|
<page numbers from the pdf file>
p.3-4 Figuration is a generic term used to represent the "web of interdependences formed among human beings and which connects them: that is to say, a structure of mutually oriented and dependent persons" (Elias 1990:249).
p.5 The concept of configuration cannot be dissociated from the categories of interdependence, function, and coercion. Individuals as well as groups are interdependent because each one fulfills some of the others' needs. At the same time, the control of resources that allow the fulfillment of the needs of others expresses itself in relations of power, and in the coercive capacity of each of the parts involved. Thus, a configuration exists when two or more individuals or human groups establish some kind of link fostered by the dependences they have on one another, and which render them capable of exercising some form of reciprocal constraint.
p.6 Mutually exercised coercions turn social attitudes imbedded in the individuality of human beings, and make them appear as if they were their natural impulses.
p.6 The social scientist's task is "is to explore, and to make men understand, the patterns they form together, the nature and the changing configurations of all that binds them to each other" (Elias 1956:234). In other words, to reveal the way in which such human beings connect to each other in their alliances and conflicts, and the kind of network they form, considering their ambitions of power and status.
p.7 Figurations are, in general, very plastic; they consist of continuous flows or, better said, processes whose transformation potential varies, and may end up producing structural changes of an evolutionary nature. Evolutionary Sociology explains movements by other movements, and not by a first unmoved cause. The idea of a causal connection among phenomena is, most of the time, a post factum inference.
p.8 Sport-games can teach us a lot about the interactions between groups and individuals.
p.10 Figurations may become dilemmas by means of uncontrollable dynamics. In this case, they may have unplanned and undesired consequences for those involved in them, as well as produce catastrophic trajectories. Fear and insecurity caused by the perception of danger tend to intensify such outcomes, since the more frightened people are the less they are capable of understanding and containing menacing factors.
p.11 The concept of configuration refers to the ideas of process, dynamics, and interdependence of mutually referred actions – be it between two or more people, between individuals and groups, or among groups, regardless of their dimensions.
p.12 To understand dance as a structure that is external to the individuals who perform it can only sound strange when one considers the impossibility of separating it from the figuration formed by the dancers. It is precisely this seemingly obvious idea that Elias elaborates in his figuration theory, by showing that there are neither individuals without society, nor society without individuals. Each individual has society as a constitutive part of his or her "self"
|
