ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on three general aspects of Norbert Elias' project apposite to consumer-cultural research. The concept of figurations is at the core of Norbert Elias' work in theorising society as networks of reciprocally oriented people, and the shifting balances of power that characterise these networks. Elias is concerned with long-term trends, and a key trend driving the European civilizing process are changes in arrangements of land ownership. Elias' historical perspective views the body as culturally and historically malleable, an emotional sensorium that is shaped within changing figurations. At a more general level, this possibility to explain the complex historical development of emotions and embodied activity should encourage consumer researchers to seek out variations in the constitution of what might ostensibly look like the same activity, community, or practice. The biologically inherited body and senses are trained and sensitised during long-term processes, which may include consumption experiences.
