title: Figurational sociology
text: # Figurational sociology
  
  Figurational sociology is a research tradition in which figurations of humans—evolving networks of interdependent humans—are the unit of investigation. Although more a methodological stance than a determinate school of practice, the tradition has one essential feature:
  
  Practitioners may be said to be inspired by the ideal that the usual humanities barrier between micro (e.g. psychological) and macro (e.g. state organization) is removed, and their causal links opened to examination. As a consequence, much of the work done in the name of this approach has examined the connection between changes in psychology and personhood, on the one hand, and changes in macro social structures on the other.
  
  Norbert Elias is usually acknowledged as an early or primary practitioner, as a consequence of his ground-breaking 1939 work, The Civilizing Process.
  
  