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This edited volume serves as an overview and introduction to the conceptual apparatus of Norbert Elias for newcomers, while also outlining current research within the Eliasian school of sociology. An Eliasian or figurational approach foregrounds process, is sensitive to long-term historical development and changing power relations and is methodologically diverse. Elias’s work is now found across academic disciplines and this volume contains contributions by sociologists, anthropologists, business and management scholars, and those working at the interface of sociology and human geography. Instead of simply highlighting the distinctiveness of the school vis-à-vis other theoretical traditions, this volume outlines how Eliasian inspired work can contribute to important debates on the future of food across academic disciplines.
Over the last century and a half, manners and formalities in the West have become less status-ridden, stiff and rigid. Debates around Norbert Elias’ theory of civilising processes gave rise to questions of a change in direction of these patterns. The concept of informalisation, which describes these transformations, was first used to analyse the tumultuous changes of the 1960s and 1970s. This increasing informality, leniency and flexibility, comes hand-in-hand with a growing demand on individuals to self-regulate their emotions. This book will stimulate debate around the changes in the standards of manners and emotion regulation, and will generate new avenues of enquiry that focus on issues involving informalisation. The chapters shed light on a variety of such moral and political issues over the last 150 years, offering a new and broader scope on the present social condition of humanity. Civilisation and Informalisation will be an important addition for students and scholars of figurational process sociology, and of broader interest to academics across sociology, social psychology and social history.
During the early medieval Islamicate period (800–1400 CE), discourses concerned with music and musicians were wide-ranging and contentious, and expressed in works on music theory and philosophy as well as literature and poetry. But in spite of attempts by influential scholars and political leaders to limit or control musical expression, music and sound permeated all layers of the social structure. Lisa Nielson here presents a rich social history of music, musicianship and the role of musicians in the early Islamicate era. Focusing primarily on Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem, Lisa Nielson draws on a wide variety of textual sources written for and about musicians and their professional/private environments – including chronicles, literary sources, memoirs and musical treatises – as well as the disciplinary approaches of musicology to offer insights into musical performances and the lives of musicians. In the process, the book sheds light onto the dynamics of medieval Islamicate courts, as well as how slavery, gender, status and religion intersected with music in courtly life. It will appeal to scholars of the Islamicate world and historical musicologists.
This book transcends the narrow philosophical concept of ethics confined to the Greek model, demonstrating that “Islamic ethics” is an interdisciplinary field. It encompasses both theoretical and practical ethics, incorporating disciplines such as Qurʾān, ḥadīth, biography of the Prophet (sīra), theology (kalām), jurisprudence (fiqh), Sufism, and philosophy. The book provides analytical readings of a list of Islamic ethical heritage sources covering a period from the 3rd/9th to the 8th/14th century. It emphasises two ideas: first, the richness and diversity of ethical perspectives within Islamic tradition, showcasing multiple approaches including the Greek philosophical, narrative...