Since the nineteenth century, struggles between state power and political prisoners' right to die have aroused considerable interest. State enforcement to 'make live' through force-feeding also raises important questions concerning processes that inform government approaches, often through methods considered to be brutal, and how these actions fit within perceptions of civilised behaviour. The social scientific focus of hunger strikes tends to be informed by Foucauldian bio-power and governmentality which we draw upon when applying insights from figurational sociology. These insights allow us to better capture shifting social processes and changing public attitudes and behaviours that weaken state control over life and death. Different empirical examples are drawn upon, namely prison based forced feeding programmes that are directed at international 'Islamicists', Irish republicans and British suffragettes. Comparing groups' levels of integration within controlling states' societies, highlight distinctions in power balances, layers of mutual identification and entwined public perceptions and state reactions that help explain the implementation, cessation or continuation of force-feeding.

Legitimacy remains a key concept in political sociology, and perhaps even more so in lay understandings of political processes and structures, as evidenced by conflict over territories and regimes around the world. However, the concept suffers from a rather static representation, and even when addressed in processual form, in terms of specific moments in the process, such as conditions favouring legitimacy or its effects. Building from an Eliasian perspective, we argue for a more processual concept of legitimisation to encompass the dynamic social networks (figurations) that constitute the more unintentional context for deliberate legitimation claims. As networks expand and intensify, processes of legitimisation incorporate changing and more diverse bases for legitimacy claims, as well as a greater variety of such claims and counterclaims. As the power relations between contending groups change, legitimation practices become part of the integrating functions of the state, shaping figurations and the social habitus.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between the organization of political hunger strikes, rational calculations and actions and emotions. Drawing from the theoretical formulations of Norbert Elias, we examine how rational–emotional balances generated by different and intertwined tiers of social integration partly shaped the organization of political hunger strikes. Political hunger strikes are interesting because they tend to involve actions based on rational considerations and emotional charges. The empirical context includes a comparative analysis across space and time involving the organization of political hunger strikes in Ireland and (West) Germany during the 20th century. Our analysis suggests a difference between the rational–emotional tension balance exhibited by hunger strikers of the 1920s and that of hunger strikers of the 1970s and 1980s. We explain how these differences are connected to the broader social structures pertaining at the time. The main contention of the paper is that all forms of political organizing involve rational–emotional balances, and these balances are structured and shaped by social dynamics at different tiers of social integration.

These are extraordinary times. Less because we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic; humanity has been here multiple times in the past, sometimes with even more devastating results (the ...

This chapter examines the issue of player violence in Gaelic games. It illustrates and explains how over time, in conjunction with expanding social constraints, players have come to adjust their conduct, gradually exercising a higher degree of self-restraint in the playing of Gaelic games. Certainly occasional transgressions continued to occur, but they became subject to increasing social scrutiny and reprimand. These changing thresholds of violence have occurred within the broader context of increasing social interdependences beyond the field of play.

This introductory chapter outlines the objectives of the book, which in a collective sense is to provide sociologically informed explanations for various developments in Gaelic games and the GAA. The chapter outlines how the book differs from existing, mainly historical studies of Gaelic games and explains some of the core concepts associated with figurational sociology. The chapter also includes a discussion of the principal data sources utilised and concludes with an overview of the content of each chapter within the book.

Music streaming, structured by an expanding network of social interdependencies (e.g. musicians, sound engineers, computer scientists and distributors) has made it easier to consume music in a wider number of social and private spaces and to a greater degree. This paper examines the emotional experience of contemporary music consumption by drawing from an Eliasian perspective, specifically Elias and Dunning's sociology of leisure. We explore the relationship between work, spare time and leisure spaces, rather than examining specific spaces in isolation. We argue that music is used to demarcate, transition between, and blur space. Music plays an important role in facilitating the rhythm of routine, helping individuals to adjust to the demands of different spaces (based on varying intensities and immediacies of social pressures) and manage mood. The key characteristics of leisure that Elias and Dunning identify (motility, sociability and mimetic tension) are explored across the spectrum of time and space.

This chapter explains the changes in how GAA administrators and activists sought to attract and integrate Irish people, mainly young people, into the association over the decades. Since the foundation of the GAA through to the 1960s, GAA administrators relied heavily on social constraints to achieve this. From the 1960s, the emphasis on social constraints subsided relative to self-restraints. One manifestation of this was a greater focus on the individual needs and motivations of younger people in Ireland. Another aspect of this was a process of diminishing displays of superiority towards other sports. These changes were impelled by changing social and psychological processes concerning people in Ireland more broadly.

Like Chap. 5 , this chapter is also concerned with amateurism and professionalism. However, the focus here is on changes in the amplification and de-amplification of professionalism and amateurism by particular groups over the decades. The chapter goes on to explain how this was interconnected with inter-organisational and intra-organisational competitive interdependences, the rising stress on both seriousness of involvement and achievement orientation, and the changing power balance between administrators and ‘elite’ players. The chapter concludes by explaining how these processes were also linked with the emergence of the concept of ‘player power’.

This article explains the relationship between social habitus, social mobility and shame feelings using Elias's theoretical frame of figurational sociology. Much work to date has centred on Bourdieu's theoretical formulations and while there are clear parallels with Elias, significant differences exist. Elias identified how shame functions as a key channel for the transmission of social tensions generated by the structure of social relations into the social habitus of individuals. We explain how apparently rational decision-making in organisations obscures the emotional dynamics of shame and fear connected with processes of social elevation, habitus change and shifting power relations between social classes. Our empirical case concerns the brewer Arthur Guinness & Sons Ltd and the decision in 1927 to sanction a direct advertising campaign in Britain for the first time.

This chapter looks at the problems and complexities in the development of the hybrid sport of International Rules football, a composite of Gaelic football and Australian Rules football. The social function of the international series agreed between the sporting organisations responsible for governing the two national codes concerned the provision of playing opportunities for elite players at an international level. Both sports are nationally distinctive in that no other country plays them, so they function as symbols of national identity. Problems of developing a hybrid sport are due to the relative power balance between the ruling bodies of the original sports, in terms of the contribution of each sport’s rules towards the new code, and the irregular performance and lack of socialisation opportunities for the hybrid sport.

This paper provides a figurational critique of one of the most dominant theoretical frames within organisation studies - institutional theory. Despite its status as the leading theoretical lens for explaining organisational change, institutional theorists continue to struggle with the so called agency-structure issue and remain divided in how to overcome it. Our primary criticisms concern the propensity to invoke or generate dualisms, the reliance on the sociological frames which sustain this, and the failure to engage in any comprehensive way with Elias’s writings on this subject.

This chapter examines how the concepts developed and utilized by Norbert Elias can be used in sociological research on sporting organizations. Initially we draw on the notions of figuration, sportization and habitus to focus on the case of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Ireland. In the second part of the chapter, we extend our understanding of these concepts, and continue to focus on the GAA, while undertaking a theoretical comparison of figurational theory and several other theoretical approaches applied to the study of organizational change; specifically as institutional theory, a Foucauldian approach and network theory. This not only illustrates substantial differences, and indeed notable symmetries between the various theories, but also illuminates how a figurational approach can be used to consider the study of sports organizations and organizational issues more broadly.