Norbert Elias and Women: Life, Texts and New Perspectives on Gender Issues (original) (raw)
Related papers
Norbert Elias gender strategies
Norbert Elias conceptualized social inequality as a result of shift in relative social forces of individuals in figurations, in which framework he also viewed the inequality between men and women. In this paper I examine the main thesis of what could be named Elias's gender sociology: firstly, men and women use different strategies in their striving for an increase in relative power depending on their social position, and secondly, one of the most effective strategies which may be successfully used by the weaker party in order to change the distribution of power between the sexes is redefining the arsenal of cultural weapons used in this struggle. The antagonism between men and women trying to draw as much power as possible to themselves in the zero-sum social game can become very fierce, especially if the use of physical violence is legitimized on a respective level of civilization. On the other hand, according to Elias's basic theoretical assumptions all individuals in a figuration are interrelated and interdependent, which restrains direct violence as well as suppresses radical liberation tendencies. This makes it easier for women to engage in strategies of coping with oppression on institutional, symbolic and proxemic level, which are discussed in the final part of the paper.
Norbert Elias, Catherine Deneuve and Gender Equality
booksandideas.net, 2019
In October 2017, the "Weinstein" affair erupted. The producer, a key figure in the Hollywood movie industry, was accused of sexual harassment by numerous female actors. Immediately afterwards, thousands of women stated that they too had suffered violence at the hands of men. Using social networks and the #MeToo and French equivalent #balancetonporc ("squeal on your pig") hashtags, the movement encouraging women to speak out took on considerable scope. On 9th January 2018, an open letter published in Le Monde and signed by 100 women, including Catherine Deneuve, put the cat among the pigeons. The signatories defended men's "freedom to bother" as a condition of sexual freedom, condemning the return to a moral order based, like the institution of marriage, on explicit consent. Others criticised the return of an unprecedented form of censorship of artistic productions. Those who had criticised the #MeToo and #balancetonporc movements were then, to varying degrees, accused of trying to silence a cry that had at last been heard, and of playing into the hands of male domination. To our knowledge, the sociology of Norbert Elias (b. Wrocław 1897, d. Amsterdam 1990) has not yet been used to clarify such recent events and controversies. Nevertheless, it allows us to reset the coordinates of the debate by linking—without confusing—the two questions of the development of inequality between men and women, and what Elias called the "civilising process" of manners. The latter expression denotes a gradual, widespread refinement of behaviours based on a certain repression of feelings and impulses, particularly those that are aggressive. First imposed by particular social conditions, this control becomes internalised and then unconscious. Whether or not one externalises or suppresses one's own violence thus depends on what one permits oneself according to the position one occupies in a social figuration that remains characterised by more or less unequal relations of mutual dependence between individuals and the groups they form. Elias thus insisted on the centrality of power relations and the need to provide historical context, since it is clear that relations between groups evolve. Finally, he indicated that the "controlled decontrolling of controls"—to which sexual liberation and its expression are related—presupposes a high degree of self-control and restraint. From this perspective, as much as it is "progress" (towards greater equality) rather than a regression (towards a repressive moral order), the #MeToo movement and its aftermath revealed the fragile nature of normative codes that still need to be reasserted.
The Reception of Norbert Elias's Work within the UK
While Elias has become a more influential sociologist worldwide, his reception in the UK remains patchy. To explore the enigma of his reception, this research seeks for a deeper understanding of the social intellectual and institutional processes that have impacted on his reception in the UK. The research was carried out by qualitative interviews. 11 Eliasians scholars participated in various ways including face-to-face, online and email interview. Results from interview data show the reception of Elias’s work in the UK encompasses three phases. The first is the process of how Eliasian sociologists came to Elias is accidental, which was mainly influenced by personal relationship, teaching, and Elias’s work and research. The second phase is the resistance on uniqueness and outsidership by the first generation of Eliasians has hindered his reception in the UK. The final phase is that adaptations and adjustments made by the new generation of Eliasians have contributed to a new understanding of Elias’s work within British sociology context. It shows the characteristics of British sociology in less influence in intellectual figures, disputed debates on a variety of topics and significance of empirical research. Taking those together, the research gaps the overstatement on the differences between Elias’s sociology and mainstream sociology in literature. The research provides a way of understanding Elias’s reception in the UK by a secondary type of a combination of Elias’s work and British sociology tradition.
Sociologica, 2011
Licenza d'uso L'articoloè messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb,è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. 's work has long been overshadowed in its value as sociological theory by readings that focused on the most superficial and methodologically showy aspects of his most important research, The Civilizing Process. To give just one example, Berthelot writes at the conclusion of his The construction of sociology: "What didn't I talk about in this book? [...] I left out Edward Wilson's socio-biology (1929 -) and the historical sociology which has boosted Norbert Elias's work [...] As for historical sociology (in some ways a reaction to the "anti-historicist anathemas" of structuralism and Popper's epistemology) I do not think it harms the dignity of sociology, and even of history, to say that this is history, albeit with broader concepts than usual, but still history " [Berthelot 2005, 117]. It seems that Elias cannot get rid of a constant refrain: too sociologist for historians and too historian for sociologists. Yet if this volume -the sixteenth of the collected works being published by the Norbert Elias Foundation at UCD Press -has a main theme, it is that of sociology's field and its epistemological and methodological status. And (as the subtitle chosen by the editors suggests) its relation to the humanities. The 28 essays contained in the volume (at least half of them published in English for the first time and others practically unknown), cover very different issues. They were mostly written in the most fertile period of the author's publishing activity -that following his retirement -although there are also some older texts, reflecting among other things, the constant threads that accompany questions of his prolific and long-lasting cognitive science. Like previous volumes in the series, this one has been very carefully edited and annotated to improve the readability of the texts.
In this interview, Stephen Mennell tells the story behind the publication of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias (UCD Press), and reflects on some aspects of Elias’s life and work, such as Marx’s influence on Elias, and Elias’s contribution to Group Analysis. In addition, Mennell shares his memories of Robert Bellah, lists some of his favourite books, and offers some advice to aspiring sociologists. The interview was conducted in Moscow in November 2013, and was subsequently revised and annotated by Professor Mennell.
1998
This book locates Elias's work clearly within the development of sociology and also against the background of current debates. Between the 1930s and the 1980s he developed a unique approach to social theory which is now beginning to take root in contemporary social research and theory. Since the translation of his work into English began to accelerate in the 1980s, a growing number of books and articles on topics including health, sexuality, crime, national and ethnic identity, femininity and globalization, in a variety of disciplines, make positive reference to Elias as an authority on the history of emotions, identity, violence, the body and state formation.
Historical Sociology, Historická Sociologie, 2017
This study is a modest contribution to the reception of Norbert Elias, one of the giants of 20th-century sociology. The paper's overriding question concerns the relevance of the Eliasian big-picture narrative: whether the theory of civilization is sufficient to explain this process or is it possible to include complementary factors? It will be argued that while Norbert Elias convincingly explores several key elements of the Western civilizing process, he does not ascribe due importance to the long-term transformation of the intimate sphere. The paper claims that, from the 17th century onwards, the centre of family-life has shifted from paternal authority to maternal care and psychological harmonization. Hence, it is justifiable to regard the shift of the power balance within the family as a key explanatory factor of the civilizing process.
Norbert Elias: A proposed intellectual portrait for the 20th anniversary of his passing (1990-2010)
Catalan Social Sciences Review 2012 http://www.raco.cat/index.php/CSSR/article/view/251771, 2012
In the summer of 1990, one of the most eminent sociologists of the 20th century, the German Norbert Elias, died in Amsterdam. His profoundly interwoven life and work are a reflection of the complexity the light and shade of the past century. With this proposed intellectual portrait on the 20th anniversary of his death, we are attempting offer a snapshot a figure and a body of work which, because of its magnitude and originality, undoubtedly deserves to be considered among the most important in sociology. As the thread running through this portrait, we propose a combination of the physical and symbolic places, spaces and people, events and connections that marked a long life and academic career which was little known and largely unrecognised until his later years. It is a career which unquestionably constitutes one of the most outstanding and attractive legacies that the sociology of the past century has passed on to new generations of social science researchers.
Apropos “The Collected Works of Norbert Elias”. An Interview with Stephen J. Mennell
Sociologica
Ruben Flores: What was it like to edit the eighteen volumes of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias in English? Stephen J. Mennell: Well-a lot of work! I think I need to explain a lot about the background to this enormous project. In the 1970s and 1980s, Elias had become good friends with Siegfried Unseld, the famous head of Suhrkamp, the great German publishers. As a result, Suhrkamp published all of Elias's books from then onwards. And, after his death, they agreed to bring out revised scholarly editions of all of Elias's work, including translations of the books and essays that Elias had written in English. The resulting Gesammelte Schriften runs to nineteen volumes-they included a volume of Elias's poetry too, which we decided could not be translated into English. That explains why there is one fewer volume in the English series. 1 x This interview took place in the context of the International Research Seminar Series at the School of Sociology of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. Special thanks to Professor Stephen Mennell, who not only accepted to be interviewed, but also kindly added footnotes to the interview text.