Table Of ContentJan Haut
Paddy Dolan · Dieter Reicher
Raúl Sánchez García Editors
Excitement
Processes
Norbert Elias's unpublished works
on sports, leisure, body, culture
Excitement Processes
Jan Haut · Paddy Dolan · Dieter Reicher
Raúl Sánchez García
Editors
Excitement Processes
Norbert Elias’s Unpublished Works
on Sports, Leisure, Body, Culture
Editors
Jan Haut Dieter Reicher
Goethe-University Frankfurt Karl-Franzens-University of Graz
Frankfurt am Main, Germany Graz, Austria
Paddy Dolan Raúl Sánchez García
Dublin Institute of Technology Universidad Europea Madrid
Dublin, Ireland Madrid, Spain
ISBN 978-3-658-14911-6 ISBN 978-3-658-14912-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-14912-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937954
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Contents
Part I Introduction
Reconstructing Elias’s Work on Leisure, Sports and the Body ........ 3
Dieter Reicher, Jan Haut, Raúl Sánchez García and Paddy Dolan
Part II Section 1: Leisure and Culture
Spontaneity and Self-consciousness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Norbert Elias
Notice on Spontaneity and Self-consciousness:
Elias’s Early Approach to Leisure Activities ....................... 77
Dieter Reicher
Civilization, Happiness and the Thinking Millipede:
A Commentary on Norbert Elias’s Spontaneity
and Self-consciousness ......................................... 95
Helmut Kuzmics
Part III Section 2: Sportisation and ‘Modernisation’
Fragments on Sportisation ...................................... 121
Norbert Elias
Completing Sportisation: Elias on the Diffusion
and Differentiation of Sport in ‘Modern’ Society ................... 137
Jan Haut
Elias on the Development of Modern Sport: Empirical
Error, Interpretive Insight and Conceptual Clarification ............. 153
Dominic Malcolm
V
VI Contents
Part IV Section 3: Sport, Violence and State Formation
Boxing and Duelling ........................................... 173
Norbert Elias
Boxing and Duelling: Critical Remarks on Elias on Violence
and State-Formation from a Historical Perspective ................. 217
James Sharpe
Class Relations and the Development of Boxing: Norbert
Elias on Sportisation Processes in England and France .............. 235
Paddy Dolan
Revisiting Duelling and Fencing in the Sociology of Norbert Elias ..... 255
Raúl Sánchez García
Part V Section 4: The Body
The ‘Rediscovery’ of the Body ................................... 277
Norbert Elias
Elias’s Contribution to the Sociology of the Body:
The Rediscovery of the Hinge ................................... 287
Michael Atkinson
Part VI Conclusion
Conclusion ................................................... 307
Stephen Mennell
Index ........................................................ 315
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Jan Haut Dr., Researcher, and Lecturer at the Department of Sports Sciences, Goethe Uni-
versity Frankfurt (Germany). His main research areas include sport and social theory (espe-
cially Elias and Bourdieu), social stratification, history and politics of sport, and cultural
sociology. His selected publications include Haut J (2016) Figurationssoziologie. In Gugutzer
R et al (eds), Handbuch Soziologie des Körpers. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 225–41. Haut J,
Prohl R and Emrich E (2016) Nothing but medals? Attitudes towards the importance of Olym-
pic success. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51(3): 332–48. Haut J (2011).
Soziale Ungleichheiten in Sportverhalten und kulturellem Geschmack. Eine empirische Aktu-
alisierung der Bourdieu‘schen Theorie symbolischer Differenzierung. Münster: Waxmann.
Paddy Dolan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, Dublin Institute
of Technology. He is the Co-Editor of the European Journal for Sport and Society, Editorial
Board Member (and book review editor) of Human Figurations, and Secretary-Treasurer of
Research Committee 56, Historical Sociology, of the International Sociological Association.
His research interests include figurational sociology, sport, childhood, emotions, and national
and cosmopolitan identities. His selected publications include Dolan P (2016) Adult and child
identities in Irish primary schools, c. 1830 to 1909. History of Education 45(5): 530–46; Dolan
P and Connolly J (2014) Emotions, violence and social belonging: An Eliasian analysis of
sports spectatorship. Sociology 48(2): 284–99; Dolan P (2009) Figurational dynamics and par-
liamentary discourses of living standards in Ireland. British Journal of Sociology 60(4): 721–39.
Dieter Reicher is an Associated Professor at the University of Graz/Austria. He was in the
editorial board of the Austrian Journal of Sociology (Österreichische Zeitschrift für Sozi-
ologie). From 2003 to 2007, he was an Assistant Professor at the Universities of Vienna and
Graz, 2004, and he was a Visiting Junior Professor at the City College in New York City.
From 2008 to 2013, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Graz, becoming
habilitated and Associated Professor in 2013. He is an author of books dealing with the civ-
ilizing theory such as Staat, Schafott und Schuldgefühl. Was Staatsaufbau und Todesstrafe
miteinander zu tun haben (2003) or Nationensport und Mediennation. Zur Transformation
von Nation und Nationalismus im Zeitalter elektronischer Massenmedien (2013).
VII
VIII Editors and Contributors
Raúl Sánchez García Dr., Lecturer of sociology of sport at the Universidad Europea
Madrid (Spain), and President of the Sociology of Sport working group within the Span-
ish Federation of Sociology (FES). His main areas of research are sport and social theory
(Elias, Bourdieu, Garfinkel), martial arts/combat sports and violence, and ethnographic
studies of sport subcultures. His selected publications include Sánchez García R (2016,
online) The development of Kano’s judo within Japanese civilizing/decivilizing processes.
Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science, 108–19; Sánchez García R and Spencer
D (eds) (2013) Fighting Scholars: ethnographic studies of martial arts and combat sports.
London: Anthem Press. Sánchez García R and Malcolm D (2010) Decivilizing, civiliz-
ing or informalizing? The international development of Mixed Martial Arts. International
Review for the Sociology of Sport 45(1): 39–58.
Contributors
Michael Atkinson is a Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology Physical Educa-
tion at the University of Toronto, where he teaches courses in physical cultural
studies, violence and suffering, and ethnographic methods. His ethnographic
research efforts have included the study of ticket scalpers, tattoo enthusiasts, fell
runners, cosmetic surgery patients, greyhound and fox hunting cultures, Ashtanga
yoga practitioners, Straightedge and Parkour youth cultures, and triathletes. His
publications include Atkinson M (2010) Deconstructing Men and Masculinities.
Toronto: Oxford University Press; Atkinson M (2008) Triathlon, Suffering and
Exciting Significance. Leisure Studies 27(2): 165–80; Atkinson M (2003) Tat-
tooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press.
Atkinson is the Editor of Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health and
Past Editor of the Sociology of Sport Journal.
Helmut Kuzmics Dr., Prof. (retired), at the Department of Sociology, Univer-
sity of Graz. His main research areas include historical sociology, figurational
sociology, fiction and sociology, national character, and sociology of war. His
selected publications include Kuzmics H and Haring SA (2013) Emotion, Habi-
tus und Erster Weltkrieg. Soziologische Studien zum militärischen Untergang der
Habsburger Monarchie. Göttingen: V&R unipress. Kuzmics H and Axtmann R
(2007) Authority, State and National Character. The Civilizing Process in Aus-
tria and England, 1700–1900. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate. Kuzmics H (1989)
Der Preis der Zivilisation. Die Zwänge der Moderne im theoretischen Vergleich.
Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
Dominic Malcolm is a Reader in the sociology of Sport at Loughborough Uni-
versity, UK. His core research interests draw on and apply the theoretical ideas
of Norbert Elias’s figurational sociology to two substantial areas: the social
Editors and Contributors IX
development of cricket; and sport, health, and medicine. His cricket research cul-
minated in the publication of Globalizing Cricket (2013)—a book which explored
the intersection of identity, nationalism, and violence to illustrate the ways in
which the role and social significance of cricket has changed as the game glo-
balized. His research on sport, health, and medicine continues to explore the
embodied experiences of injury, practices harmful to athletes’ health, and the
problems of practicing medicine within sport. His most recent books include
Sport, Medicine and Health: the medicalization of sport? and Sport and English
National Identity in a ‘disunited kingdom’ (with T. Gibbons).
Stephen Mennell is an Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University College
Dublin. He was the General Editor of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias, pub-
lished by UCD Press in 18 volumes, 2006–2014, and a Member of the board of
the Norbert Elias Foundation 1997–2016. From 2011 to 2016, he was the Presi-
dent of what is now Research Committee 56, Historical Sociology of the Inter-
national Sociological Association. His own books include All Manners of Food:
Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present
(1985), Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image (1989), and The
American Civilizing Process (2007). He holds the degrees of Doctor in de Sociale
Wetenschappen (Amsterdam) and Doctor of Letters (Cambridge). He is a Mem-
ber of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Irish
Academy and Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
James Sharpe is Professor Emeritus in History at the University of York, UK.
His most recent area of research has been on violence in its historical context, and
in September 2016 Random House published his A Fiery and Furious People: a
History of Violence in England. He has also researched and published extensively
on crime in early modern England and on witchcraft in that society, as evidenced
by his Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England c. 1550–c. 1750 (London,
1996). In addition to books, he has published extensively in collections of essays
and academic journals, with articles appearing in such leading history journals as
English Historical Review, Past and Present, and Social History. He has been a
Committee Member of the Social History Society and of the International Associa-
tion for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, and is on the editorial board of
the Anglo-French journal Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History and Societies.
Part I
Introduction
