Norbert Elias, Essay III. On Sociology and the Humanities. Vol. 16 of The Collected Work of Norbert Elias, edited by Richard Kilminster and Stephen Mennell. Dublin: UCD Press, 2009, 312 pp.,

Norbert Elias’s work has long been overshadowed in its value as sociological theory by readings that focused on the most superficial and methodologically showy aspects of his most important research, The Civilizing Process. Yet if we look at them carefully, we realize that in reality the whole of Elias’s book is focused on same basic questions: What is sociology? What does it deal with, and how? The answers to these questions Elias gives in this volume are many and structured. Elias goes on criticize the excessive specialization that had overtaken even soci- ology, losing sight of its overall object of analysis, society as a whole. But also attempts to set up a central theory that neglected the dynamic and relational elements of social life.