Bibliography of Figurational Sociology in the Netherlands (to 1989)

From the late 1960s, when Norbert Elias first came to Amsterdam as a Visiting Professor, through the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s, the Netherlands in general and the University of Amsterdam in particular formed the epicentre of what came to be known as ‘figurational sociology’. Since then, it has spread much more widely across the world.

For three decades from 1974 to 2004, the 'Amsterdam School' published its own journal, the Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift. The index to the entire series can be found here.

Willem Kranendonk compiled a comprehensive bibliography of all the publications and theses, covering the period up to 1989. It was published in 1990 as a book,  Society as Process: A Bibliography of Figurational Sociology in The Netherlands, by the Amsterdam publisher Het Spinhuis. In 1995 Het Spinhuis kindly agreed to the bibliography being made available online.

Kranendonk Cover

Although the bibliography is now obviously outdated, it is still of considerable interest, not only as evidence of the range and depth of the ‘Amsterdam School’ of those days, but also because so many key issues – in the proper sense of ‘issues’, questions for debate and discussion – broached then have since been taken up, developed and refined, through extensive further research, both in the Netherlands and further afield. 

Unfortunately related work in other countries by researchers working in collaboration with the Amsterdam group up to 1989 was excluded; and it would now be impossible to draw up such a comprehensive list of research throughout the world employing Elias's ideas.

The whole text of the bibliography can be downloaded as a PDF file. Alternatively, the bibliography was divided into thematic sections, which can each be viewed online:

 

 

Contents

Part 1: NORBERT ELIAS AND FIGURATIONAL SOCIOLOGY


Part 2: CIVILIZING PROCESSES


Part 3: STATE FORMATION AND RELATED PROCESSES


Part 4: VARIOUS RESEARCH AREAS