Norbert Elias and the social history of knowledge

Abstract

This article is concerned with Norbert Elias as a sociologist of knowledge. It concentrates on the ways in which his ideas may be employed and adapted in a future social history (or historical sociology) of knowledge. It focuses on a case-study, that of the professionalization and specialization of knowledge (or knowledges in the plural), that took place in the USA and Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, comparing and contrasting the ideas of Elias on the sociology of scientific establishments to those of Bourdieu on ‘homo academicus’ and Joseph Ben-David on German universities.