Norbert Elias

This book provides a valuable insight into the work and life of Norber Elias - one of the most important social thinkers of the twentieth century. It includes an extended interview with Elias and an autobiographical account which demonstrates the connection between the development of his theories and life experience.

Now available in paperback, Mozart is a brilliant study of the great composer's life and creative genius, written by one of the most important social thinkers of our time. In Mozart, Elias provides insight into this case of tragic conflict between personal creativity and the tastes of a society which sought to control it.

In The Symbol Theory, Norbert Elias draws together three central themes. At the first level the book is concerned with symbols in relation to language, knowing and thinking. Secondly, Elias stresses that symbols are also tangible sound-patterns of human communication, made possible by the evolutionary biological precondition of human vocal apparatus. At a third level, the book addresses theoretical issues about the ontological status of knowledge, moving beyond traditional philosophical dualisms such as subject/object and idealism/materialism. The bulk of The Symbol Theory was published in Vol 6, issues 2, 3 and 4 of Theory, Culture & Society.

What is Sociology? presents in concise and provocative form the major ideas of a seminal thinker whose work-spanning more than four decades-is only now gaining the recognition here it has long had in Germany and France. Unlike other post-war sociologists, Norbert Elias has always held the concept of historical development among his central concerns; his dynamic theories of the evolution of modern man have remedied the historical and epistemological shortcomings of structualism and ethno-methodology. What is Sociology? refines the arguments that were first found in Elias' massive work on the civilizing process, in which he formulated his major assertions about the interdependence of the making of modern man and modern society. It is Elias' contention that changes in personality structure-embodied in phenomena ranging from table manners and hygiene habits to rites of punishment and courtly love-inevitably reflect and mould patterns of control generated by new political and social instututions. Elias' rejection of a dichotomy between individual and society, and his use of psychoanalysis, political theory, and social history, help restore a fullness of resource to sociology.