ABSTRACT
One of the problems anyone introducing Elias immediately faces is that of situating his distinctive and original work within the theoretical schools, paradigms and sociological language familiar to mainstream sociologists. The diffi culty of ‘placing’ him in the familiar European sociological traditions, as developed in later paradigms, has always been, as Johan Goudsblom fi rst pointed out (1977b: 60, 77ff.), a problem for commentators. It is diffi cult to fi nd a place for Elias’s sociology of fi gurations within the paradigms of recent sociology such as phenomenology, action theory, functionalism, structuration theory, Marxism, Weberianism, critical realism, systems theory, rational choice theory and so on. Over the course of a number of years I have read in reviews and papers or heard in seminars Elias’s work labelled variously as evolutionist, Rickertian, Simmelian, Marxoid, Comtist, Freudian, historicist and hermeneuticist, or in combinations such as evolutionary Freudianism or historicized Simmelianism.
