ISA XIX World Congress of Sociology, Toronto:
CfP RC17 Sociology of Organisation session on “Elias, Habitus and Organizations: Civilizing and decivilizing processes in organizational life”
Abstracts must be submitted by 30 September through the ISA conference website.
This session focuses on the various ways in which the ideas and arguments of Norbert Elias and those influenced by him concerning processes of civilization and decivilization can contribute both to enduring questions in the sociology of organizations and to more recent developments in organizational life.
Possible themes and topics include, but are not confined to:
- The relevance of Elias’s analysis of court society for contemporary organizations.
- The distinctive contribution of Elias’s analysis of habitus in analysing organizational subjectivity.
- Case studies of organizational dynamics and change drawing on Elias’s concepts of habitus, figuration, established/outside relations, and technological development
- Changes in the labour process and shifts in relations between different forms of work within organizations.
- The changed role of the human body within organizational life, and how this can be understood in terms of the civilizing process.
- The specific theoretical significance of Elias’s work for organizational studies, in relation to theorists such as Goffman, Foucault, Latour or Luhmann.
- The ways in which Elias’s account of the development of the civilizing process can cast new light on the history of organizational life.
Other topics and research concerns in the utilization of Elias and figurational sociology to analyse organizations, including those that draw on other sub-field in sociology, such as economic sociology, the sociology of work, the sociology of gender, or science and technology studies, are also welcome. The session is open to scholars at all levels, and we will welcome contributions from PhD students and all early-career researchers.
ROBERT VAN KRIEKEN | Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology & Social Policy A26 | The University of Sydney NSW 2006 | Australia
President, ISA Research Committee 17 Sociology of Organisations
Visiting Professor, University College Dublin
School of Social & Political Sciences | Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
Rm 111, RC Mills Bldg A26 | T +61 2 9351 4990 | F +61 2 9036 9380
E mailto:robert.van.krieken@sydney.edu.au
W robertvankrieken.net