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This article explores the idea of Howard S. Becker as organisational theorist. It examines some of the principal conceptual imagery in Becker's work and considers the significance of this imagery for how organisations are 'seen' (conceptualised) and 'looked at' (analysed). To this end, a critical comparison of Becker's concept of world and Bourdieu's concept of field is undertaken. By his own admission, Becker recognises that some of his key studies—of art worlds, jazz musicians, educational environments and so forth—might be recast as centrally 'about organisations'. However, it is argued that Becker is something of an 'unwilling' organisational theorist; not in the sense that he avoids or is ignorant of the conceptual debates invoked by that term, but in as much as formal theory without object is profoundly at odds with key aspects of his sociological practice. Accordingly, this article centrally considers how Becker has consistently 'looked elsewhere' in much of his work. 'Looking elsewhere', it is proposed, involves reframing key conceptual and methodological problems such that they are amenable to research. It also involves an often radical rejection of the framing of certain kinds of problem, points towards alternative modes of analysis and investigation and entails the development of conceptual imagery expressly intended to avoid the restrictions and confinement of now dominant forms of analytical convention.

Over the last decade and a half there has emerged growing interest in the concept of "emotional intelligence" (henceforth EI), particularly within literature relating to occupational psychology, leadership, human resource management, and training. This paper considers the rise of EI as a managerial discourse and seeks to make sense of it, first in relation to existing accounts of emotion at work, and subsequently through utilising the analytical possibilities presented by the work of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. The case of EI is employed here as a concrete empirical site within which to explore potential complementarities between the analyses of Elias and Foucault, in particular around Elias's arguments concerning the changing character of the social constraint towards self restraint, and Foucault's discussion of power/knowledge and governmentality. EI is found to enshrine a more general move towards greater emotional possibility and discretion both within the workplace and beyond — an ostensible emancipation of emotions from corporate attempts to script the management and display of employee feelings. However, it is argued that rather than offering a simple liberation of our emotional selves, EI presents demands for a heightened emotional reflexivity concerning what is emotionally appropriate at work and beyond. As such, EI involves both greater emotional "freedom" plus a proliferation of new modalities of emotional control, albeit based now on the expression of feelings as much as their repression. Ultimately, these seemingly paradoxical aspects of EI serve to highlight an important point of inter-section in the work of Elias and Foucault around their conceptualisations of power, selfhood, and the shifting character of social control.

The research tradition has arisen from a specific set of historical, disciplinary and institutional conditions. The very emergence of 'documentation' is predicated upon a set of long-term processes in which humans have developed the capacity to use symbols and store knowledge such that it can be exchanged and inter-generationally transmitted. This work discusses the history, development and current debates alive in the field

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book explores the interplay between the making of Elias as a sociologist and the development of his core ideas relating to figurations, interdependence, and civilising processes. Focusing on the relevance of Elias's work for current debates within sociology, the authors centrally consider his contributions to the sociology of knowledge and methodology. Dunning and Hughes locate the work of Elias within a discussion of the crisis of sociology as a subject, and compare his figurational approach with the approaches of three major figures in modern sociology: Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. This highly readable and engaging book will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociological theory and methods.

Most explanations that have sought to understand the "causes" of Brexit have tended to focus on the idea of a "left-behind" white working class who were exercising a protest against a liberal elite. Other approaches have cited the roles played by a broader demographic in Britain, or have identified "cleavages" between "nationalist" and "cosmopolitan" normative codes. However, such approaches typically fail to address the complexities of longer-term social processes which have been fundamental to Brexit. The analytical models used to explain these cleavages have tended to conceptualise the relationships between the two codes as irreconcilable opposites, rather than as shifting balances in the context of changing social conditions. In this paper, we focus upon understanding Brexit as part of a set of longer-term developments in human figurations involving moves towards greater integration with concurrent countervailing disintegrative pressures. These shifting patterns of integration and disintegration involve changes of habitus, balances of power (such as functional democratisation), and expanding and retracting spans of emotional identification. The relationship these processes have to early nation-state formation in Europe are critical, exposing how the dualisms in national codes have been fundamental to the formation of national identities since the Renaissance. Our central argument is developments in these areas of human interdependence have contributed to recent centripetal shifts towards more nationalistic normative codes, and the resulting cleavages being witnessed in Europe, the United States, and indeed, across the world. We explore these shifting relational dynamics and show how a longer-term developmental approach helps to move the debate beyond present-centred and static considerations.

Most explanations that have sought to understand the "causes" of Brexit have tended to focus on the idea of a "left-behind" white working class who were exercising a protest against a liberal elite. Other approaches have cited the roles played by a broader demographic in Britain, or have identified "cleavages" between "nationalist" and "cosmopolitan" normative codes. However, such approaches typically fail to address the complexities of longer-term social processes which have been fundamental to Brexit. The analytical models used to explain these cleavages have tended to conceptualise the relationships between the two codes as irreconcilable opposites, rather than as shifting balances in the context of changing social conditions. In this paper, we focus upon understanding Brexit as part of a set of longer-term developments in human figurations involving moves towards greater integration with concurrent countervailing disintegrative pressures. These shifting patterns of integration and disintegration involve changes of habitus, balances of power (such as functional democratisation), and expanding and retracting spans of emotional identification. The relationship these processes have to early nation-state formation in Europe are critical, exposing how the dualisms in national codes have been fundamental to the formation of national identities since the Renaissance. Our central argument is developments in these areas of human interdependence have contributed to recent centripetal shifts towards more nationalistic normative codes, and the resulting cleavages being witnessed in Europe, the United States, and indeed, across the world. We explore these shifting relational dynamics and show how a longer-term developmental approach helps to move the debate beyond present-centred and static considerations.

In the introduction to this HSR Special Issue we provide an exposition and overview of Elias and Scotson's Established and Outsiders, seeking to identify the empirical and conceptual significance of the relational model of inter-group tensions contained therein. Our core argument is that Elias and Scotson wrote in the historical context of a British intellectual zeitgeist in which a preoccupation with 'established' groups followed from proto-Marxist political/macro-sociological concerns with the reproduction of social elites; and an engagement with 'outsiders', which followed from an ascendant micro-sociological concern with sub-cultural and 'deviant' groups who defined themselves in opposition to a dominant mainstream. Elias and Scotson's contribution, viewed in this vein, was to provide a radically relational theoretical-empirical model which synthesised micro, meso and macro sociological concerns with social power dynamics into a unified synthetic scheme. We propose that while such a model is entirely consistent with the broader conceptual architecture of Elias's approach, it is important also to recognise the not insignificant influence of Scotson's empirical work in informing the specific concerns of their study. We further reflect upon the origins of the study and its implications for our more general methodological questions relating to undertaking 'figurational analysis' in the context of historical social research.

In the introduction to this HSR Special Issue we provide an exposition and over-view of Elias and Scotson's Established and Outsiders, seeking to identify the empirical and conceptual significance of the relational model of inter-group tensions contained therein. Our core argument is that Elias and Scotson wrote in the historical context of a British intellectual zeitgeist in which a preoccupation with 'established' groups followed from proto-Marxist political/macro-sociological concerns with the reproduction of social elites; and an engagement with 'outsiders', which followed from an ascendant micro-sociological concern with sub-cultural and 'deviant' groups who defined themselves in opposition to a dominant mainstream. Elias and Scotson's contribution, viewed in this vein, was to provide a radically relational theoretical-empirical model which synthesised micro, meso and macro sociological concerns with social power dynamics into a unified synthetic scheme. We propose that while such a model is entirely consistent with the broader conceptual architecture of Elias's approach, it is important also to recognise the not insignificant influence of Scotson's empirical work in informing the specific concerns of their study. We further reflect upon the origins of the study and its implications for our more general methodological questions relating to undertaking 'figurational analysis' in the context of historical social research.

This paper explores the somewhat mixed reception of Elias's work as, in part, understandable in terms of Elias's transgression of a dominant code of 'sociological etiquette' that I have here called the 'habits of good sociology'. I explore a number of key 'habits', which include: empirical legitimacy, political alignment, and relativistic egalitarianism which have arguably come to dominate the discipline in recent years. I argue that Elias's ambition to develop a central theory falls foul of a prevailing sentiment in which no single perspective should be elevated over and above any other, and where epistemic relativism has become something of a creed in the teaching of sociology. In relation to this, I will explore the model of sociological practice developed in Elias's work and suggest that it is this model of the sociological endeavour – one in which considerable sociological ambition is combined with empirical humility (i.e. that handkerchiefs might be as important as, say, economic relationships) – that remains an important component of his intellectual legacy. Ultimately, my contention is that while it is probably unrealistic in the current intellectual climate to expect Elias's work to comprise a 'central theory', his approach nonetheless offers a model of sociological practice that might permit 'advances' in sociological knowledge to take place. ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

AbstractThe central aims of this paper are: (1) to explore the utility of using personal correspondence as a source of data for sociological investigations into the history of sociology in the UK; (2) in relation to this undertaking, to advance the beginnings of a figurational analysis of epistolary forms; and (3), to provide an empirically‐grounded discussion of the historical significance of the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester (a University largely ignored in 'standard histories' of the subject) at a formative phase in the development of the discipline within the UK. The correspondence drawn upon in the paper is between Norbert Elias and Ilya Neustadt between 1962 and 1964 when Elias was Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana and Ilya Neustadt was Professor of Sociology and Head of the Sociology Department at the University of Leicester. From an analysis of this correspondence, we elucidate an emergent dynamic to the relationship between Neustadt and Elias, one which, we argue, undergirds the development of sociology at Leicester and the distinctive character of the intellectual climate that prevailed there during the 1960s. The paper concludes with a consideration of whether it was a collapse of this dynamic that led to a total breakdown in the relationship between Neustadt and Elias, and by extension, an important phase in the expansion of sociology at Leicester.