Norbert Elias

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to Norbert Elias. The theory of the civilizing processes, the analysis of court society, and the theoretical constructions about figurations, emotions and affective valences are placed into a relationship to better understand how it is possible to think about a sociology of bodies/emotions in the twenty-first century.To achieve this objective we will explain three analytic dimensions. First, we will describe the social construction of the body, based on the concepts of process and figurations, which allow us to understand how, simultaneously, social transformations are becoming a body in the subjects, who reproduce through socialization, naturalized patterns of behaviour generating conditions for the unintended unfolding of the great civilizing process. Second, we show the main transformations in the subjective world of individuals, based on shame and displeasure, emotions defined in terms of social fears that allow behaviour to be adjusted to the parameters of what is acceptable and expected for the social group. Third, connecting the two previous analytical axes, we will return to the place of emotions in social regulation, which operates explicitly in subjects, as well as implicitly in the conditioning that marks the configurations.The plot that is formed between these three dimensions accounts for the intrinsic relationship between social processes, interdependencies, practices and emotions and, in this way, allows us to problematize, from a critical viewpoint, how bodies/emotions can be a central node for domination. This is one of the places where we consider it relevant to reread part of Elias's work, with the aim of dwelling on some of his analyses and concepts, in order to find theoretical contributions for a sociology of bodies/emotions.