Involvement and Detachment

CONTENTS Norbert Elias, 1897-1990
Note on the text
Introduction (by Norbert Elias)
Problems of involvement and detachment
The fishermen in the maelstrom
Reflections on the great evolution
- two fragments
Textual variants
Bibliography
Index.

"Elias's thesis concerning the varying degrees of involvement and detachment in the arts and sciences constitutes his most systematic and comprehensive contribution to the sociology of knowledge."

"In many ways the notes by the editors which preface these volumes can ... be read as biographical illustrations of Elias's own ongoing intellectual meditations on the tensions between involvement and detachment, and with his continuing personal and professional confrontation with the problem of time."

"well worth the dedicated study and patient reflection [it] demand[s] of readers."

Canadian Journal of Sociology 33
(1) 3008

"The enterprise of publishing the collected works of Norbert Elias under the editorship of Richard Kilminster and Stephen Mennell by University College Dublin Press is an extremely important contribution to the contemporary intellectual and academic scene. Norbert Elias was one of the most original minds in the human and social sciences in the 20th century – his work covers not only a very broad range of sociological topics starting with his classical The Civilising Process and later The Court Society, but also many topics ranging from sociology of knowledge to sociology of sport and analysis of historical processes; the broad philosophical problems, such as the idea of the place of the progress of symbolic dimensions in social life. This is really a monumental enterprise, very worthwhile and very constructive, presenting a great challenge to the contemporary intellectual and academic scene – and UCD Press should be congratulated in undertaking this enterprise."

S. N. Eisenstadt
Jerusalem, 24 July 2008

"Too easily the editors and readers of Books Ireland take it as given that Irish publishers’ books are mostly about Ireland or by Irish writers. We wish it were not so because we think our publishers are of world class, and a shining exception and exemplar is this series of eighteen volumes of the life’s work in English – some of his work was written in German – of Elias (1897–1990) whose major theme was the theory of civilising processes … Norbert is very interesting on the subject as well as on the dynamics of sports, social (and especially male) bonding, violence and football hooliganism. These books are in the very best tradition of design, with acid-free paper, sewn bindings, cloth boards, coloured endpapers, spine labels and acetate jackets."

Books Ireland
Nov 08

Norbert Elias died on 1 August 1990.
To mark the twentieth anniversary, the German radio station WDR3
(Westdeutscher Rundfunk 3. Programm) broadcast a fifteen
-minute programme in its daily ZeitZeichen series