Dynamics of Gender Relations

Process-Sociological Perspectives

Stefanie Ernst, Valerie Dahl, Marta Bucholc

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9783031803758
• eBook ISBN:
  9783031803765
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume brings together for the first time international research approaches from the field of figurational and processual sociology at the intersection of gender studies. It assembles current research on the change of gender relations in formal and informal structures. By using Norbert Elias's process-sociological oeuvre selected gender figurations in the western and non-western world are discussed. This book is anchored, on the one hand, in a socio-historical understanding of the trajectory of gendered societies over a wide area and range of centuries in the Process of Civilization. On the other hand, the immediate impulse for this volume is the critical discussion of Eliasian thinking concerning dynamic gender relations in different empirical case studies and process-theory. It will be crucial reading for sociologists interested in the Elias school, as well as sociologists of gender more broadly.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Gender Dynamics. An Introduction to Norbert Elias’s Process-Sociological Approach to Gender Relations
• 2. Balances of Power: Gender Relations in Figurational Sociology
• 3. Some Reflections on the Emancipation of Women: How Far Did We Come?
• 4. Informalisation and Emancipation of Lust and Love: Integration of Sexualisation and Eroticisation Since the 1880s
• 5. The Crisis of “Close Domination”: A Key to the History of Gender Relations?
• 6. The Changing Nature of Maternal Affects: Process-Sociological Perspectives on Counselling Literature About Maternity in France (1960–2020)
• 7. “Is It True That Women Are Sexually Harassed in Our Country Too?” Discourses on Sexual Harassment in the Polish Magazine The Mirror from 1980 to 2020
• 8. New Rules of the Game? Towards a Figurational Analysis of Negotiations on Gender and Diversity
• 9. Gender Dynamics in Academia: A Figurational Exploration of Gendered Established–Outsider Relations in Physics
• 10. Refigured Homes: Gender Balances and the Refiguration of Spaces in Germany and Kenya
• 11. Rural Masculinity in Poland: The Established, the Outsiders and the Rural–Urban Divide
• 12. Shifts in the Power Balance of Gender Groups in Western Germany 1945–2000
• 13. Gender Power Balances and Changes in the Socio-Spatial and Socio-Material Practices of Drinking in Ireland
• 14. On the Side of Women: A Dotted Line Civilising Process
• 15. Civilising Campaigns in Times of Informalisation: Fear of Moralising in Dutch Street Harassment Awareness-Raising
• 16. The Dutch Burgerlijk and the Emergence of Plural Masculine Habitus
• 17. On the Concept of Hypermasculinity in the Study of Gender and Power in the United States: Towards a Figurational Approach
• 18. Misogyny, Inadequacy, and Violence: A Process-Sociological Approach to Incels
• 19. Retro-Ideals: Knights, Gentlemen, and Cursed Soldiers. Unhegemonic Polish Masculinity in the (De)Civilising Process
• 20. Science Oriented Towards Life: Ilse Seglow and Her Doctoral Thesis on the Society of Actors
• 21. “The Changing Balance of Power between the Sexes in the History of Civilization”. On Gender Relations in Unpublished Works of Norbert Elias
• Back Matter