18 Newsletter of the Norbert Elias Foundation FROM THE NORBERT ELIAS FOUNDATION Third Norbert Elias Amalfi Prize 2003 In order to nominate an author’s first book for the award, please send the enclosed form to The Norbert Elias Foundation, in co-operation with the Academic Committee of the European Amalfi Prize for Saskia Visser Sociology and Social Sciences, announces the Third Secretary, Norbert Elias Foundation European Prize dedicated to Norbert Elias. The Prize J.J. Viottastraat 13 consists in a sum of €1000 and it will be awarded to a 1071 JM Amsterdam significantfirst work by a European author published in The Netherlands Europe between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2002. In the case of books written in the ‘smaller’ European lan- The Prize is awarded ‘in commemoration of the sociolo- guages, please also include a brief summary in English. gist Norbert Elias (1897–1990), whose writings, at once theoretical and empirical, boldly crossed disciplinary The Foundation’s new Website boundaries in the social sciences to develop a long-term perspective on the patterns of interdependence which As many readers will have discovered, Norbert Elias human beings weave together’. Norbert Elias was Foundation’s former website proved unreliable, and we himself the first recipient of the European Amalfi Prize decided to discontinue it. Saskia Visser has spent much for his book Die Gesellschaft der Individuen. Now the of her time in 2002 working with consultants to create Norbert Elias Prize is intended to draw attention to a a greatly improved and more ambitious website. By the promising young European scholar who has published time you receive this issue − or certainly very shortly a first book in sociology or a related discipline. The after that − you should be able to find us once more at a first Norbert Elias Prize was awarded in 1999 to David new address: Lepoutre for his book Coeur de banlieue and the second www.norberteliasfoundation.nl in 2001 to Wilbert van Vree for Meetings, Manners and Civilisation. We shall include a description of the website’s contents in Figurations 19. THE ELIAS COLLECTED The Frühschriften comprise minor from the time when he was member WORKS texts and academic manuscripts writ- of the famous Zionist ‘Blau−Weiss’ Two more volumes of the Gesammelte ten before the magnum opus, Über den group in Breslau, which was part of Schriften are published: Prozess der Zivilisation. Not included the German youth movement. In these Norbert Elias, Frühschriften (Col- in this volume, but forthcoming in a texts, we find Elias a sociologist of lected Works in German, Volume I). later one, is the text of Elias’s Frank- knowledge right from the beginning. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002. 191 pp. furt Habilitationsschrift, Die höfische Everything, so he teaches in the small ISBN: 3-518-58317-4 Gesellschaft. The earliest writings stem text ‘Vom Sehen in der Natur’, is Issue No.18 December 2002 Figurations 1 dependent of time and cultural mean- Oppenheimer. The title is telling: it with the 1976 Introduction, was trans- ing. In his doctoral thesis, published points to what questions the exiles of lated into German by Michael Schröter, here for the first time, he tried to come the 1930s were asking. and Elias made a further addition to to grips with the ahistorical discipline the text. Writing now in German, Elias of philosophy. His teacher Richard Reinhard Blomert returned to the general principles of Hönigswald was not amused and his École des Hautes Études en Sciences established–outsider relations in an challenge cost Elias the philosophical Sociales, Paris essay on what the called the ‘Maycomb career to which he had thitherto been Model’, published in the first German attracted. After a short interlude when Note: The following essays from the edition in 1990. This was not included he tried to earn his living as freelance Frühschriften volume are already avail- in revised English edition, and it is still writer (see the ‘Anekdoten’ reprinted able in English translation: not available in English translation. here from the Berliner Illustrierte Zei- tung), he turned to Heidelberg, where ‘On the Sociology of German Anti- ‘Further Facets of Established–Outsider he found his scientific destiny in the Semitism’, Journal of Classical Sociol- Relationships: The Maycomb Model’, new discipline of sociology. Working ogy 1 (2) 2001: 219–25 was written in the last months of with Alfred Weber (see ‘Zur Entstehung Elias’s life, in May–June 1990. In it, as der modernen Naturwissenschaften’ in In The Norbert Elias Reader: A Bio- Michael Schröter has reported and as I this volume) and strongly influenced graphical Selection (eds J. Goudsblom remember it ‘from the horse’s mouth’, by Max Weber and Karl Mannheim and S.J. Mennell, Oxford: Blackwell, Elias finally completed his old plan of he found his own way, as we can trace 1998): using Harper Lee’s famous book To through the texts collected here, includ- ‘Idea and Individual’ (brief except from Kill a Mocking Bird (1960), on the rela- ing his contributions to the Soziolo- Elias’s Breslau DrPhil dissertation), pp. tionship between Negroes and Whites gentag 1928, and ‘Zur Soziologie des 5–7 in Maycomb, Alabama, as another deutschen Antisemitismus’ in 1929 ‘On Primitive Art’, pp. 8–11 paradigmatic model of established–out- (see Figurations 9). In his sketch ‘“Die ‘The Expulsion of the Huguenots from sider relationships. This served as a Wolke” oder “Politik als Wissenschaft”, France’, pp. 18–25 stepping stone toward broadening the frei nach Aristophanes’, written in ‘The Kitsch Style and the Age of implications of his English study to all honour of Karl Mannheim when he left Kitsch’, pp. 26–35 unequal relationships. Other pointers to Heidelberg, he shows a good measure this – besides the contents of this new of irony. essay itself – are the deletion of the Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson, two definite articles in the book’s title Just after he had completed the manu- Etablierte und Außenseiter (Collected (Etablierte und Außenseiter instead of script of Die höfische Gesellschaft in Works in German, Volume IV). Frank- The Established and the Outsiders) and 1933 he had to leave Frankfurt and fled furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002. 325 pp. the omission of the original subtitle of to Paris. From the French period we ISBN: 3-518-58318-2. the book ‘A Sociological Enquiry into have two texts. ‘Kitschstil und Community Problems’. An earlier step Kitschzeitalter’, a piece on art and Responsibility for this volume of the in this direction had been his ‘Theoreti- society in history, dealing with the new standard edition in German of the cal essay on established and outsider delicate question of taste and social works of Norbert Elias was taken on relations’, written in 1976 for the class. Here he creates the term ‘good behalf of the Editorial Board by Nico translation of the book into the Dutch society’ as a taste setting class. It was Wilterdink. Not untypically, the his- language. At the time, in discussions of originally intended for publication in tory of the book is a little complicated. these relationships and of such topics the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, but The Established and the Outsiders as Black Power, Elias often referred when Horkheimer declined it, it was was originally written in English, and to Harper Lee’s novel, but it did not published in Die Sammlung edited by published in 1965 by Frank Cass, surface in the ‘theoretical essay’ (which Klaus Mann. The last text of this col- London. The substance of the book is is also included in the new German lection is ‘Die Vertreibung der Hugen- an empirical study of the tensions and edition). The translation of this book otten aus Frankreich’. It shows the power balance between working-class into the German language offered him other side of Louis XIV, the ugly face neighbourhoods near Leicester. Elias’s another chance to use this novel as a of an ageing monarch, who became co-author, John Scotson, as a teacher peg in showing that so-called ‘race rela- religious and tried to expel the Prot- and youth club leader, was intimately tions’ are understood far more properly estants from France for the sake of familiar with the area. Later, as an as established–outsider relationships. cultural homogeneity. It is a text that introduction to the Dutch translation of This is how the essay on ‘Further has to be read as commentary to the the book published in 1976, Elias wrote Facets’ or ‘The Maycomb Model’ origi- racist terror in Germany and shows the a substantial new introduction, entitled nated (for further details, see Schröter’s brute treatment of the marginalised. ‘A theoretical essay on established Erfahrungen mit Norbert Elias, Frank- It was published in a refugee journal, and outsider relations’, but this text furt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1997: 251−2, Der Ausweg, published by a Jewish remained unpublished in English until 321). Its characteristic opening sen- reform movement, called ‘Renouveau’, the revised edition from Sage in 1996. tences are: ‘Inequalities between groups with prominent contributors like Franz Later still, the original book, together and individuals belong to the recurring 2 Figurations Issue No.18 December 2002 Issue No.18 December 2002 Figurations 3 characteristics of human societies. Why ing point that, while from about 1965 interwoven in the article. The two other they are, is an open question.’ onwards Elias rarely made detailed studies were never published in English reference to earlier writers (and he journals (one of them was published Cas Wouters has often been criticised for that), this in a Dutch journal but it received no Amsterdam essay shows that earlier in his career he international attention).