ABSTRACT
This chapter locates the Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles within the institutional context of the Leicester Sociology Department of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the sociology developed there and within Norbert Elias's own biography. It gives a brief biographical overview of Elias pre-Leicester, and considers his time at Leicester and in Ghana. The chapter considers the 'research culture' within the Department outlining the research that foregrounded the Adjustment of Young Workers project. It believes why the project has not featured significantly in the Elias auto/biographies and explores the possible reasons why the project ultimately failed to deliver on its promise. Elias argues the study should not be about work but instead the work situation as many of the problems faced by young people rarely sprang from work in isolation of other situations. Elias's desire to use the survey data to identify further studies was translated by the research officers to undertake additional case studies.
