What Is Sociology?

What is Sociology? presents in concise and provocative form the major ideas of a seminal thinker whose work—spanning more than four decades—is only now gaining the recognition here it has long had in Germany and France. Unlike other post-war sociologists, Norbert Elias has always held the concept of historical development among his central concerns; his dynamic theories of the evolution of modern man have remedied the historical and epistemological shortcomings of structualism and ethno-met...