The dawn of detachment

Abstract

This article draws on Elias’s observations on the origins of political economy and sociology as well as his theory of involvement and detachment to supplement standard accounts of the history of sociology. It shows how, in the 1840s, sociology bifurcated into two tracks. Track I was the highly ‘involved’ partisan track associated with Marx and Engels and track II was the relatively ‘detached’, non-partisan track pursued by Saint-Simon, Comte, Lorenz von Stein and others. These two tracks continue to shape contemporary sociology as basic orientations. The polarization of class conflict predicted in Marx’s theory is contrasted with the class interdependence model in Lorenz von Stein, in particular. Elias’s work is understood as a synthesis of later developments in track II in which he strongly reaffirmed the historical separation of sociology from philosophy. Elias’s work is presented as a central theory of society and as a promising alternative to the prevailing practice of theoretical eclecticism in sociology.

Robert Park and Norbert Elias's contributions to ethnic and racial studies: A relational approach

“…Park's inclinations towards ethnographic observation, and Elias's detached and involved methodology led both scholars to contemplate interdependent social relations as an issue relating to micro dynamics and macro structural effects operating simultaneously. Crucially, Elias was proposing a post‐philosophical, empirically grounded, and non‐partisan sociology which would also avoid a retreat into a continual present‐day approach (Kilminster, 2014). Park was an advocate of understanding the meanings that are derived from individual experience, but which reflect social and cultural histories.…”

“…That is, broader macro processes of interdependence bring about changes in personality structures across mass populations; a concern for the inseparable and essentially empirical nature of sociogenesis and psychogenesis. In this sense, Elias's methodology in particular aims at synthesizing the kaleidoscopic nature of society into a workable and empirically based “picture of the social figuration as a totality” (Kilminster, 2014, p. 99). When viewed from this perspective, Elias's The Germans reveals ideas about the historical formation of national character which parallel Park's ideas about “racial cultural traits” as socially constituted, evolving, emotional, and relational.…”