Explaining Modern Social Reality

Few thinkers have contributed more to the understanding of modern civilization than Norbert Elias. Given the significance and relevance of his ideas in explaining social reality, this book seeks to make his complex concepts more accessible. A biographical account of his life (1897-1990) facilitates the comprehension of Elias’s concepts. Elias’s most famous work, “The Civilizing Process”, is the focus of this discussion of his theoretical frameworks, with class structure, the patterns of behavior, and the role of the state as key factors. The book also dedicates special treatment to figurational sociology, an important research field linked especially to Elias.

Elias was an innovator. He criticized accepted concepts and introduced numerous new constructs (habitus is perhaps the best known) discussed in this book. Respective chapters review Elias’s theory of knowledge, the concept of de-civilization—with an emphasis on violence, his analysis of nations and nationalism, and emotions—and his focus on shame.

Elias borrowed ideas from iconic figures in philosophy and the social sciences such as Edmund Husserl, Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and Talcott Parsons. This book describes the characteristic way Elias interprets them. The book concludes with an overview of the most significant critiques of Norbert Elias's work.