This edited volume serves as an overview and introduction to the conceptual apparatus of Norbert Elias for newcomers, while also outlining current research within the Eliasian school of sociology. An Eliasian or figurational approach foregrounds process, is sensitive to long-term historical development and changing power relations and is methodologically diverse. Elias’s work is now found across academic disciplines and this volume contains contributions by sociologists, anthropologists, business and management scholars, and those working at the interface of sociology and human geography. Instead of simply highlighting the distinctiveness of the school vis-à-vis other theoretical traditions, this volume outlines how Eliasian inspired work can contribute to important debates on the future of food across academic disciplines.

No city in America knows how to mark death with more funerary panache than New Orleans. The pageants commemorating departed citizens are often in themselves works of performance art. A grand obituary remains key to this Stygian passage. And no one writes them like New Orleanian John Pope. Collected here are not just simple, mindless recitations of schools and workplaces, marriages, and mourners bereft. These pieces in Getting Off at Elysian Fields: Obituaries from the New Orleans “Times-Picayune” are full-blooded life stories with accounts of great achievements, dubious dabblings, unavoidable foibles, relationships gone sour, and happenstances that turn out to be life-changing. To be sure, there are stories about Carnival monarchs, great philanthropists, and a few politicians. But because New Orleans embraces eccentric behavior, there are stories of people who colored way outside the lines. For instance, there was the doctor who used his plasma to make his flowers grow, and the philanthropist who took money she had put aside for a fur coat to underwrite the lawsuit that desegregated Tulane University. A letter carrier everyone loved turned out to have been a spy during World War II, and a fledgling lawyer changed his lifelong thoughts about race when he saw blind people going into a Christmas party through separate doors—one for white people and another for African Americans. Then there was the punctilious judge who got down on his hands and knees to edge his lawn—with scissors. Because New Orleans funerals are distinctive, the author includes accounts of four that he covered, complete with soulful singing and even some dancing. As a popular, local bumper sticker indisputably declares, “New Orleans—We Put the Fun in Funeral.”

A lushly photographed cookbook showcasing the intersection of culture, spirituality, and cuisine. Elysian Kitchens bridges diverse beliefs, weaving a modern tapestry of faiths and histories in 100 time-tested recipes. Monasteries, temples, mosques, and synagogues have long been centers of culinary innovation. No mere relics of the past, they reflect our modern world and are as dynamic and fundamental to our society as they ever were. Granted rare access to closely guarded religious sanctuaries, Jody Eddy demonstrates how the monastic culinary philosophy can be adopted by any home cook or professional chef interested in integrating sustainable, time-honored cooking practices into their daily lives. Her 100 recipes include dumplings (momos) inspired by the cooking of monks at Thikse, a Buddhist temple in Ladakh, India, nestled in the Himalayas. From Kylemore Abbey, in Connemara, Ireland, she brings instructions for cooking Lamb Burgers with Creamy Red Cabbage Slaw and Rosemary Aioli as the nuns do, with enough leftover sauce to drizzle over smoked salmon bagels the next day. From a Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, come time-tested kosher recipes, including Potato Kugel and Matzo Ball Soup. Ginger and Ginkgo Nut Stuffed Cabbage Rolls illustrate Zen Buddhist cooking from Eihei-ji in Japan. In Morocco, she finds a Sufi chicken and olive tajine recipe that makes for a perfect dinner. And for dessert, Panellets (tiny sugar-and-almond cookies), courtesy of an 1100-year-old Spanish monastery. A global story of cooking across communities, Elysian Kitchens contributes to the most important conversations taking place in the food world today by examining a gastronomic heritage that has until now been virtually unexplored. This is a cookbook for anyone eager to discover the traditions of magnificently beautiful, endlessly compelling places that embody the wisdom of the ages and offer the promise of a more optimistic and sustainable future.

The book presents an authoritative assessment of Norbert Elias (1897–1990). It recognizes Elias as one of the major contributors to the development of sociological tradition in the past century and charts the continuing relevance of his conception of sociology for contemporary society. Only toward the end of his career as an academic did Elias’s work begin to attract the attention of English-speaking sociologists, historians, and scholars of cultural studies. The book provides an authoritative and broad representation of Elias’s oeuvre and work inspired by it. While Elias is best known for his major study of The Civilizing Process, the reach and subtle depths of Elias’s conception of process sociology has been cemented more recently by the English-language publication of Elias’s collected work of 18 volumes. The baton of process sociology is being passed on to further generations of sociologists. Chapters from leading contributors outline the nature of the sociological practice of Elias and address fundamental questions of historical sociology, democratization, gender, racialization processes, and embodiment. Later chapters highlight the contribution of process sociology for understanding developments in nation, state and global sociology, criminology, art, and education.

Sheriff Dave Robicheaux returns to New Orleans to investigate the beating of a controversial Catholic priest and murder of three teenage girls in this intense, atmospheric entry in the New York Times bestselling series. For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy, will always haunt him. So to return there means visiting old ghosts, exposing old wounds, opening himself up to new, yet familiar, dangers. When Robicheaux, now a police officer based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest always at the center of controversy, has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he knows he has to return to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially. What he doesn’t realize is that in doing so he is inviting into his life—and into the lives of those around him—an ancestral evil that could destroy them all. A masterful exploration of the troubled side of human nature and the darkest corners of the heart, and filled with the kinds of unforgettable characters that are the hallmarks of his novels, Last Car to Elysian Fields is Burke in top form in the kind of lush, atmospheric thriller that is “an outstanding entry in an excellent series” (Publishers Weekly).

The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism is a state-of-the-art reference work which maps out the current developments and debates around the sociology of the professions, and how they relate to management and organizations. Supported by an international contributor team specializing in the disciplines of organizational studies and sociology, the collection provides extensive coverage of this field of research. It brings together the core concepts and issues, and has chapters on all the key aspects of professions in both the public and private sectors, including issues of governance and regulation. The volume closes with a set of international case studies which provide valuable practical insights into the subject. This Companion will be an indispensable reference source for students, scholars and educators within the social sciences, especially within management, organizational studies and sociology. It will also be highly relevant for those working and studying in the area of professional education.