Copyright Irish Journal ofSociotogy ISSN 0791-6035 Vol. 16.1, 2007, pp.

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Involvement and detachment, from principles to practice: A critical reassessment of The Established and the Outsiders
DANIEL BLOYCE and PATRICK MURPHY Department of Sport and Exercise Science University of Chester In this paper we revisit The Established and the Outsiders (Elias and Scotson 1965; second edition 1994). We argue that Elias was so intent upon demonstrating the heuristic value of his theory of established-outsider relations that he allowed these concerns to cloud his assessment of Scotson's data. We argue that the paradox is Elias had already developed more sophisticated and flexible tools for analysing the dynamic complexities of human figurations. Finally, we suggest that the problems Elias encountered in maintaining an effective degree of detachment in this study may lead to a wider appreciation of the difficulties facing anyone wishing to move from an understanding of the principles of the involvement-detachment thesis to their practical application.
ABSTRACT:

established-outsiders, power relationships, human figurations, involvement and detachment.

KEYWORDS:

Preamble We shall begin this paper by refiecting upon the way in which the problem that forms its centrepiece emerged. When we attempted to apply the concepts 'established' and 'outsiders' in the context of writing and supervising a doctoral thesis, they proved to be unhelpful (Bloyce 2004). The difficulties we encountered do not seem to have been recognised by figurational sociologists or their critics. This experience led us to return to Elias's seminal work, co-authored with John L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders, which was first published in 1965. Elias is rightly coming to be regarded as one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century and we readily acknowledge our intellectual debt to Elias and others working within a figurational framework. Accordingly, our aim in this paper is to assess the value of this theory within the parameters of the figurational tradition.

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We set out to trace the aetiology of the two concepts in Elias's intellectual development and how these processes resulted in The Established and the Outsiders. We shall outline the specific roots of this book and how the empirical data used in this study were gathered by Scotson in the course of researching for his MA thesis, a project that centred on a particular community and its delinquency problems. We shall next provide a synopsis of the book and explore how Elias's commitment to demonstrating the heuristic value of the concepts 'established' and 'outsiders' led him to neglect a range of relevant issues. In this connection we shall survey the evidence that we think was probably gathered yet remained unreported, the questions that were left unasked, the avenues that went unexplored and the speculative leaps made - leaps that were, in our view, probably engendered by a desire to sustain their overall thesis. We then move on to an assessment of how Elias came to subordinate his broader commitment to an approach that was based on examining the complex dynamics of power relationships to the specific concerns that preoccupied him when writing this book. How then are these shortcomings to be understood? In our view Elias and Scotson's analysis seems to have been unduly influenced by the former's overriding wish to demonstrate the heuristic value of the concepts of the established and the outsiders and this concern particularly affected Elias's selection and interpretation of the evidence. We conclude that their argument can best be understood as a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy because their treatment of evidence seems to have been geared to a prior objective. Thus, The Established and the Outsiders provides an interesting example of the way in which intellectual commitments - in much the same way as ideological commitments can lead to a level of involvement that detracts trom the adequacy of the emerging explanation.

The theory of established-outsider relations Stephen Mennell (1989: 115-6) characterises the emergence of the theory of established-outsider relations as follows: [Elias] sought categories which, though simpler in themselves, would yet enable him to grapple better with the complexities of inequality actually observed within the flux of social relationships. The eventual outcome was his theory of established-outsider relationships... The model arose out of a study of a small community near Leicester in the middle years of the twentieth century. The outcome was the book The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems (1965). According to Mennell and Goudsblom (1998: 25), Elias's flrst reference to the established-outsiders distinction was 'in the report on an empirical study, carried out with John L. Scotson'. For Mennell, the continuity between the subsequent book - The Established and the Outsiders - and Elias's earlier concerns is deep and

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readily apparent. He poitits to 'a clear connection with discussions in The Civilising Frocess of elite manners, of the shame mechanism and of ambivalent relationships between social groups, which have played so impoiiant a part in the longer term development of societies on a larger scale' (1989: 120-1). He also makes reference to EHas's 'earliest published discussion of an established-outsider relationship, his 1935 essay on the expulsion of the Huguenots from France', (1989: 121; see Elias, 2006). It therefore seems certain that in The Established and the Outsiders, Elias was pursuing problems that had long occupied his mind. There also appears to be a high level of unanimity in 'figurational circles' on the more general applicability of the theory. As Mennell (1989: 27) points out, 'Elias later spelt out how the model could be applied to a whole range of social inequalities - between ethnic groups, colonized and colonising, children and adults, gays and straights, men and women and so on." For example, Mennell and Goudsblom (1998: 27) characterise 'established' and 'outsiders' as being for Elias 'what Herbert Blumer called sensitising concepts, pointing to the complexities of inequality actually observed within the flux of social relationships'. Robert van Krieken (1989: 27) similarly writes that 'the more general significance of the study was that Elias regarded the power relations he encountered in Winston Parva [the pseudonym employed by Elias and Scotson for the community studied in The Established and the Outsiders] as particular examples of a model or "empirical paradigm" of established-outsider figurations which can be found in numerous other settings and on larger scales'. Mennell (1989: 116; emphasis in the original) concludes that, although The Established and the Outsiders 'was not widely read at the time, the effect of this book can be seen clearly in much of the work on present-day social problems undertaken by sociologists under EHas's influence'.^ On this basis there can be little doubt about either the importance attached to this work in figurational eircles or regarding its largely uncritical acceptance.^

The Established and the Outsiders: placing the study in context Situating The Established and the Outsiders in the preceding literattire on community studies is not a straightforward task. The difficulties relate, first, to the sheer diversity of the studies that come under this rubric and their 'non-cumulative nature' (Bell and Newby 1974: 3); secondly, to the fact that Elias and Scotson offer few clues to the literature in community studies that they drew upon'' and, thirdly, when writing The Established and the Outsiders, Elias seems to have been 'other directed'. That is to say he was not so much interested in community per se. Rather he conceived of the study as a means to a broader end, namely, demonstrating the heuristic merits of the theory of established-outsider relations. Be that as it may The Established and the Outsiders can still be seen to eonstitute something of a break with the approach to community studies that prevailed at the time it was written. The authors' approach diverged from the persuasive tendency to romanticise the notion of community, a tendency dating back at least as far as

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Tnnies and, indeed, one that is still common today. It was also at explicit variance with the functionalist paradigm that had hitherto been dominant. Their analysis shifted the balance away from a one-sided preoccupation with processes of integration to one that took more account of social conflict. In this respect their contribution was acknowledged and welcomed by Bell and Newby (1974: 5) because as they observed: 'community conflict is a sadly neglected facet of most community studies'. In their Preface to The Established and the Outsiders, Elias and Scotson (1965: ix) wrote that, as their study proceeded, they gradually became aware that some of the problems they were addressing 'had a paradigmatic character: they threw light on problems which one often encountered on a much larger scale in society at large'. This is an illuminating statement for at least two reasons. Firstly, it establishes the general importance of this study as a watershed in the crystallisation of Elias's ideas on established-outsider relations. Secondly, it provides flrst hand testimony to the fact that these insights did not come like a bolt out of the blue. They had been occupying his mind for some considerable time. The first of Elias's points provides justification for revisiting this study. The second will come to form part of our critique. Mennell and Goudsblom are in no doubt about the division of labour involved in the production of The Established and the Outsiders. They write: 'While Scotson collected the field data, it was Elias who did the conceptual and theoretical work' (1998: 25). Scotson was a part-time MA student and schoolteacher. His thesis was on delinquency in an area that included a school at which he had taught and was conducted under Elias's supervision.' It principally involved a comparison between two ostensibly similar working class neighbourhoods, one where delinquency rates were high and another where they were low. They wrote that 'in the third year of the research the delinquency differentials between the two larger neighbourhoods ... practically disappeared' (1965: ix). Their disappearance was accounted for by the fact that the 'problem families' that had been the chief source of the delinquency had moved out of the area. The authors later added that 'it would have required a prolongation of the research beyond its allotted time to investigate the long-term effects of this "experiment" on the relationship between the two neighbourhoods and especially on the traditional image which the established residents had formed of the outsiders' (1965: 85). Be that as it may, in Mennell's (1989: 21) words 'Elias reworked it [the MA thesis] with Scotson for publication, using it as a vehicle for the theoretical elaboration of ideas which had been in his mind at least since the 1935 essay on the Huguenots, and perhaps since his childhood as a Jew in Germany'. It seems clear that in this endeavour Elias decided to 'make do' with material gathered in the furtherance of the original project. Such an exercise is, of course, entirely legitimate as long as its limitations are recognised. It is highly likely that data gathered for Scotson's initial project on delinquency would have had some relevance for the later Winston Parva one. It is equally likely that the latter would have given rise to specific data requirements of its own. Therefore, the question arises how did the long fermentation of these ideas impact upon Elias's

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interpretation of the evidence gathered in the service of another project? However, before exploring this issue, it is necessary to provide an overview of the Winston Parva study. Winston Parva: its development and social profile Winston Parva was the vision of Charles Wilson, a paternalistic capitalist. During the 1880s he formed a company with a view to constructing a community with houses, shops and a chtirch. The intention was that the new residents would furnish the labour for his factories. Elias and Scotson (1965:13) recounted that, in the 1950s and 1960s, some of the residents still recalled how he 'drove through the streets of the township he had created in his horse-dravm carriage raising his top hat to the new "villagers'". This helps to explain why one of the central groups in this htxman figuration came to see themselves as 'villagers' and referred to their section of what became a larger community as the 'village'. The impression given by Elias and Scotson is of 'the villagers' as a traditional community, conservative in outlook, churchgoing, deferential to those above them in the status hierarchy and with the expectation that respect would be forthcoming from those below them in the pecking order. During the period encompassed by the authors' study, another charismatic figure, a Councillor Drew, seems to have been the dominant figure in Winston Parva. As might be expected in a more democratic age, the basis of his power was distinctive from that of the seemingly more aloof Charles Wilson. Drew's power was not simply based on his economic position, but also on his political and cultural leadership. In the 1920s and 1930s, the deferential structure of the community was reinforced by the construction of detached and semi-detached houses on an adjacent piece of land. These properties came to be occupied by professional and business people. The authors referred to this section of Winston Parva as Zone 1. This was where Councillor Drew and his 'inner circle' resided. Over the years, some of the more prosperous inhabitants of the village. Zone 2, as it came to be designated by the researchers, moved into this area. Therefore, some families came to have branches in both these sections of the community. Also in the 1930s and in the face of opposition from the 'villagers', the Council developed another piece of adjacent land. It seems that the 'villagers' regarded the resultant properties as 'below their standard' (1965: 14). These new houses came to be occupied by families who came from Durham, Lancashire, Wales and Ireland (1965: 19) and also by the families of soldiers from a local regiment (1965: 15). With the bombing of London during the Second World War, they were joined by a substantial number of employees of an East End instrument factory that was relocated to Winston Parva (1965: 71). The researchers designated this section of Winston Parva Zone 3. This, then, provides a bare sketch of how the social profile of Winston Parva in the mid-twentieth century came to emerge. However, this picture is far from complete because, within each of the zones, there was further social differentiation.

Irish Journal of Sociology

While Zone 1 was a predominantly middle-class area, it also contained a small enclave of working-class houses. Zone 2 consisted of two sections. Firstly, there was the area in which the working-class 'village elite', the established, lived together with a pocket of slightly better houses with middle-class occupants. There was also a pocket of lower working-class residents located in what was seen as the 'bad end' of this section of Zone 2 (1965: 36). Secondly, there was the area where the majority of the zone's 'non-elite' working-class lived. Zone 3 housed the newcomers, the outsiders. They were composed largely of working-class people employed in skilled and semi-skilled occupations, together with a small group who were characterised as 'problem families' and whose occupational status was predominantly unskilled. This latter group accounted for most of the delinquency in the community. The principal axis of tension investigated by Elias and Scotson was the relationship between Zones 2 and 3. They placed particular emphasis on the relative cohesiveness of the established group in Zone 2, the control it exercised over local associations and its use of 'praise gossip' to enhance its own image and 'blame gossip' to denigrate and stigmatise the inhabitants of Zone 3, the outsiders (1965: 91). For this purpose, the established group used the presence of a small group of middle-class residents in their zone, 'a minority of the best', to enhance their own reputation, while characterising all the residents of the Estate in terms of the 'problem families' in their midst, 'a minority of the worst'. The authors argued that, so successful were the established in this endeavour that the newcomers came to acquiesce in their own 'group disgrace' and acknowledge the 'group charisma' of those who stigmatised them. This, then, is the central thesis of The Established and the Outsiders. Evidential problems Evidence seemingly gathered but not presented In 1958, Winston Parva had 4,185 residents. They were distributed as follows: Zone 1 had 456 inhabitants. Zone 2 had 2,553 and Zone 3 had 1,176. Scotson 'carried out interviews with members of every thirteenth household on the electoral register in each of the three zones.'' Even though these data were collected with another project in mind it is difficult to imagine that they would not have provided many insights into the broader power structure of Winston Parva. Accordingly, it remains puzzling as to why the views of the middle-class majority in Zone 1 were barely reported and why the views of the working-class minority - some 59 people in this zone were ignored.' Likewise, what were the perspectives of the middle and lower working-class minorities in the elite section of the 'village'? Even the views of the 'non-elite' working-class majority of Zone 2 were only heard sporadically. More specifically, how did the middle-class majority of Zone 1 view the working-class contingent in their own zone? The authors reported that the latter's presence was unacknowledged by all the other groups in Zones 1 and 2. In the

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event, this group disappeared from Elias and Scotson's sight. Were none of this working-class minority included in the interview schedule? It could be argued that this group was a possible competitor for the title of 'outsiders'. Another competitor group for this label could have been the working-class minority at the 'bad end' of one of the elite streets of Zone 2, but once again silence reigns. Agreed, these two groups do not appear to have been overtly stigmatised, but is not being seemingly totally ignored an insidious form of stigmatisation? In the event, the researchers appeared to have accepted without comment the general unwillingness of Zones 1 and 2 to acknowledge the presence of these groups. Again, how did the middle-class majority of Zone 1 view the middle-class minority in their zone who were active in community affairs through the medium of the voluntary associations? How did they view those residents who had moved there from Zone 2? How did they view the middle-class minority in Zone 2? How did this middleclass minority view themselves and the aspirations of th 'village elite'? Were they active in the community or did they try to distance themselves from the other groups in their neighbourhood and identify with the outward looking middle-class groups in Zone 1? What of the different levels of involvement of the inhabitants of Zone 3 in the voluntary associations? The authors revealed that 'five of the people interviewed in Zone 2 had relatives in Zone 3' (1965: 72). When multiplied by a factor of 13 - every thirteenth household was interviewed - this produces the not insubstantial figure of 65 households with crosscutting ties between the two zones that were central to Elias and Scotson's established-outsider thesis. How were these ties established? Were they the result of marriage or by families moving house? What implications did these ties have for the social standing of the families in Zone 2? Did the family members in Zone 2 try to distance themselves from their relatives in Zone 3? Did their relatives in Zone 3 derive any kudos from having family ties with Zone 2? In the event Elias and Scotson provide little, if any, data on these and many other issues. Their apparently rich source of interview material was left largely untapped.

Speculative leaps The authors posed many questions that are relevant to an understanding of the power structure of Winston Parva. In the present context, highlighting two of them must suffice. For example, they speculated that 'if one had asked the "villagers" they would probably have said they did not want an Estate at their doorstep, and if one had asked the Estate people they would probably have said they would rather not settle near an older neighbourhood such as the "village"' (1965: 156, emphasis added). The obvious point to make is why were questions that were so pertinent to Elias and Scotson's thesis raised but not pursued? Another indication that the researchers' central preoccupation with proving the sociological value of the established-outsiders distinction detracted from the object-adequacy of their study is the trajectory of a number of what we think were unwarranted assumptions on

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their part. For example, they wrote: 'the role of a lower status group in which they were placed and the indiscriminate discrimination against all people who settled on the estate must have early discouraged any attempt to establish closer contacts with the older groups' (1965: 156, emphasis added). The operative phrase is 'must have'. The question arises why must it have? Was this assumption made because it [ was supportive of the authors' thesis? It is, of course, one thing to hypothesise, but quite another to make unsupported assertions. Suffice to say, in the present context, such claims as those cited above, remain problematic in the absence of supportive evidence. Avenues left unexplored Space permits only one example of a neglected research avenue in the present context. It is, however, an avenue that is crucial to the authors' thesis. One of its central planks was the alleged cohesiveness of Zone 2 as opposed to the relative absence of this characteristic in Zone 3. Yet we are told that 'the "Londoners" ... formed, at least at the outset, a fairly compact group' (1965: 18, italics added). That they were relatively well integrated when they arrived in Winston Parva would not be surprising, given that they worked for the same East End firm. But what are we to read into the phrase 'ai least at the outsefl Was it that the researchers had been unable to determine whether or not the cohesiveness of this group had been sustained or diminished? They appear to have been better informed about the past - some 20 years earlier - than they were about the period in which their research was conducted. One fruitful venue for exploring this issue would have been the nature of relationships in the pub. After all, '"locals" [pubs] were among the central institutions of Winston Parva's community life.' (1965: 16). There were two pubs in Winston Parva, 'The Eagle' and 'The Hare and Hounds'. It seems that, 'of the 25 people from the Estate [interviewed] one mentioned [frequenting] "The Eagle", and 19 "The Hare and Hounds'" (1965: 76). Repeating the earlier exercise and multiplying this latter figure by their sample factor of 13 produces 247 customers. Elias and Scotson were centrally concerned with the contrasting levels of social cohesion in two sections of the community. The Hare and Hounds was a major context in which people from what was held to be the less cohesive section socialised. It, therefore, remains puzzling as to why the authors should have ignored one of the principal venues in which the relative cohesion of this group might have found its strongest expression. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this and other issues were not pursued because the ' authors were primarily concerned to emphasise the differences between these two sections of the Winston Parva community. Thus, while acknowledging that evidence gathered for the delinquency thesis is likely to have had some relevance to the established-outsiders project, the gaps in knowledge that were bound to arise when using it for a wider purpose could only have been bridged effectively by additional theoretically informed research. Such

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gaps cannot be papered over by signpost questions that are left unexplored, or by mere assertions aimed at offering a semblance of support for the thesis. We will now turn to the central issue of the balance of power in Winston Parva. Exploring the complex dynamics of power in Winston Parva From an Eliasian perspective, power is a polymorphous pi-operty of social relations (Elias, 1978: 92-4). For example, while one dimension of power may favour one party in a relationship, another dimension may advantage another party. Relationships in Winston Parva were a case in point. When compared with the residents of Zone 3, the 'village elite' had more control over the local associations and, because of their stronger social cohesion, they had a greater capacity to use praise and blame gossip as a means of maintaining their particular view of the status hierarchy. However, if we reflect upon the relative susceptibility of the various parties to internalising the dominant definitions, the emerging picture becomes more problematic. We dispute Elias and Scotson's statement that 'the residents of Zone 3 themselves seemed to accept the status inferiority locally accorded to their own neighbourhood by comparison with Zone 2 although grudgingly and with some bitterness'. They added 'one could not help wondering why they acquiesced' (1965: 2). Undoubtedly, some of the presented evidence does indicate that some of the residents of Zone 3 were of a similar mind to those of Zone 2 with regard to the 'problem families' and in terms of embracing a negative view of the Estate. However, as we will show, there is a great deal of evidence scattered through the text that is inconsistent with the view that the residents of Zone 3 accepted and acquiesced in their inferior status. It is also relevant to collate and give due importance to the scattered evidence that testifies to the 'village elite's' deference to the middle-class groups in the community. It is apparent that the former did not simply acquiesce in their own inferior status vis-vis the middle classes: they flilsomely embraced it. Let us take this further by considering the evidence relating to the power of the residents of Zone 3.

The power of the residents of Zone 3 Political affiliations. For electoral purposes, Winston Parva was divided into two wards, one formed by Zone 1 and part of Zone 2, the second by the other part of Zone 2 and Zone 3. Councillor Drew represented the former ward during the period of the research. He stood as an Independent and had the backing of the Conservative Association. Labour councillors represented the latter ward. While Drew held that, by voting Labour, the Estate people showed their lack of 'intelligent awareness and a sense of responsibility' (1965: 64), it is also possible that some of the Estate people had brought their Labour affiliations with them. Heavy industrial areas in the North of England and Wales tended to be Labour strongholds in those years and the East

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End of London also has a history of radical politics. The authors do not seem to have considered these possibilities. Regardless of whether the political affiliations of the 'newcomers' had more to do with their social roots or the conditions they encountered in Winston Parva, Elias and Scotson recognised that 'the Estate people on their part, and perhaps a number of rejected "villagers" as well, retaliated by rejecting the ruling political outlook and activities of Zones 1 and 2 as another example of the rule of the "cliques", the "old fogies", the "snobs"' (1965: 64). Not only does this statement indicate the level of resentment felt by Estate residents; it also supports the view that such resentment found expression in overt opposition in formal political processes. The Hare and Hounds and the Working Men's Club. Elias and Scotson's neglect of the levels of cohesion that might have been given expression in The Hare and Hounds has already been noted. However, what remains to be said is that Zone 3's take-over of this pub - the authors described it as a 'conquest' - was surely indicative of a group that possessed certain power resources and one that was not prepared to bow to the prevailing conventions of Zone 2 (1965: 17). What of the Working Men's Club? Although it was located in the 'village', 'men and women from the Estate formed the bulk of its members ... [This club] offered opportunities for families from the village and the Estate to come into closer contact after work and, perhaps, to form some kind of friendship with each other. But no such relationships were formed' (1965: 76). Perhaps not, but could this club have been a context in which intra-Zone 3 relationships were consolidated? Again, how did the numerical dominance of people from Zone 3 in the club come about? Why did the 'village elite' not use their power to fi-eeze them out of the club, as they had done in the other voluntary associations? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these and other issues were not raised, let alone pursued, because the authors were so intent on emphasising the differences between Zones 2 and 3 and, in particular, the different levels of integration that were held to characterise them. Delinquency. The authors observed that children from the more disorderly homes 'had little respect for the laws and rules of the people who were better off.' (1965: 122). 'The knowledge that by being noisy, destructive and offensive they could annoy those by whom they were rejected and treated as outcasts, acted as an incentive' (1965: 129). Whatever the complex social roots of this behaviour, it certainly involved a level of conscious opposition to the prevailing order. The delinquent children were defiant in their rejection of prevailing values, and this defiance constituted a source of satisfaction and excitement to them. While Elias and Scotson did on occasions recognise that 'many [Estate] residents clearly resented the air of superiority which people in Zone 2 assumed towards them', they continued to maintain that what the residents of the Estate 'said and the

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13

manner in which they said it, indicated their resignation and helplessness' (1965: 80). Thus, while the evidence of retaliation by juveniles, political opposition, the total take-over of The Hare and Hounds, the numerical dominance of the workingmen's club by people from Zone 3 and various other expressions of resentment abound in the text, the authors never brought these data together or acknowledged their combined relevance for their thesis. As Fletcher (1997: 71) has noted, when 'power differentials are relatively even, the outsiders begin to retaliate and counterstigmatise'. There is clear evidence that some of the residents of Zone 3 were doing precisely that. Zone 1 looking down Elias and Scotson tell us that Zone 1 was predominantly middle-class. However, distinctions can be drawn between the middle-class majority, who were apparently indifferent to the other two zones, and the minority, led by Drew, who were active in community affairs. This latter group contained people who had previously lived in Zone 2. The middle-class majority were characterised as living behind 'invisible walls'. Its members' social alignments were said to be with similar individuals and groups outside the Winston Parva community (1965: 25). Indeed, the likelihood is that they did not perceive themselves as belonging to this community at all. According to the authors 'the residents of Zone 1, as the interviews indicated, were very conscious of the superiority of their neighbourhood in relation to Zones 2 and 3' (1965: 28). The authors offered some fragmentary evidence of this, such as the statement "'this is a better part, all our family live this side"', (1965: 28-9). This comment is of interest because it suggests that some of the middle-class majority regarded their fellow residents with family ties in Zone 2 as being of lower status. The views of residents of Zone 1 who had relatives in Zone 2 are of particular interest in this connection. They expressed pride in their origins, but this must surely have been an ambivalent pride. While making a point of not denying their origins, they simultaneously proclaimed their satisfaction with how far they had risen (1965: 7) and if this self-satisfaction was to be meaningful, they must have viewed their social origins as in some way inferior (1965: 28). Would not a systematic and balanced analysis of both sides of this superiority-inferiority equation have been central to a more adequate assessment of the established-outsider hypothesis? The authors recognised that the greater power exercised by the residents of Zone 1 did not only find expression in economic differentials and relative control over the means of orientation. It was also exhibited, they argued, in the differential control exercised by the 'inner circle' over most of the voluntary associations based in Zone 2 (1965: 26-7). However, Elias and Scotson did not probe the implications these differentials had for the self-images of the residents of Zone 2, in particular those of the 'village elite'.

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Zone 2, with particular reference to the 'village elite ' Elias and Scotson tell us that the village was divided in two by a road with the minority living to the north. This northern section included the 'old families' and a middle-class-minority [and] was held to be 'the better part of the village' (1965: 36). As such, its residents placed considerable store on 'the respect they felt was due to them' (1965: 148). Conversely, perhaps the strongest indications of the 'village elite's' acceptance of their own relative inferiority were, firstly, the way they used the middle-class enclave in their part of the village as a benchmark for their own respectability and, secondly, the pride they took from those of their number who had relocated to Zone 1 (1965: 28). It seems that the majority of 'villagers' who lived south of the road were under great pressure to conform to the standards of the 'village elite' (1965: 38). Yet notwithstanding the power wielded by the 'village elite' in Zone 2, the authors acknowledged the limitations of their power over Zone 3. They wrote: 'the "villagers" might have been more successful if they had made common cause with other Estate families who equally suffered from their minority. Together they might have been able to exercise stronger control over the disordered minority of the Estate' (1965: 131). By implication, this statement confirms the limited success the 'village elite' achieved in their attempts to subordinate and control the 'wayward' groups. In addition, it helps to demonstrate how the depth of the 'village elite's' hostility towards the 'problem families' led them to stigmatise the Estate as a whole and thereby detracted from their capacity to appreciate that their objectives might have been more effectively achieved by other means. In other words, their prejudices arguably seem to have limited their power. In our view, Elias and Scotson provided ample evidence to sustain the view that it was the 'village elite' who internalised the dominant definitions to the greatest depth. Members of this group believed themselves to be superior to the residents of Zone 3 and this was the aspect upon which the authors chose to concentrate. However, of at least equal importance to an understanding of the power structure of Winston Parva was the fact the 'village elite' also accepted their own inferiority relative to Zone 1 and to the middle-class group in their own zone. It would, we think, not be appropriate to characterise their accepted inferiority to Zone 1 as an intemalisation of a form of 'group disgrace'. It might, however, be fitting to describe it as an example of deeply internalised group deference, a group orientation that can be at least as profound in its social consequences. Indeed, the intergenerational inculcation of deference to the middle-classes seems to have been one of the principal influences that predisposed the 'village elite' to be hostile to the newcomers who then compounded the felt antagonism by not showing the respect due to the community's long-established conventions. Our argument is not that while the 'village elite' was engulfed by dominant definitions, some of the residents of Zone 3 and the 'problem families' in particular were somehow untouched by them. Rather we are suggesting that the totality of the latter groups' conditions of

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existence, their life-experiences and life-chances, encouraged them to be more inclined to question or reject these definitions and embrace values and standards that, to varying degrees, diverged from those of the dominant group(s). Recognition of the greater complexity of power relationships in the community, therefore, casts doubt on the appropriateness of characterising the 'village elite' as an 'established' group or even as part of an 'established' group. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to characterise this group as acolytes of the 'inner circle' in Zone 1, although it should be noted that even some of the 'inner circle' were judged to be of a questionable status by some of the middle-class majority in their own zone. As the authors themselves put it: 'One needed some knowledge about the making of this relationship in order to understand how it came about that the inhabitants of Zone 2 could successfully claim for themselves a higher status than those of Zone 3 while conceding in turn a higher status to most residents of Zone r (1965: 17). We concur. Such understanding was central to an adequate grasp of the power dynamics of Winston Parva. That the necessary research was not undertaken seems to support our contention that Elias and Scotson mistakenly opted to rely on data gathered for another project. In summary, because of the narrowness of their focus, Elias and Scotson's analysis simplifies and distorts the power dynamics that characterised Winston Parva for two principal reasons. Firstly, their concentration on the power that Zone 2 wielded over Zone 3 led them to neglect or underplay the power that Zone 3 had to resist and to moderate the goals of Zone 2. Secondly, Elias and Scotson's preoccupation with the Zone2-Zone3 nexus, led them to neglect the extent to which Zone 2 was itself subservient to Zone 1 and how this subservience helped to foster and drive Zone 2's approach to Zone 3 and the latter's response. Thus, what we appear to have here is an established community characterised by a paternalistic structure whose way of life was disrupted by a substantial influx of newcomers. It was a paternalism bolstered by the continuing centrality of the church and, to a lesser extent, the Conservative Association and the construction of an adjacent middle-class residential area. Elias and Scotson (1965: 68-9) demonstrated an awareness of this paternalistic pattern when they wrote: The manner in which second generation men and women in Winston Parva exercised power and assumed responsibilities as community leaders followed certain traditional patterns ... There was much to suggest that they were urban middle-class and working-class developments of roles which landowners, gentry and aristocracy in their capacity of leaders of rural communities had evolved before in a pre-industrial setting. Elsewhere, Elias and Scotson wrote of Drew that, 'deliberately or not, he played in this urban and industrial setting a part not unlike that played in a more rural setting by the squire' (1965: 27). Yet these insights did not go on to inform the analysis. Nor do they receive the weight due them in any of the secondary accounts. This is

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unfortunate because, in our view, a broader appreciation of this emerging pattern would have gone a long way towards explaining why the 'village elite' attached so much importance to the prevailing norms of deference and respect and the need for newcomers to know their place. This paternalistic hierarchy makes problematic Elias and Scotson's application of the labels 'established' and 'outsiders' to the 'village' and the Estate respectively. In other words, the authors failed to heed their own warning that 'once people have become interdependent, research is bound to be sterile if one studies them in isolation and tries to explain their grouping as if they were separate things' (1965: 167). In this case, their desire to demonstrate the illuminating power of the concepts 'established' and 'outsiders' led them to focus overly on one dimension of the relational network to the relative neglect of other dimensions that were arguably of equal and, perhaps of greater, significance to an understanding of the power dynamics of Winston Parva. Elias added a new introduction to the Dutch edition of The Established and the Outsiders (1976). However, it does not seem to contain any softening in his interpretation of the Winston Parva study. For example he wrote: The only difference between them [Zones 2 and 3] was ...one group was formed by old residents established in the neighbourhood for two or three generations and the other was a group of newcomers ... The relations between the two groups ... were different only with regard to the duration of their residence at this place [Winston Parva]. Here one could see that "oldness" of association, with all it implied, was, on its own, able to create the degree of group cohesion, the collective identification, the commonality of norms'. We recognise that social cohesion and the ability to organise can enhance the power of a group. What we dispute is that this was the only social dimension that distinguished Zone 2 from Zone 3. The 'village elite' also had well-established ties with the 'inner-circle' in Zone 1 and, crucially, the former were able to rely on the latter's support. Perhaps what is most indicative of Elias's theoretical preoccupations is that this new introduction does not contain even a single reference to Zone 1 (1994: xvii-xviii; emphasis added). Of community studies in general Bell and Newby observed that 'whilst it might justly be said that they have contributed a good deal to sociology, they have nevertheless contributed very little to each other' (1974: 3). This statement could be seen as a suitably fitting summary of the impact of the Winston Parva study. While flgurational sociologists have applied the theory of established/outsider relations and found it to be illuminating, outside these circles its impact on practitioners of community studies has been fairly marginal. A few authors have drawn upon it. Crow and Alan (1994) make a number of references to it and Day (2006: 178) goes so far as to describe the authors as being 'prescient in treating mobility as a major influence on the shaping of community and ... (in providing) ... an

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exemplary analysis of the erection of symbolic barriers between interacting groups'. But perhaps given the 'idiosyncratic and diverse' nature of the studies encompassed by the term community studies (Bell and Newby 1974: xliii), the likelihood of any one study having a significant impact on such a disparate field seems quite remote. Problems of involvement and detachment Ideological preoccupations about 'preferred forms of life' can have a profoundly limiting effect upon one's capacity to understand human figurations. However, there are other preoccupations that can have a similar impact, for example, being overly concerned with demonstrating the explanatory power of a particular approach. It is a danger that can perhaps afflict intellectuals who have placed considerable distance between themselves and ideological concerns, but in the process have developed a commitment to a particular theoretical framework to such a degree that they lower their critical guard. Rather than attempting to assess the adequacy of their hypotheses, they seek to sustain them. Our analysis of The Established and the Outsiders leads us to suspect that, in that context, Elias pursued his intellectual objectives to a point where his judgement was clouded. How else can one explain the authors' disproportionate attraction to evidence that supported the notion of Zone 2's group charisma and Zone 3's group disgrace? How else can one explain their failure to systematise and give due weight to the evidence pertaining to Zone 2's pattern of deference to Zone 1 and their relative neglect of the evidence relating to Zone 3's resistance to Zone 2's attempts to stigmatise them?* It may seem paradoxical that a man who devoted so much energy to exploring the relationships between involvement and detachment and arguing the need for researchers to distance themselves from heteronomous evaluations, should himself have slipped into a more involved mode of thought (Elias 1987: 34-5). Yet such an outcome is understandable within his general approach. In developing the involvement-detachment thesis, he was attempting to break with the dichotomy that continues to characterise much of the debate on the influence of values on the social sciences. The fact that, in this instance, Elias seems to have become overly involved not only testifies to the difficulty he encountered in striving to maintain his footing on this treacherous terrain, but also alerts us to the difficulties confronting everyone who seeks to distance themselves from heteronomous concerns. In our view the writings of Norbert Elias on involvement and detachment have brought immense clarity to an area riddled in ideology and awash with unhelpful dichotomies (1987).' These writings contain many insights that have yet to be digested effectively. Perhaps one neglected issue is the need to recognise more fully that a sound appreciation of the theoretical arguments surrounding these concepts does not in itself provide some sort of guarantee that the principles will be effectively and consistently adhered to in practice. People's ideological

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jjredispositions, their day-to-day concerns and, indeed, on occasions, their intellectual priorities, can undermine their efforts to achieve a higher level of detachment. The struggle to avoid sliding back into more heteronomous modes of thinking requires sociologists to maintain a constant level of vigilance. Yet notwithstanding the ever-present hazards, there is, in our view, a rather pervasive assumption in figurational circles that the move from principles to practice is unproblematic and, therefore, requires no elaboration or specific guidance. As Rojek observes 'Elias supplies no guidelines, no mechanism, no drill for attaining detachment' (1986: 591). We think that the significance of this comment should be recognised and addressed.'" Our hope is that, in addition to shedding some light on the formation of the concepts of the established and outsiders, this paper has had something to say about the difficulties associated with achieving and maintaining an appropriate level of detachment. That Elias himself arguably exhibited too high a level of involvement in the way he went about developing his argument in The Established and the Outsiders constitutes a salutary reminder to those who eschew the difficulties involved in bringing a reasonable level of detachment to bear on one's research. The difficulties that Elias encountered in adhering to his own theoretical principles may encourage a broader appreciation of the problems confronting others who are genuinely seeking to bring a higher level of detachment to their work. In the Introduction to the second edition of The Established and the Outsiders, Elias wrote that he and Scotson 'tried not to allow our theoretical interests to overwhelm our interests in the social life of the people of Winston Parva' (1994 xii). This statement surely testifies to his appreciation of the fact that the movement from principles to practice is not a cut and dried affair." Saving the baby Much of Elias's theorisation in The Established and the Outsiders is brilliant and irnaginative. It is also on many occasions partial and assertive. However, our intention in this paper has not been to throw the baby out with the bath water. For example, we readily acknowledge the usefulness of Elias's discussion of the concepts 'group charisma' and 'group disgrace', and of the related tendencies for human groups to depict themselves and the groups they hold in high esteem in terms of the characteristics of 'a minority of the best' and to present the groups they deem to be their inferiors in terms of the characteristics of 'a minority of the worst'. We also accept the argument that when power differentials between two groups are particularly wide, the group that is labelled inferior may deeply internalise the derogatory definition of themselves. We are also confident that the theory can be used effectively by those who are aware of its limitations and of the need to locate the particular example of established-outsider relations that is under investigation within its broader figuration. For example, in his analysis of the figurational dynamics of black-white relationships in the United States, Dunning has provided a demonstration of how

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the theory can be applied circumspectly (Loyal and Quilley, 2004: 75-94). We would only add that its centrality to an analysis is likely to be greater when the two groups involved are relatively insulated from wider human figurations. In our view, Elias's commitment to demonstrating the heuristic value of the theory of established-outsider relations led him to marginalise the more sophisticated approach to power relations that he had already developed in his longerterm studies. He seems to have done so in favour of a more simplistic and dichotomising framework. Mennell (1989: 124-5) hints at as much when he writes that 'although Elias constantly strives to find more processual concepts for use in sociology, "established" and "outsiders" are perhaps not the most inherently dynamic of the terms he has introduced'. Elias seems to us to have been motivated by the entirely laudable desire to develop analytical tools which, as Mennell (1989:115) puts it, would 'enable him to grapple better with the complexities of inequality'. However, in the context of the Winston Parva study, this theory became as much and perhaps more straitjacket than a sensitising agent. It led its authors to become unduly absorbed by one nexus in the community and in thiscase the attempt to simplify led to over-simplification.

Notes Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Eric Dunning, Ivan Waddington and Stephen Mennell for their helpful and supportive comments on an earlier draft of this paper. As always the final responsibility rests with us. 1 Elias added an introduction to the Dutch edition of The Established and the Outsiders (1976), an introduction that was also included in the second English edition (1994). While it contains an interesting discussion of the more general applicability of the theory of established-outsiders relations and related concepts, in our view it contains no arguments that detract from the substance of this critique. Indeed, some of the arguments that form the critical focus of this paper are restated with equal, if not more, conviction. 2 Mennell (1989: 125-37) provides an over-view of some of the studies by figurational sociologists that have utilised the theory of established-outsider relations. These publications include de Swaan (1988), Dunning (1972), and Van Stolk and Wouters (1980). Also see Dunning and Waddington, (2003), Ernst (2003), Liston (2005a; 2005b), and Sutton and Vertigans (2002). 3 For example, the following writers have provided straightforward synopses of the The Established and Outsiders thesis, Mennell (1989: 116-25), Mennell and Goudsblom (1998:25-27 and 49-52), Fletcher (1997: 70-76), Robert van Krieken (1998: 147-53) and Dunning (2004: 80-1). While such accounts perform a useful service, their uncritical nature has also helped to sustain the status of The Established and the Outsiders as an unchallenged seminal work. 4 In the foreword to Bell and Newby, Elias states that he was familiar with the work of the contributors to this reader among others in the field (1974: xv). However, while Elias and Scotson may have taken account of the work of these writers, none of the Bell and Newby texts are cited in The Established and the Outsiders and the few authors operating within the

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community studies area that are cited receive only fleeting treatment. 5 Leicester University library has never held a copy of Scotson's MA thesis. For the full story of how the thesis seems to have gone missing, see Cas Wouters's Note on the Text in the standard edition of The Established and the Outsiders that forms volume 4 of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias (forthcoming, 2008). 6 The authors were not very forthcoming in their discussion of their research methods. Much has been left to the imagination of the reader. However, we have been able to determine that, in addition to interviews with significant figures in the community, Scotson conducted twelve interviews in Zone 1, 64 in Zone 2 and 25 in Zone 3. 7 This figure has been calculated on the basis of the percentage of manual workers in Zone 1 (1965: 29). 8 Elias came later to use Harper Lee's semi-autobiographical novel. To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960), as a means of illuminating the part played by violence in established-outsider relations. His treatment of this book seems to have much in common with his approach to Scotson's MA thesis. They were both conceived of as closed books and the subsequent analyses were geared to demonstrating the heuristic powers of the theory of established-outsider relations (see Fletcher 1997: 76-78). Limitations on space prevent further elaboration. The paper by Elias, 'Further Aspects of Established-Outsider Relations: The Maycomb Model', will appear in volume 4 oiThe Collected Works of Norbert Elias to be published in 2008 by. CD Press. 9 University College Dublin Press have recently published a new edition of Involvement and Detachment in February 2007 as part of The Collected Works of Norbert Elias. 10 Dunning has addressed Rojek's comment directly by outlining some 'rules of procedure' (Dunning and Rojek 1992: 252-4). While we would not dispute the usefulness of these 'rules', we suspect that Rojek was primarily referring to the deeply entrenched predispositions that academics and students bring to their studies and how they can become more aware of them and achieve a degree of detachment from them. 11 Focusing on Elias's essay on 'The Expulsion of the Huguenots from France', Mennell and Goudsblom (1998: 9) state that 'in this essay and the more comprehensive theory of the established-outsiders relationships it anticipates, Elias cannot completely disguise his powerful sympathy for outsiders of every kind.' To the extent that this is the case it would seem to be a irther indication of the difficulties of moving from the principles of the involveihent/detachment thesis to its application. Although, it should be said, we did not detect any significance signs of this in his approach the residents of Zone 3 in Winston Parva.

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