Handing over the Torch: Intergenerational Processes in Figurational Sociology

Abstract

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:

Qualitative Secondary Analysis: Building Longitudinal Samples to Understand Men’s Generational Identities in Low Income Contexts

“…The originating team members were similarly generous with their time and reflections. It is clear that we have been working in a community of researchers, where the aim has been to ‘hand on the torch’ (Elias, 1992; Gabriel and Mennell, 2011).…”

Figurational sociology and the rhetoric of post-philosophy

“…Such a wilful forgetting of philosophy, moreover, is hardly in keeping with figurational sociology's emphatic insistence upon the intergenerational processes of knowledge production and transmission (see also Elias, 1977: 67, c.f. Korte, 2001: 18 andGabriel andMennell, 2011). What I have been trying to suggest throughout this article is that figurational sociology's opposition to philosophy requires re-visitation.…”

“…(Kilminster, 2002: 4)Once we understand any given work as a response to the dilemmas and opportunities experienced by its author and, by extension, by a broader figuration of interdependent human beings, so the sociology of knowledge’s argument goes, we gain much greater insight into it than we would have done by abstracting it from that context and engaging with it upon textual terms alone. Along these lines, Kilminster has developed his sociology of figurational sociology’s opposition to philosophy (see also Goudsblom, 1987; and Gabriel and Mennell, 2011 on the sociology of figurational sociology) by accounting for the place of ‘Idea and Individual’ within its overall development, along much the same lines that Elias had previously developed his sociology of courtly romantic literature (2005), of Las Meninas (1987), of Mozart (1993), and of many other things besides. 3…”

“…Once we understand any given work as a response to the dilemmas and opportunities experienced by its author and, by extension, by a broader figuration of interdependent human beings, so the sociology of knowledge's argument goes, we gain much greater insight into it than we would have done by abstracting it from that context and engaging with it upon textual terms alone. Along these lines, Kilminster has developed his sociology of figurational sociology's opposition to philosophy (see also Goudsblom, 1987;and Gabriel and Mennell, 2011 Kant's moral philosophy is evidently rooted in a sense of duty to others (Kant, 1996a(Kant, , 1996b(Kant, , 1996c. Epistemologically, the claim also makes no sense when we realize, following the previous section, that Idea and Individual can be understood as a non-individualist instance of neo-Kantianism.…”

Documents and detachment in the figurational sociology of sport

“…Above all, in light of the present debate, they write narratives that are hardly exercises in induction or indeed in pure empiricism. (Calhoun, 1998: 855) Tough we do not self-identify as 'historians', we engaged with newspaper and organisational archives informed and guided by an existing theoretical framework, or what Elias often refers to as a 'fund of social knowledge' passed down intergenerationally producing a chain of interdependence linking researchers over many decades and even centuries (see Gabriel and Mennell, 2011). When we look at relations between players on the eld, or between players and spectators, and between team managers and organisational functionaries within the Gaelic Athletic Association we have the concepts of guration and habitus at our disposal.…”