Paddy Dolan
Biographic Data
| ID | 179995 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paddy Dolan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paddy |
| FAMILY NAME | Dolan |
| SIGNATURE | DOLAN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Dublin Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0086-8382 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 115 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Forced to Live: Controlled Forced Feeding of Political Prisoners and the Challenge to Nation-States' Civilising Processes
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…
Theorising political legitimisation: From stasis to processes
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 Eliasia…
Rational and Emotional Tension Balances in the Organization of Political Hunger Strikes
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 ac…
Sport in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic: Towards an Agenda for Research in the Sociology of Sport
These are extraordinary times. Less because we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic; \nhumanity has been here multiple times in the past, sometimes with even more devastating \nresults (the ‘Black Death’ of 1346–1353, or Cocolitzli Epidemics in the 16th \nCentury, for example). Rather, these are extraordinary times due to both the huge shutting \ndown of industry, travel and borders, and the enormous level of coverage and discussion \n…
Music in the time-spectrum: Routines, spaces and emotional experience
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 \nprivate spaces and to a greater degree. This paper examines the emotional \nexperience of contemporary music consumption by drawing from an \nEliasian perspective, specifically Elias and Dunning’s sociology of leisure. \nWe expl…
Habitus, social elevation, and the channel of shame-fear: The decision to expand Guinness advertising
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…
Excitement Processes: Norbert Elias's unpublished works on sports, leisure, body, culture
Excitement Processes
Social class tensions, habitus and the advertising of Guinness
Drawing from an Eliasian perspective we examine how an 'advertising subjectivity' became more firmly embedded within the bourgeois habitus. We explain how and why advertising slowly developed and expanded within a commercial organization despite initial opposition, ambivalence and even hostility from some of its bourgeois senior management towards the practice - the very social class sometimes identified with advertising's origins and advance. Ou…
Sociology in the 21st Century: Reminiscence and Redefinition
Can sport be ‘un-political
Sports officials often claim that sport has to be ‘un-political’. This argument is most notably made in two contexts: Firstly, when the decision of awarding Olympic Games or World Championships to nations that struggle with human right issues is justified by the IOC or other international sporting federations. Secondly, when athletes express their concern over social injustices with symbolic gestures of protest in sports-specific contexts
Sport, unity and conflict: An Enduring Social Dynamic
The purpose of this article is largely to serve as an introduction to this special issue on sport, unity and conflict. This was the theme of the European Association for Sociology of Sport conference in 2015, held in Dublin, Ireland. The special issue contains articles by the three keynote speakers of the conference – Randall Collins, Anthony King and Roberta Sassatelli. Each dealt with the theme in different, yet compatible, and highly thought-p…
Documents and detachment in the figurational sociology of sport
This article discusses the methodological implications of using a figurational approach to the study of Gaelic games (the Irish sports of hurling and Gaelic football) and their organisation and governance from the late nineteenth century onwards. Following Norbert Elias, we argue that data generation guided by theories, and potentially modifying such theories, are essential components of research endeavours. The problem of generalisation or repre…
Cultural cosmopolitanization and the politics of television in 1960s Ireland
Many long-term perspectives on television tend to reduce the medium to a vehicle of social control. Here, following the figurational approach of Norbert Elias, the ambivalent meanings that the advent of television evoked, as discussed by politicians in Ireland during the 1960s, are examined. The consuming public were used as a discursive resource to either justify the introduction of television into Irish homes, or claim its inevitably deleteriou…
Status, Power and Ritual Interaction: A Relational Reading of Durkheim, Goffman, and Collins By Theodore D. Kemper Ashgate. 2011. 322 pages. $124.95 hardback
How do emotions emerge and change in social contexts? Why some emotions and not others? How are people bonded together as communities or even societies? These are the kinds of questions that Kemper (implicitly or explicitly) asks in this thought-provoking, challenging book. Here, I mean challenging in the literal sense that Kemper is asking us, the readers, to rethink how we do sociology by reimagining the basis for social interaction. He does th…
Emotions, Violence and Social Belonging: An Eliasian Analysis of Sports Spectatorship
This article examines the development of different forms of spectator violence in terms of the socio-temporal structure of situational dynamics at Gaelic football matches in Ireland. The nature of violent encounters has shifted from a collective form based on local solidarity and a reciprocal code of honour, through a transitional collective form based on deferred emotional satisfaction and group pride, towards increasing individualization of spe…
Re-theorizing the ‘structure–agency’ relationship: Figurational theory, organizational change and the Gaelic Athletic Association
This article illustrates how the figurational sociology associated with Norbert Elias provides an alternative theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between, ‘individual-organization-society’ and organizational change, and in so doing transverses what is conceived as a false dichotomy between structure and agency. Through an historical case study of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, the ‘individual-organization-society’ r…
The Amplification and De-Amplification of Amateurism and Professionalism in the Gaelic Athletic Association
In this paper we explain how and why a specific ethos of amateurism was portrayed and embodied by various groups comprising the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland throughout its history. Interestingly, the discourse pertaining to amateurism has at times been de-amplified, instead being superseded by the vilification of professionalism. Since the 1970s, both amateurism and professionalism have been imbued with new meanings and interpretations …
Sport, media and the Gaelic Athletic Association: The quest for the ‘youth’ of Ireland
Social developments and related dynamic relationships connected with the sports–media complex is a recurrent focus of sociological investigation. However, in explaining developments in the relationship between sports associations and media organizations the specific structure of power relations between them and other related organizations is often given primacy. We argue that this negates how changes in people’s social habitus – how people think …
Organisational centralisation as figurational dynamics: Movements and counter-movements in the Gaelic Athletic Association
In this paper we develop aspects of Elias's figurational approach within organisational studies by using some of the core theoretical constructs as a model to explain organisational change through an empirical investigation of the dynamics of centralisation–decentralisation processes in an Irish sports organisation. Based on historical analysis, the paper documents the expanding interdependencies, figurational dynamics and shifting power balances…
The Planned and the Unplanned: A Roundtable Discussion on the Legacies of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias
When one considers the proximity of their concerns, it is perhaps surprising that the works of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault have not been more systematically compared and discussed. However, the differentiation of disciplinary knowledge (particularly the boundary that separates philosophy from social theory), com-pounded by parochialisms fostered by the cult of the intellectual, have delayed this process far past its due. This conversation, …
Space, Time and the Constitution of Subjectivity: Comparing Elias and Foucault
The work of Foucault and Elias has been compared before in the social sciences and humanities, but here I argue that the main distinction between their approaches to the construction of subjectivity is the relative importance of space and time in their accounts. This is not just a matter of the “history of ideas,” as providing for the temporal dimension more fully in theories of subjectivity and the habitus allows for a greater understanding of h…
The Civilizing and Sportization of Gaelic Football in Ireland: 1884-2009
Over the course of the last 125 years the sport of Gaelic football in Ireland has undergone a sportization and civilizing process as the rules governing the sport became stricter and players developed greater levels of self-control. However, the civilizing of Gaelic football was a particularly fragile and uneven process. The growing social desire to diminish displays of violence was moderated by ambivalence towards violence. Gradually the externa…
Developing Consumer Subjectivity in Ireland: 1900—80
The development of consumer subjectivity cannot be solely understood in terms of the intentions, strategies and discursive practices emanating from diverse power centres. Following Elias, and using Ireland as an empirical case, the consumer is presented as undergoing a shift along a continuum of We—I balances towards the latter pole. This occurs within the context of increasing social interdependencies, functional specialization and social integr…
Figurational dynamics and parliamentary discourses of living standards in Ireland1
While the concept of living standards remains central to political debate, it has become marginal in sociological research compared to the burgeoning attention given to the topic of consumer culture in recent decades. However, they both concern how one does and should consume, and, indeed, behave at particular times. I use the theories of Norbert Elias to explain the unplanned but structured (ordered) changes in expected standards of living over …
Sport in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic: Towards an Agenda for Research in the Sociology of Sport
These are extraordinary times. Less because we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic; \nhumanity has been here multiple times in the past, sometimes with even more devastating \nresults (the ‘Black Death’ of 1346–1353, or Cocolitzli Epidemics in the 16th \nCentury, for example). Rather, these are extraordinary times due to both the huge shutting \ndown of industry, travel and borders, and the enormous level of coverage and discussion \n…
"The Sustainability of "Sustainable Consumption
This article examines the limitations of the concept of sustainable consumption in terms of the inadequate attention given to the social, cultural, and historical contextualization of consumption. The author argues that macromarketing should adopt modes of inquiry that fully engage with this contextualization. The implicit assumptions of sustainable consumption center on the rational individual and his or her needs and wants, and neglect the sign…
Developing Consumer Subjectivity in Ireland: 1900—80
The development of consumer subjectivity cannot be solely understood in terms of the intentions, strategies and discursive practices emanating from diverse power centres. Following Elias, and using Ireland as an empirical case, the consumer is presented as undergoing a shift along a continuum of We—I balances towards the latter pole. This occurs within the context of increasing social interdependencies, functional specialization and social integr…
Space, Time and the Constitution of Subjectivity: Comparing Elias and Foucault
The work of Foucault and Elias has been compared before in the social sciences and humanities, but here I argue that the main distinction between their approaches to the construction of subjectivity is the relative importance of space and time in their accounts. This is not just a matter of the “history of ideas,” as providing for the temporal dimension more fully in theories of subjectivity and the habitus allows for a greater understanding of h…
Can sport be ‘un-political
Sports officials often claim that sport has to be ‘un-political’. This argument is most notably made in two contexts: Firstly, when the decision of awarding Olympic Games or World Championships to nations that struggle with human right issues is justified by the IOC or other international sporting federations. Secondly, when athletes express their concern over social injustices with symbolic gestures of protest in sports-specific contexts
Figurational dynamics and parliamentary discourses of living standards in Ireland1
While the concept of living standards remains central to political debate, it has become marginal in sociological research compared to the burgeoning attention given to the topic of consumer culture in recent decades. However, they both concern how one does and should consume, and, indeed, behave at particular times. I use the theories of Norbert Elias to explain the unplanned but structured (ordered) changes in expected standards of living over …
The Civilizing and Sportization of Gaelic Football in Ireland: 1884-2009
Over the course of the last 125 years the sport of Gaelic football in Ireland has undergone a sportization and civilizing process as the rules governing the sport became stricter and players developed greater levels of self-control. However, the civilizing of Gaelic football was a particularly fragile and uneven process. The growing social desire to diminish displays of violence was moderated by ambivalence towards violence. Gradually the externa…
Sport, unity and conflict: An Enduring Social Dynamic
The purpose of this article is largely to serve as an introduction to this special issue on sport, unity and conflict. This was the theme of the European Association for Sociology of Sport conference in 2015, held in Dublin, Ireland. The special issue contains articles by the three keynote speakers of the conference – Randall Collins, Anthony King and Roberta Sassatelli. Each dealt with the theme in different, yet compatible, and highly thought-p…
Emotions, Violence and Social Belonging: An Eliasian Analysis of Sports Spectatorship
This article examines the development of different forms of spectator violence in terms of the socio-temporal structure of situational dynamics at Gaelic football matches in Ireland. The nature of violent encounters has shifted from a collective form based on local solidarity and a reciprocal code of honour, through a transitional collective form based on deferred emotional satisfaction and group pride, towards increasing individualization of spe…
Music in the time-spectrum: Routines, spaces and emotional experience
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 \nprivate spaces and to a greater degree. This paper examines the emotional \nexperience of contemporary music consumption by drawing from an \nEliasian perspective, specifically Elias and Dunning’s sociology of leisure. \nWe expl…
Sociology in the 21st Century: Reminiscence and Redefinition
Theorising political legitimisation: From stasis to processes
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 Eliasia…
Social class tensions, habitus and the advertising of Guinness
Drawing from an Eliasian perspective we examine how an 'advertising subjectivity' became more firmly embedded within the bourgeois habitus. We explain how and why advertising slowly developed and expanded within a commercial organization despite initial opposition, ambivalence and even hostility from some of its bourgeois senior management towards the practice - the very social class sometimes identified with advertising's origins and advance. Ou…
The Amplification and De-Amplification of Amateurism and Professionalism in the Gaelic Athletic Association
In this paper we explain how and why a specific ethos of amateurism was portrayed and embodied by various groups comprising the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland throughout its history. Interestingly, the discourse pertaining to amateurism has at times been de-amplified, instead being superseded by the vilification of professionalism. Since the 1970s, both amateurism and professionalism have been imbued with new meanings and interpretations …
Organisational centralisation as figurational dynamics: Movements and counter-movements in the Gaelic Athletic Association
In this paper we develop aspects of Elias's figurational approach within organisational studies by using some of the core theoretical constructs as a model to explain organisational change through an empirical investigation of the dynamics of centralisation–decentralisation processes in an Irish sports organisation. Based on historical analysis, the paper documents the expanding interdependencies, figurational dynamics and shifting power balances…
"The Sustainability of "Sustainable Consumption
This article examines the limitations of the concept of sustainable consumption in terms of the inadequate attention given to the social, cultural, and historical contextualization of consumption. The author argues that macromarketing should adopt modes of inquiry that fully engage with this contextualization. The implicit assumptions of sustainable consumption center on the rational individual and his or her needs and wants, and neglect the sign…
Developing Consumer Subjectivity in Ireland: 1900—80
The development of consumer subjectivity cannot be solely understood in terms of the intentions, strategies and discursive practices emanating from diverse power centres. Following Elias, and using Ireland as an empirical case, the consumer is presented as undergoing a shift along a continuum of We—I balances towards the latter pole. This occurs within the context of increasing social interdependencies, functional specialization and social integr…
Figurational dynamics and parliamentary discourses of living standards in Ireland1
While the concept of living standards remains central to political debate, it has become marginal in sociological research compared to the burgeoning attention given to the topic of consumer culture in recent decades. However, they both concern how one does and should consume, and, indeed, behave at particular times. I use the theories of Norbert Elias to explain the unplanned but structured (ordered) changes in expected standards of living over …
The Planned and the Unplanned: A Roundtable Discussion on the Legacies of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias
When one considers the proximity of their concerns, it is perhaps surprising that the works of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault have not been more systematically compared and discussed. However, the differentiation of disciplinary knowledge (particularly the boundary that separates philosophy from social theory), com-pounded by parochialisms fostered by the cult of the intellectual, have delayed this process far past its due. This conversation, …
Space, Time and the Constitution of Subjectivity: Comparing Elias and Foucault
The work of Foucault and Elias has been compared before in the social sciences and humanities, but here I argue that the main distinction between their approaches to the construction of subjectivity is the relative importance of space and time in their accounts. This is not just a matter of the “history of ideas,” as providing for the temporal dimension more fully in theories of subjectivity and the habitus allows for a greater understanding of h…
The Civilizing and Sportization of Gaelic Football in Ireland: 1884-2009
Over the course of the last 125 years the sport of Gaelic football in Ireland has undergone a sportization and civilizing process as the rules governing the sport became stricter and players developed greater levels of self-control. However, the civilizing of Gaelic football was a particularly fragile and uneven process. The growing social desire to diminish displays of violence was moderated by ambivalence towards violence. Gradually the externa…
Organisational centralisation as figurational dynamics: Movements and counter-movements in the Gaelic Athletic Association
In this paper we develop aspects of Elias's figurational approach within organisational studies by using some of the core theoretical constructs as a model to explain organisational change through an empirical investigation of the dynamics of centralisation–decentralisation processes in an Irish sports organisation. Based on historical analysis, the paper documents the expanding interdependencies, figurational dynamics and shifting power balances…
Sport, media and the Gaelic Athletic Association: The quest for the ‘youth’ of Ireland
Social developments and related dynamic relationships connected with the sports–media complex is a recurrent focus of sociological investigation. However, in explaining developments in the relationship between sports associations and media organizations the specific structure of power relations between them and other related organizations is often given primacy. We argue that this negates how changes in people’s social habitus – how people think …
Re-theorizing the ‘structure–agency’ relationship: Figurational theory, organizational change and the Gaelic Athletic Association
This article illustrates how the figurational sociology associated with Norbert Elias provides an alternative theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between, ‘individual-organization-society’ and organizational change, and in so doing transverses what is conceived as a false dichotomy between structure and agency. Through an historical case study of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, the ‘individual-organization-society’ r…
The Amplification and De-Amplification of Amateurism and Professionalism in the Gaelic Athletic Association
In this paper we explain how and why a specific ethos of amateurism was portrayed and embodied by various groups comprising the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland throughout its history. Interestingly, the discourse pertaining to amateurism has at times been de-amplified, instead being superseded by the vilification of professionalism. Since the 1970s, both amateurism and professionalism have been imbued with new meanings and interpretations …
Cultural cosmopolitanization and the politics of television in 1960s Ireland
Many long-term perspectives on television tend to reduce the medium to a vehicle of social control. Here, following the figurational approach of Norbert Elias, the ambivalent meanings that the advent of television evoked, as discussed by politicians in Ireland during the 1960s, are examined. The consuming public were used as a discursive resource to either justify the introduction of television into Irish homes, or claim its inevitably deleteriou…
Status, Power and Ritual Interaction: A Relational Reading of Durkheim, Goffman, and Collins By Theodore D. Kemper Ashgate. 2011. 322 pages. $124.95 hardback
How do emotions emerge and change in social contexts? Why some emotions and not others? How are people bonded together as communities or even societies? These are the kinds of questions that Kemper (implicitly or explicitly) asks in this thought-provoking, challenging book. Here, I mean challenging in the literal sense that Kemper is asking us, the readers, to rethink how we do sociology by reimagining the basis for social interaction. He does th…
Emotions, Violence and Social Belonging: An Eliasian Analysis of Sports Spectatorship
This article examines the development of different forms of spectator violence in terms of the socio-temporal structure of situational dynamics at Gaelic football matches in Ireland. The nature of violent encounters has shifted from a collective form based on local solidarity and a reciprocal code of honour, through a transitional collective form based on deferred emotional satisfaction and group pride, towards increasing individualization of spe…
Documents and detachment in the figurational sociology of sport
This article discusses the methodological implications of using a figurational approach to the study of Gaelic games (the Irish sports of hurling and Gaelic football) and their organisation and governance from the late nineteenth century onwards. Following Norbert Elias, we argue that data generation guided by theories, and potentially modifying such theories, are essential components of research endeavours. The problem of generalisation or repre…
Can sport be ‘un-political
Sports officials often claim that sport has to be ‘un-political’. This argument is most notably made in two contexts: Firstly, when the decision of awarding Olympic Games or World Championships to nations that struggle with human right issues is justified by the IOC or other international sporting federations. Secondly, when athletes express their concern over social injustices with symbolic gestures of protest in sports-specific contexts
Sport, unity and conflict: An Enduring Social Dynamic
The purpose of this article is largely to serve as an introduction to this special issue on sport, unity and conflict. This was the theme of the European Association for Sociology of Sport conference in 2015, held in Dublin, Ireland. The special issue contains articles by the three keynote speakers of the conference – Randall Collins, Anthony King and Roberta Sassatelli. Each dealt with the theme in different, yet compatible, and highly thought-p…
Excitement Processes: Norbert Elias's unpublished works on sports, leisure, body, culture
Excitement Processes
Social class tensions, habitus and the advertising of Guinness
Drawing from an Eliasian perspective we examine how an 'advertising subjectivity' became more firmly embedded within the bourgeois habitus. We explain how and why advertising slowly developed and expanded within a commercial organization despite initial opposition, ambivalence and even hostility from some of its bourgeois senior management towards the practice - the very social class sometimes identified with advertising's origins and advance. Ou…
Sociology in the 21st Century: Reminiscence and Redefinition
Music in the time-spectrum: Routines, spaces and emotional experience
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 \nprivate spaces and to a greater degree. This paper examines the emotional \nexperience of contemporary music consumption by drawing from an \nEliasian perspective, specifically Elias and Dunning’s sociology of leisure. \nWe expl…
Habitus, social elevation, and the channel of shame-fear: The decision to expand Guinness advertising
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…
Sport in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic: Towards an Agenda for Research in the Sociology of Sport
These are extraordinary times. Less because we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic; \nhumanity has been here multiple times in the past, sometimes with even more devastating \nresults (the ‘Black Death’ of 1346–1353, or Cocolitzli Epidemics in the 16th \nCentury, for example). Rather, these are extraordinary times due to both the huge shutting \ndown of industry, travel and borders, and the enormous level of coverage and discussion \n…
Rational and Emotional Tension Balances in the Organization of Political Hunger Strikes
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 ac…
Theorising political legitimisation: From stasis to processes
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 Eliasia…
Sociology (23 works) · Social science (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Sociology and Norbert Elias (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (10 works)