The Planned and the Unplanned: A Roundtable Discussion on the Legacies of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias

Sam Binkley is Associate Professor of Sociology at Emerson College, Boston. His research considers the historical and social production of subjectivity in varied contexts, from the lifestyle movements of the 1970s to contemporary anti-consumerist movements. He is co-editor of Foucault Studies, and author of Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970’s. He is currently working on a book on neoliberalism, therapy and happiness.

Paddy Dolan is Lecturer in Consumer Research and Co-director of the DIT Centre for Consumption and Leisure studies at Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland. His research interests include figurational approaches to the study of consumption, leisure, sport, childhood, subjectivity and organizations. He has published in the British Journal of Sociology, Journal of Consumer Culture, Sport in Society and Journal of Macromarketing, and is co-editor of Approaches to Qualitative Research (Oak Tree Press, 2009).

Stefanie Ernst is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hamburg. Her research interests include the sociology of work, organization and gender, focusing on processes of transformation and subjectivation. She is chief editor of the journal Sozialwissenschaften und Berufspraxis (Social Sciences and Professional Practise), and has published research in Forum, Qualitative Social Research, Journal of Historical Social Research and European Journal of Women’s Studies. She is currently working on a book on a project titled “Thinking in Figurations,” a sociological study of the next generation of Norbert Elias scholars. She is editor of Care or Control of the Self? – The Sociology of the Subject in the 21st Century (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).

Cas Wouters is a senior researcher at Utrecht University and a staff member at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam, and Associate Editor of Theory, Culture & Society. He first published his theory of informalisation in 1976 and elaborated this theory in many articles, which have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Body & Society, British Journal of Criminology, The Sociologist, and Theory, Culture & Society. His study of changes in the manners books that have been published since 1890 in the Netherlands, Germany, England and the United States resulted in two monographs: Sex and Manners: Female Emancipation in the West 1890-2000 (Sage 2004) and Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890 (Sage 2007). Both books were translated into Dutch and Chinese.