Abstract
Synthesizing ideas from two authors as similar and as different as Marx and Elias is a tricky and dangerous undertaking. Each of them proposed not only specific explanatory claims about the workings of social phenomena but also methodological approaches for generating explanations, epistemological standards for evaluating explanations, and ontological concepts for defining the phenomena to be explained. Each articulated these claims in a body of work that has been institutionalized as paradigmatic for a network of researchers. As Kuhn (1996) pointed out, explanatory claims made under the auspices of different scientific paradigms are not only different but incommensurate. For this reason, even simple comparisons between two paradigms can be problematic.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
Karl Marx (2000d, 173)
There is no reason to assume that we have yet reached the point of no return in the maelstrom in which we are drifting.
Norbert Elias (1987a, 115)
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© 2013 François Dépelteau and Tatiana Savoia Landini
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Powell, C. (2013). Contradiction and Interdependency: The Sociologies of Karl Marx and Norbert Elias. In: Dépelteau, F., Landini, T.S. (eds) Norbert Elias and Social Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312112_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312112_7
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