Abstract

This publication of Norbert Elias' broadest statement of the fundamentals of sociology is in important respects very different from the discipline as it is institutionalised today. In his vision, sociology is concerned with the whole course of the development of human society. The second edition of What is Sociology? contains previously unpublished material that was discovered in the Elias archives at Marbach as well as editors' notes and revisions of previous translation errors.