ABSTRACT
It is one of the ironies of modern sociology that in the reception of Elias’s work in the 1970s and 1980s the clarity and straightforwardness of most of his writings probably worked against him. In the social sciences it is often mistakenly assumed that if something can be conveyed simply then it cannot be profound. For those accustomed to sociological language being diffi cult and obscure, reading Elias can be a liberating but at the same time disconcerting experience. Wolf Lepenies (1978: 63) aptly described the qualities of Elias’s writings: ‘a jargon-free concern with clarity, a careful training in sociological observation and a thoroughgoing combination of theoretical discussions with often surprising references to details’. Helmut Kuzmics (2001b: 116) has pointed out that because Elias stretched what counted as explanation in sociology away from the naturalistic ideal of science and used a number of literary sources (among other data) as evidence of emotional changes, his works have a kind of quality that might be called ‘literary’.
