From networks to fields to figurations to discourses, relational ideas have become common in social science, and a distinct relational sociology has emerged over the past decade and a half. But so far, this paradigm shift has raised as many questions as it answers. Just what are 'relations', precisely? How do we observe and measure them? How does relational thinking change what we already know about society? What new questions does it invite us to ask? This volume and its companion volume Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues bring together, for the first time, the leading experts and up-and-coming scholars in the field to address fundamental questions about what relational sociology is and how it works.

This book presents key conceptualizations of violence as developed by Norbert Elias. The authors explain and exemplify these concepts by analyzing Elias's late texts, comparing his views to those of Sigmund Freud, and by analyzing the work of filmmaker Michael Haneke. The authors then discuss the strengths and shortcomings of Elias's thoughts on violence by examining various social processes such as colonization, imperialism, and the Brazilian civilizing process-in addition to the ambivalence of state violence. The final chapters suggest how these concepts can be used to explain difficulties in implementing democracy, grappling with memories of violence, and state building after democracy.

Norbert Elias has been recognized as one of the key social scientists of the twentieth century. The contributions collected in Norbert Elias and Social Theory discuss the specificities, the strengths, and the limits of Elias's sociology by considering its similarities and its differences with other important classical (Epicure, Freud, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel) and contemporary (Manheim, Fromm, Arendt, Bauman, and Bourdieu) social theories. Editors Francois Depelteau and Tatiana Savoia Landini have compiled an essential and comprehensive volume on a quintessential thinker.

This handbook on relational sociology covers a rapidly growing approach in the social sciences-one which is connected to the interests of a large, diverse pool of researchers across a range of disciplines. Relational sociology has been one of the key foundations of the "relational turn" in human sciences since the 1980s, and it offers a unique opportunity to redefine the basic epistemological and ontological principles of sociology as we know it. The contributors collected here aim to elucidate the complexity and the scope of this growing approach by dealing with three central questions: Where does relational sociology come from and what are its principal concerns? What are the main theoretical and methodological currents within relational sociology? What have we studied in relational sociology and what are the results?

This handbook on relational sociology covers a rapidly growing approach in the social sciences-one which is connected to the interests of a large, diverse pool of researchers across a range of disciplines. Relational sociology has been one of the key foundations of the "relational turn" in human sciences since the 1980s, and it offers a unique opportunity to redefine the basic epistemological and ontological principles of sociology as we know it. The contributors collected here aim to elucidate the complexity and the scope of this growing approach by dealing with three central questions: Where does relational sociology come from and what are its principal concerns? What are the main theoretical and methodological currents within relational sociology? What have we studied in relational sociology and what are the results?

Edited by Francois Depelteau and Christopher Powell, this volume and its companion, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, addresses fundamental questions about what relational sociology is and how it works.

This book will compare the approach and works of Norbert Elias, well known for his analysis of the civilizing process, his work on sport and violence and, more largely, his figurational approach, with other important social theories both classical and contemporary.