Peter Emmerson

 1.1.2 Figuration: a process concept

At this point I want to explain the use of ‘figuration’. Norbert Elias developed this word as one of a number of concepts designed to distance sociological knowledge from its mystical and metaphysical forebears, which tend to produce unrealistic, static models of human experience and can disable the scientific enterprise. Figuration is a notion that attempts to locate sociologists more adequately with life, modelled in terms of social structural processes. The emphasis is on the word process in order to gain better access to the movement characteristic of day to day existence. Non-figurational concepts like ‘class’ and ‘society’ refer to social structures and are inadequate. A structure is expressive of solidity and stability and gives the wrong steer by understating the energy and, as Zygmunt Bauman might say, liquidity of real social experience. My proposal is to bin structural concepts such as class which inherently paralyse social networks and are therefore scientifically unfit for purpose. This could provide us with more adequate tools of analysis, and so reduce the need for intellectual trickery to shoehorn people into sociological models. Figuration offers an opportunity to explore something better suited to facilitate the study of ever changing social networks.

Elias draws our attention to another advantage of using concepts of structural process such as figuration. The structural form of analysis because of its inherent inflexibility, tends to produce rigid contrasts, one important example being the separation of society and the individual. Such a schismatic approach to modelling social life evokes an artificial picture, suggestive of discreet categories of group and personal experience. Such a perspective, argues Elias, is more about the intellectual tradition that dominates western culture than factual accuracy. In a more general form structure is often equated with sociology and individuality with psychology. Where the latter is concerned people are viewed as separate, isolated beings governed by instinctive, internal forces that motivate survival thoughts and practices. This so-called agency perspective, which in its most idealistic and extreme form argues that people have free-will, conjures the impression that the forces regulating togetherness are of secondary importance. Such psychologism is untenable as Popper has pointed out, because it relies on an infinite reduction to the origin, a programme of research to identify the very first cause – was it the chicken or the egg? – impossible. Elias is with Popper, and for that matter Marx on this, that the place to start is the social. Figuration is a concept designed by Elias for social scientific analysis that assesses the flow of interdependencies that occur between people in social networks. Elias has demonstrated how this approach dissolves thorny problems such as the division between ‘society and the individual’ (structure and agency): the intellectual tradition that is responsible for this unscientific model can be left to parent those areas it was designed to fit – religion and philosophy.

Figuration is therefore a concept developed to go beyond the limitations of the latter, to provide greater access to the facts because figuration has a greater degree of what Elias calls ‘reality congruence’, ie. it is more scientific. It can take account of both structural and personal experiences because it guarantees that we look for processes that bind people together with varying levels of dependency. These relationships of interdependency involve power, which again is a process in which the balances change. Whilst I suspect we need to abandon the use of the concept power for the same reasons already alluded to with respect to class and society, Elias points us in a direction which may be fruitful. By improving the degree of consonance between the conceptual tools used by sociologists (and social scientists generally for that matter) and their research material, I believe we can increase our potential to explain social matters.

Let’s consider briefly the example of Marx’s great breakthrough which analysed the relationship between class and social conflict. My argument is that the pioneering work Marx carried out has not been fully exploited partly because it has been bogged down in fruitless theometaphysical (see 1.2 below) debate about the definitive nature of the two classes of capitalism (the ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘proletariat’). Whilst this too is probably associated with ingrained academic habits that can be traced back via Hegel to the ancient Greeks, I think it is also connected to Marx’ uncritical use of the concept class. Class is a notion far too profoundly steeped in supernatural and philosophical ethers, geared to finding the absolute truth and stability: social experience is thus perceived as if it were some reified, solid thing. What is ironic about Marx is that having criticised Adam Smith and others for not recognising the ideological content of their ideas, he then proceeded to fall into the same trap himself by failing to spot the damaging effect that an idealistic concept like class had on his own model. Figuration is a more realistic concept that I feel can help us avoid the traps that caught out the likes of Marx, by offering the prospect of a more scientific analysis with greater access to the fluidity of social experience, and at the same time, moving us beyond such ossifying debates as class.