Norbert Elias’s Lost Research: Revisiting the Young Worker Project

Based on the re-discovery of a lost sociological project led by Norbert Elias at the University of Leicester, this book re-visits the project: The Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles. Norbert Elias’s Lost Research makes use of the interview booklets documenting the lives of nearly 900 Leicester school leavers at the time, to give a unique account of Elias’s only foray into large-scale, publicly funded research. Covering all aspects of the research from the development of the research proposal, the selection and management of the research team, the fieldwork, Elias’s theoretical work to the ultimate demise of the research project, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of existing Eliasian texts by introducing this project to a wider audience and investigating and applying Elias’s theoretical work to the areas of youth and school to work transitions. Shedding new light on Elias’s thought, whilst exploring questions of methodology and the relevance of older research to modern questions, this book will be of interest to social theorists, as well as sociologists with interests in research methodology and the history of sociology.