Excitement processes : Norbert Elias's unpublished works on sports, leisure, body, culture

Description

The book focuses on major aspects of Norbert Elias's social theory through research on supposed “minor” topics, such as manners, sports, leisure and cultural practices. While many of his publications became essential for scholars in the different disciplines concerned, the development of the figurational approach towards these fields was not always completed. The edited volume picks up some lose ends by including archive manuscripts by Elias on the genesis of sport, developments of cultural practices, and the sociology of the body, which are published here for the very first time. Based on critical reviews of these texts, international experts show how the new material adds up to Elias’s oeuvre and how it can be fruitfully applied to current research. Front Matter....Pages I-IX Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Reconstructing Elias’s Work on Leisure, Sports and the Body....Pages 3-20 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 Spontaneity and Self-consciousness....Pages 23-76 Notice on Spontaneity and Self-consciousness: Elias’s Early Approach to Leisure Activities....Pages 77-94 Civilization, Happiness and the Thinking Millipede: A Commentary on Norbert Elias’s Spontaneity and Self-consciousness ....Pages 95-117 Front Matter....Pages 119-119 Fragments on Sportisation....Pages 121-136 Completing Sportisation: Elias on the Diffusion and Differentiation of Sport in ‘Modern’ Society....Pages 137-152 Elias on the Development of Modern Sport: Empirical Error, Interpretive Insight and Conceptual Clarification....Pages 153-169 Front Matter....Pages 171-171 Boxing and Duelling....Pages 173-215 Boxing and Duelling: Critical Remarks on Elias on Violence and State-Formation from a Historical Perspective....Pages 217-233 Class Relations and the Development of Boxing: Norbert Elias on Sportisation Processes in England and France....Pages 235-254 Revisiting Duelling and Fencing in the Sociology of Norbert Elias....Pages 255-273 Front Matter....Pages 275-275 The ‘Rediscovery’ of the Body....Pages 277-285 Elias’s Contribution to the Sociology of the Body: The Rediscovery of the Hinge....Pages 287-303 Front Matter....Pages 305-305 Conclusion....Pages 307-314 Back Matter....Pages 315-322