Böcker i Collected Works of Norbert Elias-serien

A study of the life of the nobility at the royal court of France, especially under Louis XIV.

Argues that in highly constrained, 'civilised' societies, sports - as well as a spectrum of other cultural and leisure activities - are to be understood not in terms of 'relaxation' but rather of the need for pleasurable excitement and its pleasurable resolution.

Beginning with the author's celebrated study of the changing standards of behaviour of the secular upper classes in Western Europe since the Middle Ages, this title demonstrates how psychological changes in habitus and emotion management were linked to wider transformations in power relations.