also provides an ología de Norbert Elias. Pamplona: source to recommend to undergradu- illustrative chapter dedicated to knowl- Eunsa, Colección Filosófica nº 192, ate students undertaking a sociological edge as a sociological category, in 2006, 410 pp. ISBN: 84-313-2372-8. theory course, to scholars who want which the author provides a deep recon- to prepare a new course on Elias’s struction on Elias’s sociology of knowl- Although Norbert Elias is already well- theory, or even to someone who simply edge. At the end of this second part, known within Spanish academia and wants to revise knowledge of his work. Garcia Martínez also includes a brief his theory of civilising processes and Written in brilliant Spanish, with a overview of books like Time: an Essay, figurational approach to sociology are clear vocabulary and well-structured The Established and the Outsiders and likely to make an occasional appear- sentences, García Martínez’s book Quest for Excitement, completing the ance in some journal or book chapter, a provides an illustrative and comprehen- wide spectrum of Elias’s writings. strong and solid line of Eliasian thought sive systematisation of Elias’s work. is markedly absent. Elias’s status within The bibliography used and quoted is The last section of the book introduces Spanish sociological academia is still also extremely complete since García a critical reflection on the strengths and somewhat unstable when compared to Martínez ‘writes through Elias’, which weaknesses of the civilisation process other classics within the discipline. This means that he follows, step by step, theory. In particular, García Martínez is despite the fact that Elias’s works the principal ideas and arguments con- brings together the principal critiques have been translated into Spanish since tained in Elias’s books. On the other and counter-critiques lately addressed 1982, and despite a special issue of the hand, this work also presents an excel- to Elias’s work: questions about the Revista Española de Investigaciones lent compilation of the major critiques universality of the civilising process Sociológicas having been dedicated and debates – both Spanish and inter- theory and the debate between those to his work in 1994. More recently, in national – surrounding Elias’s perspec- who subscribe to it (Mennell, doctoral research, a clear attempt has tives, which makes the book extremely Goudsblom) and those who argue the been made to develop Elias’s theory. useful when pursuing a theoretical path difficulty of applying the theory to One example is the work carried out to follow further developments in the non-European societies (Arnason, van by Fernando Ampudia de Haro who civilisation process theory. Velzen, Rasing, Jagers); the discussion applied civilising process theory to the of civilising and de-civilising pro- Spanish situation – in The Civilisation The book is structured in three main cesses (Dunning, Mennell, Szakolczai, of Behaviour: Civility and Good Man- sections. In the first section, which is Krieken, Wacquant, Zwaan, Fletcher, ners in Spain since the Middle Ages clearly devoted to Elias’s principal Van den Bergh); and the theory of to the present (PhD thesis in press). works – The Court Society, The Civilis- informalisation (Wouters, Brink- Another example is Raúl Sanchez Garcia ing Process and The Germans – García greve, Korzec, Kapteyn, De Swaan). who analysed the way combat sports Martínez tries to rebuild a general This review also includes remarks contribute to the study of institutional- description of the civilising process about some of the historiographical ised violence, in Cultural Paradigm and theory as a whole. This section contains criticisms by some scholars on the way violence in Spanish society: the case of a detailed review of these three books, Elias thought about (1) power relations combat sports in the autonomous com- setting out clearly the conceptual between monarchy and court society (J. munity of Madrid (unpublished PhD framework of the civilisation/de-civili- Duindam, G. Barraclough) and court thesis, 2006). These contributions are sation processes as it has been shaped society and bourgeoisie (D. Gordon, some of the few to promote and revital- among sociologists today. E. Le Roy Ladurie); (2) the criticism ise the active reception of Norbert Elias’s of Hans-Peter Duerr about the myth of sociological perspective. In the second section, García Mar- civilised society when considering some tínez tries to systematise the so-called other non-occidental cultures which Thus any overall attempt to advocate figurational sociology, raising some also possess a certain kind of ‘civilisa- Elias’s ideas in Spain is extremely fundamental questions about the onto- tion’ level; and also, finally, (3) a short welcome. García Martínez’s book El logical and anthropological view that exposé of Derek Layder’s revision of proceso de la civilización en la soci- implicitly or explicitly underlies Elias’s figurational sociology and his arguments ología de Norbert Elias (The civilisa- work. Once again, García Martínez to highlight its theoretical fragility when tion process in the sociology of Norbert uses Elias’s own works – Involvement compared to some other attempts at indi- Elias) fills the absence of a text that and Detachment, the essays on the vidual–society integration.

12 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 This last systematisation has the par- Weber and Mead. It may be said to be To conclude, this is a very good treat- ticular advantage of bringing into the García Martínez’s personal perspec- ment written in Spanish of Norbert Spanish academic literature some of the tive (or, in his words, ‘shy attempt’) to Elias’s theory of civilising processes. relevant critiques addressed to Elias’s develop the theoretical contribution of Although the book does not add much work. At a certain level, García Mar- Norbert Elias. According to the Spanish to the ‘Elias agenda’, since it pre- tínez sets up the actual debate traced by author, there are three points that can be dominantly describes and illustrates Elias’s followers and Elias’s detractors compared whenever one regards Elias’s the author’s sociological approach, it about the main arguments that involve civilising theory in relation to those nonetheless represents a complete and the most significant contemporary lines classics of sociological thought: (1) wide interpretation that can be used by of research. This is especially important changes in the social habitus towards a Spanish public. It is possible – one since it provides for Spanish academia greater self-regulation of behaviour and hopes – that this work will not only a good picture of the present state of emotional management; (2) changes in increase knowledge of Elias within the ‘Eliasian question’. the social structure illustrated by the Spanish academia, but also will moti- functional division of labour and the vate future theoretical and empirical Finally, at the end of the last section, expanding and strengthening of interde- research using Elias’s theory. García Martínez tries to go a step fur- pendent networks; and (3) the interac- ther and makes a comparison between tion between action and structure, lead- Sofia Gaspar Elias’s civilising process and some of ing to the relation between intentional Universidad Complutense de Madrid the ideas shared by other classic soci- action and the crystallisation of social ologists such as Simmel, Durkheim, structures.

RECENT BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Stephen Cock, Swimming and Bathing early twentieth century. The research thesis, as noted above, the author was in the Civilising Process, unpublished method utilised was that of documen- awarded the first University of Chester MSc thesis, University of Chester, 2007 tary analysis. Relevant documents were Norbert Elias Prize.] sought from: the British Library and There was evidence, within existing website; the public libraries in Harro- Robert van Krieken, ‘The ethics of literature, which suggested that the atti- gate and Blackpool; The Times Digital corporate legal personality’, pp. 77–96 tudes and behaviour of people regard- Archive. These documents (including in Stewart Clegg and Carl Rhodes ing swimming and bathing may have books, poems, swimming treatises, pic- (eds), Management Ethics: Contem- changed during the period between the tures, manuscript illustrations and both porary Contexts. London: Routledge, Middle Ages and the early twentieth local and national newspaper articles) 2006. century. However, research regarding were analysed in a processual manner, retrospective analyses of swimming across the entire period of investiga- Robert van Krieken begins this chapter and bathing was, and arguably still is, tion. The research findings supported by quoting some of the more realist predominantly atheoretical and, in par- the contention that, over time, there had contributors to ethical debate, notably ticular, lacking in sociological analysis. been changes in the behaviour of indi- Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber. What The sociological problem within this viduals, regarding swimming and bath- characterised both of these thinkers research was, therefore, to investigate ing, which appeared to have occurred in was a keen concern with the applica- from a figurational sociological per- a civilising direction. It was argued that tion of ethics to practice in troubled spective whether Elias’s theory of the Elias’s theory of the civilising process times. Indeed, from a business ethics civilising process could provide an could be used to provide a theoretical point of view almost all times appear adequate theoretical explanation for the sociological explanation, in terms of troubled because a concern with ethics changing attitudes and habits of indi- complex figurational processes, for the is rarely characterised by an absence of viduals, regarding swimming and bath- behavioural changes that were apparent trouble. It is often when situations are ing, from the late Middle Ages to the within the research findings. [For this constituted as ‘problems’ that manag-

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 13 ers reach for ethical accounts. As Van in the context of the recent cases of cor- policy concern, social science lacks Krieken puts it, it is when ‘we become porate corruption such as Enron, Van basic information on such events. This concerned with contradictions or con- Krieken concludes that contemporary article explores one aspect of such flicts between managerial conduct management ethics may well be a test- everyday incivility – how people react and widely-shared ethical principles, ing ground for the character of contem- emotionally and behaviourally to the [that] it is important to see that there porary civil society itself. If that is the badly behaved stranger. Mainstream are two ways of approaching such con- case, then the prognosis is apparently criminology, as well as the social theory flicts’. These two ways are described not good. of Goffman and Bauman, is oriented as ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ respectively; the around a fear/avoidance vision. This former is something not too dissimilar Andrew Linklater, ‘Torture and Civi- dominant paradigm is unnecessarily to the framework that Ibarra-Colada lisation’, International Relations, 21 (1) restrictive on intellectual inquiry. A prepared, which looks at ethics against 2007: 111–18. raft of other options including anger/ the backdrop of a whole civilisation. By intervention; disgust/aversion and indif- contrast, thin accounts focus on mat- Abstract: The global anti-torture norm ference/do-nothing are analytically ters of organisational design, abstracted has been one of the main examples of reconstructed from the classical social from the thick context and from the a global civilising process. It reflects theory of Durkheim, Elias and Simmel. motives of the managers who run them; modern sensibilities to cruelty and These various models are applied to they stress the normative character of excessive force which were highlighted incidents coded from the transcripts the organisation as a whole, rather than in Norbert Elias’s account of the ‘civi- of the Melbourne Everyday Incivility those of managers as individuals. lising process’. The idea of defending Project. The results show that emo- civilisation has also been used to tions and behaviours tend to pair up as But there is an internal contradiction defend torture in the war against terror. predicted. Fear/avoidance, however, that cuts across both the ‘thin’ and Exceptional methods are needed, it has is a relatively uncommon response to the ‘thick’ dimensions of managerial been argued, to protect civilised ways incivil encounters. Anger/intervention ethics, which is seen in the tensions of life. Notions of constitutional or and indifference/do-nothing are more between explicit normative standards ‘civilised torture’ have been introduced frequent. The former is especially asso- and implicitly constituted practical to try to harmonise these competing ciated with events where the respondent forms of behaviour. This is the problem views. They have been employed in is a ‘victim’, and the latter with those of ‘hypocrisy’ that is manifest in the the attempt to reconcile civilised self- where the respondent is an onlooker. ways in which otherwise ‘good’ men images with the use of excessive force. These findings suggest the limitations and women can still end up doing ‘bad’ The future role of torture in the ‘war of current criminological research in things, and the ways in which good against terror’ depends on the interplay areas related to incivility and fear of things can be done for bad reasons. In between these competing conceptions crime, and have implications for collec- this chapter Van Krieken seeks to rec- of the civilising process. tive efficacy, social capital and broken oncile institutional design and socially windows criminology. constituted individual habitus not simply Editors’ Note: Readers should also as alternatives between which one can refer to the following recent articles by Timothy Phillips and Philip Smith, choose, but as linked and interacting Andrew Linklater: ‘Rethinking Urban Incivility Research: with each other within a broader overall ‘The Harm Principle and Global Strangers, Bodies and Circulations’, process of the ‘civilisation of manage- Ethics’, Global Society, 20 (3) 2006: Urban Studies, 43 (5–6) 2006: 879– ment’. Thus, Van Krieken is involved in 329–43. 901. an ambitious project to develop further ‘Cosmopolitanism’, pp. 109–27 in A. the application of the ideas of Norbert Dobson and R. Eckersley (eds), Politi- Abstract: Research on urban incivil- Elias to theorising contemporary organi- cal Theory and the Ecological Chal- ity has made progress but has limited sation and management practice. lenge, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- scope thanks to a stereotyped and sity Press, 2006. policy-relevant focus on problem Van Krieken finds the ‘ethical form’ of ‘Discourse Ethics and the Civilising neighbourhoods and urban renewal. It management conduct somewhat inac- Process’, Review of International Stud- also lacks benchmark comparative data, cessible. In part this is because of the ies, 31 (1) 2005: 145–54. has almost nothing to say about inter- role that idealised standards play in ‘Norbert Elias, The Civilising Process personal incivility and is experiencing fixing ethical responsibility. In practice, and International Relations’, Interna- diminishing returns to effort. A new the ethical dimensions of management tional Politics, 41, 2004: 3–35. agenda is proposed that explores every- occur within a complex field of differ- day life incivility as this is experienced ing ethical interests and orientations. Tim Phillips and Philip Smith, ‘Emo- over the broader population in the These provide for relatively autono- tional and behavioural responses to course of daily routine. The Everyday mous, self-referential ethical sub-sys- everyday incivility: challenging the Life Incivility in Australia Survey is tems with no necessary consistency fear/avoidance paradigm’, Journal of introduced. This was a random national between them. The relation between Sociology 40 (4) 2004: 378–99. sample survey collecting systematic them thus becomes a central problem- Abstract: Although antisocial behaviour narrative information on interpersonal atic. Indeed, somewhat pessimistically, has become an issue of political and encounters involving a rude stranger.

14 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 Findings from the study are reported outcome of this conference, reflects the with topics that are only now becoming here, documenting the range of low- current relevance of Elias’s work and its ‘hot topics’ within cultural studies, such level incivilities experienced in daily ongoing capability to give new impetus as for example the history and sociol- life and outlining some of their prop- to historical, sociological and cultural ogy of emotions and laughter. erties. The results challenge received studies. wisdom about the corrosive effects of Finally, the contributors of this volume urban incivility on society. The volume is divided into three sec- agree on the fact that Elias’s work is as tions. A first section deals with the relevant as ever – and there are many Chris Otter, ‘The Civilising of Slaugh- historical background in which Elias other readers who agree with them, for ter: The Development of the British developed his theory on court society the book was chosen one of the four Public Abattoir, 1850–1910’. Food and – Imperial and Weimar Germany; with most important books published in History 3 (2) 2005: 29–51. his historical and sociological sources, 2005 concerning early modern history his teachers and the biographical back- by the users of most important German ‘Meat might not have been murder, but ground; and with the various reactions mailing list ‘h-soz.u.kult’. to become “no more than a commod- of the academic world towards his ity”, all signs of its bloody and brutal books. Although he always saw himself The contents are: origin had to be obliterated or purged: as an outsider, various influences on his it had to be made into something clean. work can be traced, direct as much as Einleitung Claudia Opitz Civilisation, as Nobert Elias informed indirect ones: his personal interest in the us, advances by distancing itself not history of France and French monarchy, I. Biographische und wissenschaftsge- from killing itself, but from the percep- his study of the works of Max Weber, schichtliche Aspekte tion and reminder of it. Therefore, meat and the ideas he shares with other aca- offers the historian a particularly thick demics of his time such as, for example, Norbert Elias: Der jüdische Intellek- and fleshy lens through which to exam- Johan Huizinga or Aby Warburg. tuelle und die Liebe zur höfischen ine the conjoint histories of civilisation, Kultur, Reinhard Blomert commodification, and cleanliness.’ (p. That his work was not always approved Quellen für und Einflüsse auf die 30) Otter’s essay is one of eleven in by his academic readers is illustrated Höfische Gesellschaft, Claudia Opitz this special issue of Food and History in the second section of the volume. Kulturgeschichte, Hofforschung und die on ‘The Slaughterhouse and the City’, Many historians who deal with court Kunst der burgundischen Niederlande, edited by Paula Lee, all of them having a history have criticised certain aspects Birgit Franke und Barbara Welzel bearing one way or another on a civilis- of Elias’s analysis of the French court The Keen Observer versus the Grand- ing process that has been especially suc- society; others have asked whether his Theorist: Elias, Anthropology and the cessful in hiding behind the scenes the observations were also true for the vari- Early Modem Court, Jeroen Duindam distasteful origins of tasty comestibles. ous European courts or how his expla- nation of the French Revolution should II. Kritische Würdigung Claudia Opitz, ed., Höfische Gesell- be revised. Nevertheless Die höfische schaft und Zivilisationsprozesse: Nor- Gesellschaft has been a point of refer- Norbert Elias und die Kunstgeschichte, bert Elias’ Werk in kulturwissenschaftli- ence for many other works. Jutta Held cher Perspective. Köln: Böhlau, 2005. Hof, Adel und Monarchie: Norbert 264 pp. ISBN 3-412-15004-5. Despite all these criticisms, Elias’s Elias’ Höfische Gesellschaft im Lichte theories are still indispensable and pro- der neueren Forschung, Ronald G. Asch The publication in 2002 of a new edi- vocative sources for further research, Zu Macht und Romantik der Frauen im tion of Die höfische Gesellschaft, as as is shown in the third section of the Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV: Die Höfische volume 2 of the complete works in volume. The authors of the various Gesellschaft aus literatur- und gender- German published by Suhrkamp, Frank- articles in it give a rich impression of wissenschaftlicher Perspektive, Renate furt (see Figurations 19) – was the how Elias’s work should not at all be Kroll reason to invite scholars to assess once laid aside, but how it can still give rise Anmerkungen zur ‘Soziogenese der again Norbert Elias’s book on court to new perspectives in cultural stud- Revolution’, Wolfgang Schmale society, together with Über den Prozess ies. His combination of sociological der Zivilisation and other works. An and historical questions and methods is III. Kulturwissenschaftliche Per- interdisciplinary conference, held in still of major importance; many of his spektiven Stuttgart in May 2003, was organised interests can be linked to gender his- by Prof. Claudia Opitz (University of tory; his figurational theory is still very Aspects of the relationship between his- Basel, Switzerland) and Dieter Bauer productive if one tries to research rela- tory and sociology: Notes on the Work (Katholische Akademie Rottenburg, tionships, networks and dynamics of of E. H. Carr, Philip Abrams and Nor- Stuttgart) to reconsider the importance smaller and larger societies – especially bert Elias, Eric Dunning of Elias’s work for cultural studies in court society – as his theory permits the Geschwisterbeziehungen im Adel und general, and especially for new research combination of macro- and micro-his- Nobert Elias’ Figurations-soziologie in history, sociology, art and literary tory. It is also clear that there are still – ein Anwendungsversuch, Sophie history. The published volume, as an unpublished texts by Elias which deal Ruppel

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 15 Die Verhöflichung des Lachens: White [in Metahistory: the Histori- stresses that civilisation has always, and Anmerkungen zu Norbert Elias’ Essay cal Imagination in Nineteenth-century particularly in the thinking of Norbert on Laughter, Eckart Schörle Europe, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Elias, been achieved only by paying a University Press, 1973) – should be certain price: banning physical violence Helmut Kuzmics and Roland Axt- regarded only as distortions and aberra- does not only mean the taming of war- mann, Authority, State and National tions from the scientific path to virtue. riors, but also growing inhibition and Character: The Civilising Process This paper argues the converse: taking joylessness. in Austria and England, 1700–1900. the emotions of sociologists into con- Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. xii + 363 pp. sideration and treating their prose as Helmut Kuzmics, ‘The marketing-char- ISBN 978-0-7546-3560-4. tragedy (Weber), satire (Goffman) and acter in fiction: Len Deighton’s Close romance (Elias) does not weaken their Up (1972) as a sociological description This important book is a much-needed claim on reporting the truth on society of post-war Hollywood and the process translation of the German original, pub- and human entanglements in general, of Americanisation’, Irish Journal of lished in 2000 (see Figurations 15). It but rather strengthens it. To acknowl- Sociology, 15 (2) 2006: 23–40. came to hand just before this issue went edge this to be valid does not in the to press, so we shall discuss it more least, therefore, lead to relativism and Abstract: Len Deighton’s book, fully in Figurations 28. epistemological scepticism, a position although not well known among soci- which is avoided in the paper. ologists, provided as early as 1972 a Readers should also note the following profound and shrewd analysis not only essay by Helmut Kuzmics: ‘Öster- Helmut Kuzmics, ‘Violence and pacifi- of the American movie industry, its reichische Identität aus soziologischer cation in Norbert Elias’s theory of civi- milieux and culture of deception and Sicht’, Text & Kontext, Sonderreihe, lisation’, pp. 27–45 in Helen Chambers, their influence on old Europe, but also Bd. 51, Österreichische Identität, ed. ed., Violence, Culture and Identity: of the more general mechanisms of a W. Wucherpfennig, 2006: 13–29. Essays on German and Austrian Litera- radical marketisation of the self. The ture, Politics and Society, Oxford: Peter novel can, thus, contribute to a better Helmut Kuzmics, ‘Soziologie als Lang, 2006. understanding of America’s hegemonic Erzählung: Die Sprache der Soziologie position in Europe, insofar as it results in “klassischen“ Beispielen’ [Sociol- Abstract: The real sociological prob- in far-reaching Americanisation. The ogy as Narrative: The Language of lem, according to Elias, is not to legionary barracks of the Romans, the Sociology in ‘Classical’ Examples], pp. explain why people beat or even kill French Court of Louis XIV and the 51–72 in Esterbauer, R., Pernkopf, E., other people – the more important English Public School have found their Ruckenbauer, H.-W., eds, WortWechsel: question is: How is it possible that so legitimate successor in the social fabric Sprachprobleme in den Wissenschaf- many human beings are able to live in of Hollywood and the American spirit ten interdisziplinär auf den Begriff comparative peace and harmony with of commercial entertainment. gebracht, Würzburg: Königshausen & each other – without permanent fear to Neumann, 2006. be beaten or killed by others? The paper Stuart Carroll, Blood and Violence in starts by giving an outline of Elias’s Early Modern France. Oxford: Claren- Abstract: The development of sociol- key concepts referring to the ‘Euro- don Press, 2006. xii + 369 pp. ISBN ogy as a science can be seen as a pro- pean Civilising Process’ as a process of 0-19-929045-8. cess of replacement of earlier, mythical structural pacification which punishes forms of thinking about society through violent emotions with feelings of fear, I found this book by chance through an a more objective, detached, neutral shame and embarrassment. Elias’s online discussion list, and I hope that type of thinking with implications for approach has been criticised for mainly it will be reviewed along with other its basic vocabulary which has to be three reasons: recent books on violence in a future neutral and purely descriptive as well. issue of Figurations. Carroll appears According to operationalist positions, 1. as a theory of unjustified, evolution- to be hostile to Elias’s interpretation but also to a wider range of sociologi- ist optimism, overrating the spontane- of long-term trends in violence. In cal prose, as Elias indicates in What ous violence of the past, underrating the response to critics on the discussion is Sociology? (1978), only terms and cruelty of the present; forum he writes: ‘In the book I hope concepts modelled on those of the 2. because of its presumed inability to to show that violence is a diverse and natural sciences seem to deserve credit explain the mass political violence and dynamic phenomenon; it is not simply for approaching this kind of objectiv- destruction of the twentieth century; an elemental Angriffslust that requires ity. This might lead to the notion that 3. because of the hidden normativity of taming; it is not easily pigeon-holed, both sociological authors’ emotions the concept of ‘civilisation’ or ‘civilis- or reduced to a “pathological” condi- and deviations from the standard ing processes’. tion. … [I]t became clear to me that the ‘scientific’ narrative – expressed as archives told a different story to that of romance, satire, comedy or tragedy (as the grand narrative, a fiction that was argued by Northrop Frye [in Anatomy The paper discusses these criticisms, given credence by Elias and his follow- of Criticism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton refutes accusations (1) and (2), and ers. Even for the great François Billa- University Press, 1957], and Hayden concedes only some truth in (3). It cois, the reason for duelling’s dramatic

16 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 and rapid spread had to be associated relative to its neighbours. This has had 1. Understanding Elias’s Language and with the rise of the state: he explained long-term and all-pervasive effects on Style. Modernity or the Human Condi- duelling as the revolt of the individual the way they see themselves, on how tion? against the inevitable triumph of abso- they perceive the rest of the world, and 2. Origins of Elias’s Synthesis. Placing lutism.’ From this, it rather sounds how others see them. Elias. Elias and Weimar Culture. Elias as though Carroll has fallen into a as a Synthesiser. Elias as an Ontolo- common trap of misunderstanding gist. Philosophy Reframed. Modes of about Elias’s theory – yet again! – but Richard Kilminster, Norbert Elias: Persuasion. let us wait for a more detailed look at Post-Philosophical Sociology. London: 3. Norbert Elias and Karl Mannheim, the book in a future issue. – SJM. Routledge September 2007: 224 pp. Closeness and Distance. Intellectual ISBN: 978-0-415-43706-6 (hb) £70.00 Affinities. Relationism. Evaluating. The Zurich Congress 1928. Issues of Theory BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS The contention of this book is that and Practice. the selective absorption of ideas and 4. The Civilising Process: The Structure Several new ‘Eliasian’ books in English concepts from Norbert Elias’s writings of a Classic. Introduction. The Kultur/ are scheduled to appear almost simul- into the sociology mainstream in recent Zivilisation Antithesis. The Process taneously in the course of 2007. They years, has unintendedly drawn the teeth of Historical Retrieval. Accumulating will no doubt be reviewed in future of his work. Severed from the broader Explanatory Levels. Socioanalysis, issues of Figurations, but to whet read- framework which gave them their full ‘Redemption’ and Progress. ers’ appetites we are printing the pub- meaning and significance, his ideas 5. Involved Detachment: Knowledge lishers’ blurbs for each of them here: have become cleansed of their more and Self-Knowledge in Elias. Introduc- refractory and challenging aspects. The tion: After Weber. From Distance to Stephen Mennell, The American book makes explicit the far-reaching Detachment: Mannheim, Kris, Schutz Civilising Process. Cambridge: Polity, and provocative core at the heart of and Elias. Involvement and Detachment September 2007. ca 400 pp. ISBN 978- Elias, which is in danger of slipping as a Balance. Secondary Involvement: 07456-3208-7 (hb); ISBN: 978-07456- into oblivion. Epilogue: Detachment in a New Key? 3209-4 (pb) 6. The Symbol Theory: Secular Human- Few sociologists of the first rank have ism as a Research Programme. Intro- Since 9/11, the American government scandalised the academic world to the duction. Situating The Symbol Theory. has presumed to speak and act in the extent that Elias did. Developed out of Anthropological and Philosophical name of ‘civilisation’. But is that how the German sociology of knowledge in Approaches. The Modern Synthesis the rest of the world sees it? And if not, the 1920s, Elias’s sociology contains in Evolutionary Biology. Recent Evo- why not? a sweeping radicalism which declares lutionary Theory and Anthropology. an academic ‘war on all your houses’. Notes. Stephen Mennell leads up to such con- His sociology of the ‘human condition’ 7. Concluding Remarks: The Fourth temporary questions through a careful sweeps aside the contemporary focus Blow to Man’s Narcissism? study of the whole span of American on ‘modernity’ and rejects most the development – from the first settlers paradigms of sociology as one-sided, to the American Empire – in a novel economistic, teleological, individualis- Cas Wouters, Informalisation: Man- way. He looks at the USA in the light of tic and/or rationalistic. As sociologists, ners and Emotions since 1890. London: Norbert Elias’s theory of civilising (and Elias also asks us to distance ourselves Sage, October 2007. decivilising) processes. from mainstream psychology, history and above all, philosophy, which is This highly original book explains the He constantly draws comparisons summarily abandoned, although carried sweeping changes to twentieth-century between the USA and other countries of forward on a higher level. regimes of manners and the self. Broad the world. Topics include: in scope and deep in analytic reach, it The radical and confrontational char- provides a wealth of empirical evidence • American manners and lifestyles acter of Elias’s work is only just begin- to demonstrate how changes in the • Violence in American society ning to be appreciated. It embraces code of manners and emotions in four • The impact of markets on American scientific attitudes and obligations, countries (the USA, England, Germany, social character including a robust secularism which, and The Netherlands) are characterised • American expansion, from the fron- taken to their furthest conclusions, by increasing informalisation and an tier to empire represent considerable intellectual, ‘emancipation of emotions’. This return • The ‘curse of the American Dream’ professional and emotional challenges of emotion to the centre of personality and increasing inequality for sociologists. This book braces us for coincides with the fading importance • The religiosity of American life these challenges by reconstructing the of introductions, the growth of the origins of Elias’s ideas as a ‘post-philo- right to privacy, diminishing social Mennell shows how Americans’ his- sophical’, workable synthesis of many and psychic distance between people, toric experience is of their country perspectives on the social world. a stronger taboo on displays of supe- constantly becoming more powerful Selected Contents: riority and inferiority, and a shift from

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 17 rules for avoiding certain people to Its overarching theme is Norbert Elias’s WORK IN PROGRESS rules for avoiding certain emotions and theory of the civilising process, and their expression. As well as features of the chapters in the book recognise, as Amanda Rohloff (Victoria Univer- manners that are distinctively German, he did, that changes in human behav- sity of Wellington) ‘Moral panics as English, Dutch, and American, there are iour are related to transformations of decivilising processes? An Eliasian also strong similarities in the changing both social and personality structures. approach’. class and personality structures in the Drawing on a vast range of archival and four countries. written records from five countries, the Applying the ideas of Norbert Elias contributors explore the usefulness of to the sociology of moral panics, this In his thought-provoking discussion, the theory – the subject of much debate article assesses whether moral panics the author traces: over the past two decades – to explain- may be short-term processes of decivi- ing long-term patterns in violence, lisation arising alongside, and partly as • The increasing scope for behavioural but also point to the need for further a result of, civilising processes. Exam- and emotional alternatives in public and empirical and comparative studies, to ining the models of Stanley Cohen private manners, such as the use of more reflect current thinking and develop- (Folk devils and moral panics: The evocative and informal language, Chris- ments within historical, criminological, creation of the mods and rockers, 3rd tian names, instant intimacy and enmity, and sociological methodologies. edn, London: Routledge, 2002), and of personal pronouns, and social kissing. Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda In approaching the subject from a vari- (Moral panics: The social construction • The ascent and integration of a wide ety of perspectives, Assaulting the Past: of deviance, Cambridge, MA: Black- variety of groups – including the work- Violence and Civilisation in Historical well, 1994) the article identifies pos- ing classes, women, youth and immi- Context presents a comparative and sible symptoms and outcomes of moral grants – and the sweeping changes this qualitative assessment of violent behav- panics to be compared with some of the has imposed on relations (and feelings) iour and the experience of violence. symptoms of decivilising processes as of social inferiority and superiority Approaches used include the empiri- proposed by Stephen Mennell (‘Decivi- cal and the theoretical, and the book is lising processes: Theoretical sig- • The shifts in self-regulation that strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on nificance and some lines of research’, require manners to seem ‘natural’, at the history of crime, history of medi- International Sociology, 5 (2) 1990: ease and authentic, while avoiding cine, criminology and legal history. The 205–23). The following is a summary traces of feelings of superiority and volume seeks to offer new insights on of this comparison. inferiority violence, the individual and society, to further illuminate the links between For a moral panic to occur there must • Rising external social constraints state formation, social interdependency be an initial concern over a (real or towards being unconstrained, reflexive and self-discipline that are so integral to imagined) problem. For the issue to be and considerate, showing presence of the theory of the civilising process. recognised as a problem, the state must mind, role-taking, and the ability to be either unwilling or unable to address tolerate and control conflicts, and to Katherine D. Watson lectures in the the issue, or else be unaware of it. Here compromise Department of History and manages we see the perception that the state is the research of the School of Arts and weak or weakened with regard to the • Growing interdependence and social Humanities at Oxford Brookes Uni- problem. Indeed, this may be regarded integration, declining power differences versity. She is the author of Poisoned as a symptom of the problem. For and the diminishing social and psychic Lives: English Poisoners and their Vic- example, during the Satanism scare, distance between people tims (2004). the state was believed to be weakened by the allegedly corrupt conspiratorial Continuing the analysis of Sex and network of Satanists within government Manners [see Figurations 24], this BIBLIOGRAPHICAL departments and other highly influential book is a dazzling work of historical RETROSPECT professions. sociology and a fascinating read. Sabine Delzescaux, Norbert Elias: This model of moral panics as decivilis- Katherine D. Watson, Assaulting the Civilisation et décivilisation. Paris: ing processes suggests that civilising Past: Violence and Civilisation in His- L’Harmattan, 2002. ISBN: 2-7475- and decivilising trends occur alongside torical Context. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 3718-8 one another and that civilising can Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. This important addition to the literature give rise to decivilising. For example, ISBN: 1-84718-105-8 on Elias in French has not previously one indicator of moral panic is dispro- been recorded in the pages of Figura- portionality – the ‘problem’ becomes This book offers an important contri- tions. The original PhD thesis of 2000 amplified and exaggerated (or in some bution to the comparative history of on which it was based was indeed noted cases invented). The civilising trend interpersonal violence since the early in Figurations 13, but it has been sub- of increased division of labor – result- modern period, a subject of great con- sequently published by L’Harmattan. ing in increased bureaucratisation, temporary and historical importance. – SJM specialisation and expertisation – has

18 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 culminated in the growth of expert convergence, I intend to further develop ogy of knowledge and psychoanalytic systems of knowledge (as opposed to and test these ideas using a specific problematics, which a splitting of the ‘local knowledge’). This reliance on example. Thus far, I have been unable to image of humankind into conscious and ‘expert’ information can result in it find any instances where Elias has been unconscious strata attempts to prevent. becoming increasingly easier for people applied to moral panics (or a related Aspects of Swiss and Turkish state for- to be fooled by political rhetoric, expert area). If anyone knows of any, I would mation were compared in the light of claims, and other claims to authority, as be very interested to hear from them. Vamik Volken’s contrast (in Das Versa- well as the media, as people do not have gen der Diplomatie: Zur Psychoanalyse the specialised knowledge to critically Amanda Rohloff nationaler, ethnischer und religiöser assess and question claims. Thus, when Victoria University of Wellington, New Konflikte [The Failure of Diplomacy: claims are invented, exaggerated, or Zealand The Psychoanalysis of National, Ethnic distorted, people may come to believe Email: [email protected] and Religious Conflicts], Giessen: a threat to be a greater danger than it Psychosozial-Verlag, 1999) between actually is. This can make the level of official and unofficial strategies of danger increasingly incalculable when RECENT CONFERENCES diplomacy. the information we receive about social problems may be unreliable. The Art of Polyphony: Tenth Civilising Process Group Analysis as a Model Symposium, University of During a moral panic the problem may for the Civilising of Conflicts Campinas, Brazil, 2–5 April be stereotyped and folk devils created. Conference of the Seminar for Group 2007 This process may involve folk devils Analysis, Zürich, 23–25 February 2007 The Tenth Civilising Process Interna- becoming increasingly dehumanised Norbert Elias was a theoretician who tional Symposium – ‘Sociabilities and and seen as the ‘other’ – a result- sought to integrate psychoanalytic Emotions’ held at State University of ant decrease in mutual identification knowledge into sociological models. Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, 1–4 between the folk devils and ‘the rest With S. H. Foulkes he was one of the April 2007, was a great success. The of us’ – thereby legitimating the use of six founders of the Group Analytic academic standard was notably high in all more ‘cruel’ measures in these excep- Society in London (see Hans-Peter the various types of forum: four lectures tional times. Waldhoff, ‘Unthinking the Closed Per- by international professors (Johan Gouds- sonality’, www.groupanalyticsociety. blom, Cas Wouters, François Dépelteau With a moral panic, the demand for co.uk). Group analysis is one way in and Ramon Spaaij), one ‘Debating immediate action to address the prob- which sociological and psychoana- Table’, ten ‘Thematic Tables’, 32 paper lem before it is too late may result in lytical knowledge have been brought presentations and workshops, and six solutions proposed and accepted with- together, incorporating psychodynamics mini-courses within the conference. out thorough investigation. Indeed, and social relationships into psychoana- during such processes one may witness lytic practice. But sociology and group The event was attended by researchers an increase in the ‘fantasy content’ and analysis have gone their own ways, from several Brazilian states, includ- a decrease in the ‘reality congruence’ although their affinity and exchange of ing Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande – where people are so desperate for ideas are visible from time to time. do Sul, Santa Catarina, Minas Gerais, action that they are prepared for the The Zürich Seminar for Group Analy- Pernambuco, São Paulo, Paraíba, Piauí, state to use any means necessary, even sis was founded especially by Jewish Mato Grosso do Sul, Bahia and Pará. It at the cost of the temporary abandon- emigrants with support from German- also drew researchers and students from ment of certain civil liberties that would speaking members of the Group Ana- well-known institutions in Argentina usually be celebrated. In contrast, if it is lytic Society, London. Its silver jubilee and Mexico. They greatly contributed believed that the state is not responding was an occasion for examining its to the event, notably in discussions adequately to the problem, we may wit- roots, among them the theory of civilis- on figurational sociology and Elias’s ness the re-emergence of violence into ing processes. theory of civilising processes. the public sphere – where people take The basic multi-perspectival and unau- Elias’s theoretical–methodological the law into their own hands. For exam- thoritarian character of Group Analysis model led to discussion on themes such ple: parents kidnapping their (believed was the standpoint from which to study as education and schools, violence, to be) ‘brainwashed’ ‘children’ from its suitability for the civilising of con- childhood, memory, history, emotion, New Religious Movements for the flict, by making apparent the dominant health, sports, leisure, technology, work, purposes of ‘deprogramming’; and vigi- role played by the deep-seated and Protestantism, native people, social rep- lante crusades against paedophiles. often unconscious dimensions of it. resentations, sociological theory, among For a full version of this article, others. It is important to remember that please contact the author: amanda. In my own presentation, for example, the discussions were also carried on in [email protected]. Comments and I sought to describe the difference the corridors of the event and during suggestions are most welcome. between earlier, more point-like pat- the four dinners that were promoted by terns of civilisation and more integrated the Tenth Symposium with the purpose This article is an initial investigation patterns. An example on the theoretical of bringing the participants closer and only. Having identified the potential for level is Elias’s integration of sociol- solidifying the academic relations.

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 19 Plans are already afoot for the next FORTHCOMING Chamchas: State Formation and Neigh- three symposia in the series. As for the CONFERENCES bourhood Politicisation in Gujarat, XI and XII Civilising Process Inter- India’ national Symposia, our colleagues Conference to mark the Nina Baur: ‘Markets as Figurations’ from Argentina (Prof. José Antonio completion of the Norbert Mohamed Soffar: ‘Reading Norbert Castorina, Prof. Carina V. Kaplan and Elias Gesammelte Schrif- Elias in Arabic’ Prof. Victoria Orce) have declared their ten interest in organising a symposium at Deutsche Literaturarchiv, Marbach an Afternoon (chair: Annette Treibel) the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) der Neckar, Germany Anke Barzantny: ‘Mentoringpro- and the Federal University of Pernam- To mark the completion publication by gramme für Frauen aus figurations- buco (UFPE) are also investigating the Suhrkamp of Elias’s collected works in soziologischer Sicht – eine Maßnahme feasibility of their department organis- German, a conference will be held on zur Aufhebung der Etablierten-Außen- ing one. And the Federal University of 14–15 September 2007 at the Deutsche seiter-Figuration in der Wissenschaft?’ Grande Dourados (UFGD) has already Literaturarchiv in Marbach, where his Bowen Paulle: ‘Must we go on concen- declared interest in hosting the XIII papers are now housed. trating the new urban outsiders? Pro- CPIS. cesses of educational (de)segregation PROGRAMME: seen through the eyes of Norbert Elias’ An Organising Committee for the next Giselinde Kuipers: ‘The Sense of symposium is already being formed, Friday, 14 September Humour and the Self: on Cultural Vari- with members including: 16:30: Presentation of the Gesammelte ations and Fluctuations in the Evalua- Schriften von Norbert Elias tion of Humour’ Adriane Luisa Rodolpho (EST), Tabea Dörfelt: ‘“Warum können wir Altina Abadia da Silva (UFG-Catalão), Welcome by Dr Ulrich Raulff (DLA, uns nicht vertragen?”: Die Ballade vom Carina V. Kaplan (UBA), Marbach) und Professor Hermann armen Jakob as an example for the Deoclecio Rocco Gruppi (FAG/UNI- Korte (Norbert Elias Foundation) poetic reflection on human behaviour CENTRO); by Norbert Elias’ Gláucio Campos de Matos (UFAM), Presentation of the 19 volumes by Hilde Eliazer Aquino López (Un. Bernd Stiegler (Suhrkamp) and Annette 16:00 Close Marista de Guadalajara), Treibel-Illian (chairman, Editorial João Paulo Pooli (ULBRA/UCS), Board) Joelma Cristina Parente Monteiro Alen- Social Science History car (UEPA), Address by Professor Wolf Lepenies Association, José Luis Simões (UFPE), (Fritz Thyssen Stiftung) 15–18 November 2007 Luiz Francisco de Albuquerque de Palmer House Hilton, Chicago Miranda (UNIMEP), Talk by Wilhelm Voßkamp: ‘Wish- Magda Sarat Oliveira (UFGD), dream and Nightmare: Arkadias and It is proposed to organise a session on Maria Beatriz Rocha Ferreira (FEF/ Utopias in Norbert Elias’ ‘Comparative studies and the theory of UNICAMP), civilising processes’; likely participants Marizabel Kowalski (UFV), Break for Refreshments are Stephen Mennell, Cas Wouters, Ricardo Lucena (UFPB), David Matsinhe, Bo Paulle, Andrew Tatiana Savoia Landini (UNIFESP), 19:30 Die Ballade vom Armen Jakob. Stebbins. Website: www.ssha.org Tony Honorato (UNESP-Fclar/UEL) Performance of the short satirical opera, with libretto by Norbert Elias Civilising and Decivilising Suggestions are invited for the general and music by Hans Gal, by members of Processes: A Figurational theme of our next CPIS: please email the Staatstheater Stuttgart. Introduced Approach to American [email protected] by Hermann Korte. Studies Ademir Gebara Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Regina N. Pagani Saturday 15 September Frankfurt, 22–24 November, 2007 Tony Honorato 9.30 Presentation of the 2007 Norbert Elias Prize for an author’s first book. 10.00 Workshop: Norbert Elias, Human PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME Scientist: New contributions relating to his Life and Works: Co-ordinator: Thursday, November 22, 2007 Annette Treibel 18:00 Loïc Wacquant (Berkeley / Paris) ‘Decivilising the Penal State’ (to Morning (chair: Stefanie Ernst) be confirmed) John Goodwin: ‘My dear Norbert: Ilya Friday, November 23, 2007 Neustadt’s correspondence with Nor- The Formation of the State and of Indi- bert Elias in Ghana, 1962–64’ viduals Ward Berenschot: ‘The Coming of the 9:30 Stephen Mennell (Dublin)

20 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 ‘The American Civilising Process and OBITUARY through dictatorship and war, bodily its Decivilising Underbelly’ suffering and death through illness or 10:30 Dietmar Schloss (Heidelberg) Peter Reinhart Gleich- violence cast a shadow over his life. ‘Norbert Elias and the United States: mann (1932–2006) The Public Discussion about the Shape Later, as a sociologist, Gleichmann of the Republic in the Early National placed great value in speaking directly, Period’ without euphemism, especially on 12:00 Cas Wouters (Amsterdam) questions of violence and death. In his ‘Status Competition and the Develop- academic life, among other things kill- ment of an American Habitus’ ing, death and above all mass murder – and decivilising processes in general Challenges to the Civilising Process – became central to his work. 14:30 Kirsten Twelbeck (Hannover) ‘Self-Denial, Citizenship, and Ameri- Gleichmann spent the last years of ca’s “Second Founding”’ the war in Schulpforta, an almost 500 15:30 Anthony V. Baker (Campbell year-old aristocratic school with a long University School of Law) ‘“… viola- humanistic tradition that had been tion of law … contempt of justice …”: transformed into a Nazi elite school. Figurations and the Nat Turner Rebel- ‘Schulpforta gave us knowledge, early lion’ Peter Gleichmann, who died on 13 self-reliance, manners and discipline’, 17:00 Günter Leypoldt (Tübingen) November 2006, was Professor of said his brother Ulrich. ‘Emerson and the field of Transcenden- Sociology at the University of Hano- talist Intellectual’ ver from 1978 to 1997, and one of the After the war, the Gleichmanns came principal champions of Norbert Elias in as a refugee family to Hanover. Out- Saturday, November 24, 2007 Germany. wardly, at first glance Peter’s life now Civilising Projects? Religion, Literature ran along peaceful and ordered lines. and the Arts Gleichmann was born in Berlin, but He finished his schooling in a tradi- 9:00 Peter Schneck (Osnabrück) his family came from Suhl, Thuringia, tional Gymnasium, where for the first ‘“Toiling the literary field’: Walter in central Germany. His great-grand- time there were two young women in Besant, Henry James and the Sublime father was an arms manufacturer, in his class; one of them, Renate Röver, Economy of Literature’ protest against which his grandfather later became his wife. Both studied 10:00 Francesca Sawaya (Oklahoma) became a Lutheran pastor in a small architecture, and Gleichmann went on ‘Patronage and Modern American Lit- town, in reaction to which calling his to study sociology. He and Renate had erature’ parents refused to be married in church three children. 11:30 Biljana Oklopčić (Osijek) – something quite unusual at that time. ‘Women’s Education in the US South Both his parents were doctors. Peter A second look shows, however, that as Civilising Project: Its Literary Gleichmann followed the pattern, defy- peaceful, orderly lines were perhaps nec- (De)Construction in William Faulkner’s ing his authoritarian father’s wish that essary, but at the same time too narrow Snopes Trilogy’ he pursue a medical career and instead for Gleichmann. The Hanover Institute 12:30 Ruxandra Radulescu (Bucha- first studying architecture and then of Architecture had links with that in rest) ‘A Figurational Approach to embarking upon an academic career. Graz, Austria, and there followed jobs in Native Bodies in Louise Erdrich’s various architecture and planning offices Novels’ So opposition and calling things in in Finland and The Netherlands. Finding question was a family tradition, as his these too narrow, he widened his experi- Theoretical Reflections younger brother Ulrich – a well-known ence of town, regional and environmen- 15:00 Winfried Fluck (Berlin) ‘Mul- cardiologist – made clear in his eulogy. tal planning. These led him to embark tiple Identities?’ He also referred to the fate of their on sociological studies first at Göttingen 16:00 Closing Remarks maternal grandfather, a doctor, who and then at Hanover, where he became came into conflict with the henchmen a lecturer in 1960, taking his doctorate of the Third Reich and met his death in in 1962 and his Habilitation in 1968. He Further details of this conference can 1945. was a visiting lecturer at the Universities be obtained from c.buschendorf@em. of Manchester and Leicester – where he uni-frankfurt.de and/or a.franke@em. Their brother Reinhard died in 1944 met Norbert Elias, whose sociology had uni-frankfurt.de from meningitis, and Peter himself a profound influence on him. in the late 1930s suffered from polio, often a fatal illness, although in his case In 1976–7, Gleichmann was a guest the after-effects were relatively mild. professor in Aachen. Karl-Siegbert Against the background of being born Rehberg, the current chairman of the in 1932, as the eldest of an eventual German Sociological Association, five siblings, and a childhood passed remembers:

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 21 One might observe that not only had A young student had presented the We had a long talk in my study, in Norbert Elias analysed court society introduction to her Diploma disserta- which we exchanged our experiences with figurational sociological insight, tion to Professor Gleichmann and in meeting and reading Elias. We but had also – after his happy return asked for his opinion. The gist of his spoke German most of the time, and from exile – made himself a central reply was: ‘Your introduction is very at the end Peter said something like: figure in his own ‘courtly’ figuration. good, and especially very sociological: ‘ich habe noch nie ein so einleuch- And Peter Gleichmann in certain ways no one will understand it.’ tendes Gespräch geführt’. …Later our embodied the sociological structural relationship became more guarded, discovery that such a centralized figu- And Helmut Kuzmics remembers being ‘behutsam’, … especially after he ration with expectations of affection very nervous when he was invited to was nominated for the chair of the and competitive tensions sharpens give an introductory lecture for his sociology of ‘bouwen en wonen’ at the on the one hand the capabilities for guest-professorship in Hanover about University of Amsterdam. I shall never sensible observation, but can on the his book Der Preis der Zivilisation. forget the moment when I heard that the other hand also become a source of Peter Gleichmann was the one to have appointment had come through, and I suffering from society and from one- invited him, so he was quite surprised, immediately reached for the telephone self. Throughout, Peter Gleichmann that he criticised it severely, regarding to tell the good news to Peter; to my maintained a semi-detached character, it as too ‘economistic’. But in the event surprise, I met with a long silence: he through a not always freely chosen Peter ‘was then, and always thereafter, was not at all pleased. … Looking back sense of ‘strangerness’; as René König a caring and considerate host’. on my relations with Peter Gleichmann, put it perfectly, every sociologist has to I find some cause for regret. The initial be something of a ‘Jew’, if he or she is Peter Gleichmann’s search for semi- auspices were more favourable than successfully to be able to objectify the detached positions led to a careful how it worked out after all. But such is taken-for-grantedness of everyday life. degree of approach in some cases, life. And death. where considerable mutual distancia- With this semi-detached position Reh- tion and distrust had reigned originally, Peter Gleichmann did indeed take up the berg has hit upon a Leitmotiv that, in for example with some highly qualified chair in Amsterdam, but stayed only a various ways, is almost always discern- representatives of “critical theory” brief time before returning to Hanover. ible in memories of Peter Gleichmann. in Hanover, where relations became It was captured in the title of his Fest- respectful. The political scientist But that is not the note on which to end schrift, Detached Involvements (Distan- Joachim Perels recalls in his funeral this obituary. Gleichmann fruitfully zierte Verstrickungen: Die ambivalente oration ‘a great substantive affinity’, sublimated the force of semi-detach- Bindung soziologisch Forschender especially in the ‘observations of the ment: in his writings on social and an ihren Gegenstand, Festschrift für unloosened despotic state violence of psychic constraints, but above all in his Peter Gleichmann zum 65. Geburtstag. the Hitler regime.’ According to him, outstanding talent for wissenssoziologi- Berlin: Edition Sigma 1997 – see Figu- sche insights. He covered all the causes rations 8). Peter Gleichmann was a reserved man, of suffering in body, mind and society, who knew [how] to show involvement and transformed suffering into knowl- Peter Gleichmann was often inspiring and intimacy in [his] detachment. He edge. He had a gift for the outsider’s, company. Richard Kilminster recalls: was strongly interested in the other for marginalized perspectives. He took person and his involvement. This particular care of foreign students. He I have long admired Peter’s originality became particularly clear ... when promoted the reception of French soci- and independence of mind. He and I Peter Gleichmann was preparing the ology because he felt it was unjustly have exchanged some stimulating cor- large conference on mass killings, marginalized. He took a keen interest in respondence over the years. We agreed which took place in Loccum in 2001. Germany’s smaller neighbouring states, about the significant traces of the Wis- In intensive personal contact with the such as Poland and The Netherlands. sensoziologie present in Norbert’s out- speakers from various fields – an exam- The same ‘view from below’ led him to look. I also remember vividly sitting next ple of real interdisciplinarity – he suc- show that buildings should be made fit to Peter at a conference of the German ceeded in articulating the central prob- for people, not the other way round. In Sociological Association Theory Group lem so sharply that the conference and his architectural sociology it led him to in Bremen in the early 1980s. He gave a the book publication resulted in a com- address the tabooed ‘natural functions’, continuous commentary in my ear about prehensive analysis of the anti-civilisa- and later to speak about violence and the political and sociological inclina- tory structures of the twentieth century. death. tions of all the speakers and questioners. He would say, ‘ah, this chap is a con- His ‘detached involvement’ seemed on He did not only criticise over-involved, servative – see his tough body armour the other hand sometimes to make him ideological writings under the guise of (in the Reichian sense)’! It was most shy away from those who came too sociology, but also those over-detached illuminating! close. Johan Goudsblom remembers: positions, who failed to notice the relationship between an author in the But he could be very direct. One of his I remember in particular one of his human sciences and the humans he former students remembers how: first visits to my house in Amsterdam. described in his work. Hans-Heinrich

22 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007 Nolte, an historian who specialises ‘Elias in the Twenty-First Century’, light up a room with her smile and in world-system theories, recalls for at the University of Leicester, 10–12 her intellect’, and that is how I shall example how Peter Gleichmann’s April 2006 [see Figurations 25] will always remember her myself. A month insistence on feelings being important be shocked and saddened to learn of or two after the conference I invited in the human sciences helped him to the death of its principal organiser, Dr her to a dining members’ guest night become clear about himself. Anne Witz. at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. She was looking forward to it, and One last anecdote: when he was in At the time of her terribly premature had bought what she characteristically hospital after a serious operation and death at the age of only 54, Anne was called ‘a posh frock’, but she wasn’t strictly forbidden to do any work, he Reader in Sociology at Leicester (a title able to come: she went into hospital for smuggled out notes written on a paper hallowed, of course, by Elias himself). more heart surgery. On 11 December napkin to his long-time student assistant But I first knew her when she was an 2006, to my absolute disbelief because I Gabriele Overlander, a former nurse, undergraduate in Exeter in the 1970s. had seen her survive so much, she died. who was then writing the thesis about She resurfaced in my life and in Exeter She is very greatly missed. her former profession that became her in 1986–8, when she replaced me there successful book Die Last des Mitfüh- while I was away on research fellow- SJM lens (Frankfurt: Mabuse, 2000). She ships. After Exeter she held posts in still has the napkin. several universities, and we met up Sue Scott wrote the following obituary again when she had just moved to for the University of Leicester: During his final illness, which came Leicester. Anne graduated in Sociology from the after 14 years of various very severe University of Exeter in 1977 and, after illnesses, I edited a collection of his I suppose Anne must have heard a bit a period of teaching sociology in the essays – Soziologie als Synthese: about Norbert Elias from me in her Department of Hotel and Catering Man- Zivilisationstheoretische Schriften undergraduate days, though that was agement at the then Manchester Poly- über Architektur, Wissen und Gewalt back in a period when I myself was technic, she went to Lancaster to do her [Sociology as Synthesis: Essays on only just encountering him and his PhD, under the supervision of Sylvia Architecture, Knowledge and Violence work. When she arrived in Leicester Walby, graduating in 1987. After tem- in the Light of the Theory of Civilis- as Reader, however, she became seri- porary posts at the Universities of Lan- ing Processes, Wiesbaden: VS – Verlag ously interested in this major figure caster and Exeter she moved to the then für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006 – see from her new department’s history, and Birmingham Polytechnic in 1988 and Figurations 26]. He died just before I proposed holding a conference in 2004 from there to the Department of Social could present him with a copy of the to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his Policy and Social Work at the Univer- book, though he saw the proofs. At his own arrival there. In the event, it was sity of Birmingham in 1990. Anne took funeral, I placed copies in the hands of delayed until April 2006, but that did up a senior lectureship in Sociology at his wife Renate and their daughter Iris. not matter: it was a huge success, and Strathclyde in 1996 moving from there her co-organisers – Eric Dunning and to her Readership at Leicester in 2001. Hans-Peter Waldhoff Jason Hughes – would be the first to [Translated and edited by Stephen attribute the major share of the credit to Anne’s early publications focused Mennell] Anne. on the gendered medical division of labour, developing a feminist analysis The main reason for the delay was that of occupational closure [see the Work- Anne Witz, 1952–2006 Anne’s health had begun to decline. ing Paper, Midwifery and Medicine: She had had Hodgkins disease as a 19- sexual divisions and the process of year-old – I remember that as a dreadful professionalisation (1985)]. Her PhD time – though drastic treatment pulled thesis was published as Professions and her through and she had more than Patriarchy (London: Routledge, 1992). three decades of fulfilled and produc- While at Lancaster she also worked tive activity. But the treatment had left with Jane Mark-Lawson on a historical a legacy, and in 2003 she underwent sociology of patriarchy and women’s open-heart surgery. Then last year labour in nineteenth-century coalmin- she arrived at the conference straight ing [From ‘Family Labour’ to ‘Family out of hospital, 48 hours after having Wage’: the case of nineteenth-century undergone a mastectomy. Few people women’s labour in coalmining (1986)]. knew it: she was her usual exuberant Anne was committed to feminism, and and funny self, though fretting that it to re-envisioning sociology through a had resulted in participants not receiv- feminist lens, but she was also commit- Photo: Sue Scott ing conference packs. As her friend Sue ted to sociological theory and to ensur- Scott (Dean of Humanities and Social ing that feminist sociologists did not All who took part in the brilliantly suc- Sciences at Keele University) says simply throw the theoretical baby out cessful and enjoyable conference on below, Anne was ‘someone who could with the patriarchal bathwater. She was

Issue No.27 June 2007 Figurations 23 comfortable thinking through theory cially in Germany, where she was the CONTRIBUTIONS TO and used writers such as Simmel and Marie Jahoda Visiting Professor at the FIGURATIONS Bourdieu, and more recently Elias, to University of Bochum. think with. Her work on health profes- The next issue of Figurations will sions led her into a broader analysis As well as being an excellent scholar be mailed in November 2007. News of gender and organisations, the best- Anne was an inspiring teacher and and notes should be sent to the Edi- known manifestations of which are supervisor; she pushed students hard, tors by 1 October 2007. Gender, Careers and Organisation but also gave them a great deal of sup- (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997) written port. Those taking her courses would Editor: Stephen Mennell with Susan Halford and Mike Savage, have had to work very hard to avoid Editorial Address: School of Soci- and Gender and Bureaucracy (Oxford: developing a sociological imagina- ology, University College Dublin, Blackwell, 1992) which she edited with tion. Anne was also an extremely Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Mike Savage. good citizen often taking on more Tel. +353-1-706 8504; then her fair share of administrative Fax: +353-1-706 1125. I first met Anne in 1986 and our paths responsibility and doing a great deal of E-mail: [email protected] crossed regularly at BSA and Medical external examining - including being Sociology Conferences, we became an ‘A’ level examiner for some years. Associate Editor: Dr Katie Liston, closer in the mid nineties and as well She organised many conferences and Department of Sport and Exercise as being a wonderful friend she was summer schools both in the UK and Sciences, University of Chester, an extremely stimulating sociological overseas. We were both members of the Parkgate Road, Chester CH1 4BJ, companion – we shared an interest in organising committee for the British United Kingdom. the sociology of the body and a com- Sociological Association Conference Tel. + 44-1244 513430; Fax: +44- mitment to its grounding in a feminist held in Glasgow in 1999. She was a 1244 392889 understanding of gendered bodies as joy to work with, always ensuring that E-mail: [email protected] against a tendency for increasingly free we were on track and most importantly floating theorisations. Around this time that our ideas were helped along by Contributions should preferably be Anne wrote two excellent papers, one, good food and wine. This conference e-mailed to the Editor in the form of with Alex Hughes, ‘Feminism and the produced a collection edited by John MS Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf) or matter of bodies: from de Beauvoir to Eldridge, et al, eds For Sociology: and plain text (.txt) files. Do not use Butler’, published in Body and Society Legacies and Prospects (Durham: embedded footnotes. Hard copy is in 1997, and the second ‘Whose body Sociology Press, 2000). accepted reluctantly. matters? Feminist sociology and the corporeal turn in sociology and femi- Anne’s health began to fail early in © 2007, Norbert Elias Stichting, J.J. nism’, published in 2000, also in Body 2003, after she had only been at Leices- Viottastraat 13, 1071 JM Amster- and Society. Anne worked well alone ter for 18 months; despite this I’m sure dam, Netherlands. but she was also an excellent collabora- that she has left a lasting and positive tor and her last and greatest writing col- impression on her colleagues in the Graphic Design and Desktop Pub- laboration was with Barbara Marshall Sociology Department and in the wider lishing: Annette van de Sluis. from Trent University in Canada. They University. She was a special person, Printed by MultiCopy, worked together with obvious pleasure someone who could light up a room Weesperstraat 65, and produced amongst other things an with both her smile and her intellect. Amsterdam. excellent book Engendering the Social: She is a great loss to her sister, to her feminist encounters with sociological friends and colleagues and also to soci- Figurations is distributed free of theory, co-authored with Barbara L. ology and the academic community charge on request to researchers, Marshall (Maidenhead: Open Univer- more generally. Up until a few months institutes or libraries. To be added sity Press, 2004). Anne was not only a before her death Anne was working to the mailing list, please write to theorist, but also undertook empirical on her next monograph – Engendering Saskia Visser, Secretary, Norbert research. One example was a study Embodiment – which sadly she will Elias Foundation, J.J. Viottastraat of new forms of work in the service never finish. However, some of her 13, 1071 JM Amsterdam, sector, with colleagues at Strathclyde, friends and colleagues are planning a The Netherlands. funded by the ESRC, in the course of memorial conference and an edited col- which she developed the concept of lection which we hope will include an ‘aesthetic labour’. More recently she extract from her manuscript. was developing a research proposal, on the cultural economy of interior design, Sue Scott with a colleague at Leicester, Jennifer Keele University Smith [wife of Joe Maguire, a familiar name in the pages of Figurations]. Anne also had strong international links, primarily in Europe and espe-

24 Figurations Issue No.27 June 2007