Guides on my way to Elias

Abstract

This paper was originally presented as a speech in honour of Stephen Mennell. It consists of an attempt to reconstruct how, in the 1950s, the author as a student of social psychology at the University of Amsterdam, was made aware of, and became enthusiastic about, the work of Norbert Elias. Who were the people who served as links between himself and Elias? This ‘intellectual genealogy’ is followed by a brief discussion of how Stephen Mennell has become Elias’s most prominent advocate in the English speaking world.