This study combines moral panic with the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias to explore how climate change has developed as a social problem. The central argument is that,through combining the short-term focus of moral panic with the long-term focus of Elias, we can examine the interplay between planned and unplanned developments in both the perception and reality of climate change. The first part of the research consisted of discourse analysis of a variety of different texts from 1800 to the present. These were used to explore the long-term development of climatechange as emerging from an ecological civilizing process. The second stage of the research related these developments to moral panics, arguing that the emergence of climate change can only be understood by exploring the interplay between long-term processes and short-term campaigns. The third part of the research explored these historical developments at the individual level, examining the notion of individual ecological civilizing processes. 15 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with climate change ‘activists’ and ‘non-activists’, comparing how their biographical developments related to ecological civilizing processes and moral panics. The final part of the research compared climate change with five other empirical examples of moral panics, to explore the civilizing and decivilizing processes and civilizing offensives that occur before, during, and after the panics. The central aim was to demonstrate the complexity of moral panics, and to aid in the reformulation of the concepts of moral panic and decivilization. Through a synthesis of Elias and moral panic, as applied to the example of climate change, this study aimed to: critically assess the development of climate change; to reassess the concept of decivilization and the relation between civilizing processes and offensives; and to reformulate the concept of moral panic, including suggesting how moral panic research ought to be undertaken.

This thesis is about using rather than applying Norbert Elias’s conceptual ideas, and its analytical procedure employs a ‘fair play’ approach to theorists and theory. This is put to use regarding British independent funeral firms by conceiving these as a figuration developing over the long-term, and exploring the accounts of funeral directors placed in dialogue with Elias’s ideas. The thesis examines how the key Eliasian concepts of figuration, sociogenesis, habitus and de/civilising processes play out in context, including over-time developments within the British funeral industry. Its focus is ‘thinking with Elias’ about such matters in relation to the everyday working practices of independent funeral directors. Chapter One introduces Elias’s key conceptual ideas. In beginning its ‘fair play’ analysis it discusses criticisms, debates and uses of his work and explores the substantive literature on death, funerals and the British funeral industry. Building on this, Chapter Two considers analytically the process of methodologically trying out potential approaches to thinking with Elias around one of his core ideas, figuration. Departing from Elias’s retrospective approach, it chases the independent funeral firm figuration as it unfolds in the present. Using figuration in thinking with Elias sets the stage for further analytical use of Eliasian concepts in subsequent chapters. Chapter Three explores how sociogenesis works by examining intersections and departures between the funeral directors’ accounts and the Eliasian view of long-term development. Regarding sociogenesis, the ‘actual’ processes of death-related social change were not of central interest to the funeral directors, who were more concerned with ensuring their firms’ persistence. Chapter Four engages with Elias’s ideas about habitus and the we-identities of the independent directors, shared belief and behaviour traditions within and between firms and the directors, and also sources of conflict. Core to this is the emphasis on traditions, although these are present-time ‘invented’ around the priority of remaining in business. Chapter Five presents Elias’s theory of the de/civilising process as his ‘bigger picture’ of social change, and its analysis engages and contrasts this with the independent funeral directors’ accounts of the bigger picture in discussing perceived trends. They respond to changes as these are unfolding, and explain over-time matters of stasis and change as they experience them in ways that challenge Eliasian thinking. Chapter Six discusses the main contributions of the thesis. In using theory and thinking with Elias rather than against him, I have aimed to be a fair player in doing sociology. First, my thesis recognises the importance of context and that how concepts play out in ‘real’ life will vary significantly. Second, in adopting a fair play approach, the thesis provides a detailed empirical example of how to evaluate theorists on their own terms by following in their suggestions and engaging with their ideas in contextual and reflexive ways. It has neither replicated nor reproduced an Eliasian study, but instead demonstrated how actually using it in a context will play out. Third, the thesis has used the Eliasian key concepts of figuration, sociogenesis, habitus and de/civilising in a present-day setting so as to examine how these unfold in the present and can be explored through people’s accounts. Fourth, it analyses the accounts of the independent funeral directors in a fair play way and establishes that their ideas work as theory, as exploring the dialogue between Elias and the funeral directors has shown. Overall, the thesis is a reply to Elias’s call for sociologists to think for themselves, engage with and expand upon ideas and settings to hand, and to pursue the actual processes at work in society.

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Zugl.: Regensburg, Univ., Diss., 2004

Königsberg, Phil. Diss. v. 3. Dez. 1914, Ref. Pillet. / [Geb. 10. Nov. 89 Königsberg i. P. ; Wohnort : Königsberg ; Staatsangeh. Preussen ; Vorbildung : Altstädt. G. Königsberg Reife 10 ; Studium : Königsberg 9 S. ; Rig. 31. Juli 14.].

Zugl.: Regensburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2004.

Diss.--Fakultät Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften--Bamberg--Otto-Friedrich-Universität, 1990/91.

Orientador : Gustavo Luis Gutierrez / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação Fisica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-02T17:51:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carmo_GoncaloCassinsMoreirado_M.pdf: 383586 bytes, checksum: 5bdd483ef2af84bc15b5fefcf377ae41 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2002 / Mestrado

Orientador : Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-03T23:20:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Chioda_RodrigoAntonio_M.pdf: 6950972 bytes, checksum: 1d6f3ad7449175c3f727f36b36a92f50 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Resumo: Trata-se da investigação da roda de conversa como uma prática educativa, tal como se apresenta em um dado momento no tempo e as normas e regras que dela emergem. A prática da roda é um importante elemento de apreensão do processo civilizador que passou a sociedade ocidental e do autocontrole necessário aos participantes deste. Para observar os sinais e as marcas que uma prática educativa imprimiu nos corpos dos participantes deste "micro" processo civilizador que é a roda, parti do visível nos gestos e atitudes dos participantes da roda. A roda é, portanto, constituinte do processo civilizador maior, ou seja, em uma escala menor, é onde as crianças praticam e se educam para as relações sociais que exigem um grande autocontrole que é apreendido pelas crianças através de contenções externas de corpo e de fala. A roda observada possibilitou ainda que seus participantes exercitassem um conjunto de habilidades humanas necessárias à compreensão e interpretação do contexto social vivido, podendo posteriormente utilizá-las para agir sobre ela, proporcionando uma certa interação do aluno com seu processo educativo / Abstract: This study concerns the investigation of the circle of conversation as an educational practice, just as it comes in a specific moment in the time, and also the norms and rules of corporal contention that emerge from it. By means of what is visible in the gestures and in the body of the participants of the circle. I could observe in a smaller scale the signs and the marks that an educational practice printed in the participants of this "small" Civilizing Process that constitutes the circle. It is an imitation of that larger process, that is to say, where the children practice and they are educated for the social relationships that demand a large self-control, that the children apprehend first through external contentions of body and of speech. The practice of the circle facilitates its participants to exercise a group of necessary human abilities to the understanding and interpretation of the society, later on could use them to act on her, in the search of an active participation for the construction of a society indeed democratic / Mestrado / Mestre em Educação

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