In this paper, we argue that Norbert Elias's concept of survival unit is a distinctive part of the development of his figurational sociology and one of the most consistent contributions to relational thinking. The survival unit is a particular form of figuration which provides security and the material foundations for life such as food and shelter. Every human being is born into a survival unit. This unit is a relational concept which cannot be conceived outside a relationship with other survival units.By introducing the concept of survival unit Elias overcomes one of the key problems in relational sociology: how to demarcate primary social relations. Elias argues that human societies from very early on have been divided into survival units. These survival units are demarcated and constituted in their relationship to other survival units. Consequently, their boundaries are generated in a confrontation with other survival units.This relationship can be peaceful or conflict ridden but in the last resort it can end with violent confrontation. Only the survival unit with the ability to defend a domain of sovereignty will survive. This observation places Elias among the few sociologists with an understanding of the role of warfare in social relationships.
This collection of essays is designed to show how the various concepts of Norbert Elias's writings fi t together in an overall vision for sociology, and how this has come to inspire the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary research tradition of 'fi gurational' sociology. In this introduction, we focus on a somewhat neglected aspect of Elias's work, the concept of generation. We explore his role as a teacher, passing the torch to a fi rst generation of scholars, mainly in Europe, examining his generosity to younger colleagues as well as some of his well-known foibles. We then trace his infl uence in the emergence of a second generation that is more far-fl ung, both internationally and across disciplines.For over four decades or almost half his life, Norbert Elias lived in Britain and strove to make his presence felt within British sociology, but with extremely limited success. Anecdotal evidence suggests that among his fellow sociologists in the post-war period he was commonly regarded as an eccentric voice or even as a Victorian throwback. 1 Professional sociologists at that time paid much more attention to the views of Talcott Parsons or of positivist philosophers such as Karl Popper, against both of whom Elias railed (2000 [1969], 2009a [1985], 2009b [1974]). At the time, very few people in Britain (or elsewhere) appreciated 2 that Elias was formulating and advocating a fundamental theoretical basis -a theoretical-empirical synthesis -for the social sciences that was quite as comprehensive as, but also in most respects antithetical to, the then-dominant structural functionalism propagated from Harvard. No sociological theorist has since attained the international dominance of the discipline that Parsons did, nor is it likely that anyone else will do so. Yet, in retrospect, it seems likely that the infl uence of Elias, that voice crying in the wilderness, will long outlast that of Parsons. 3 How could that have happened?Norbert Elias himself was deeply ambivalent about those who would follow in his own footsteps and about the development of a 'school' of sociology based on processual thinking. A favourite image he used in his writings and conversations was the torch-race, 4 used to convey the intergenerational process in the creation and transmission of knowledge:
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