On the pragmatics of social theory. The case of Elias's "On the Process of Civilization"

This paper proposes a new approach to the study of sociological classics. This approach is pragmatic in character. It draws upon the social pragmatism of G.H. Mead and the sociology of texts of D.F. McKenzie. Our object of study is Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization. The pragmatic genealogy of this book reveals the importance of taking materiality seriously. By documenting the successive entanglements between human agency and non-human factors, we discuss the origins of the book in the 1930s, how it was forgotten for thirty years, and how in the mid-1970s it became a sociological classic. We explain canonization as a matter of fusion between book’s material form and its content, in the context of the paperback revolution of the 1960s, the events of May 1968, and the demise of Parsons’ structural functionalism, and how this provided Elias with an opportunity to advance his model of sociology.

Current Problems of Social Europe. Research Papers in Law, 7/2007

From the Introduction. The main difficulty of Theology lies in the fact that the very existence of its subject-matter, God, may be put into question. Talking about Social Europe has something of a theological dimension. The aim of this article is to contribute into the debate, by putting into perspective some of the latest manifestations of social Europe. The need for the pursuance of social policies at the European level is now more pressing than ever (para 2). The EU, however, as it now stands, is the direct evolutionary result of the predominantly economic entity created back in 1957. This explains that the social policies pursued at the European level are piecemeal and often impregnated with market concerns (para. 3). From an instrumental point of view, EU social policy is being pursued concomitantly by secondary legislation (hard law) in the fields where the EU does have the relevant competences and by softer means of cooperation (soft law) in several other fields. Hard law has given the occasion to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in a series of recent judgments, of putting to the fore the concept of a ‘social market’ (para. 4). Soft cooperation has been formalised into the infamous Lisbon Strategy and has been the main object of experimentation with the open method of coordination (OMC) (para. 5). The advances achieved in the above ways, however, do not offer firm answers to basic questions concerning the future development of the European social identity (para. 6)