Što je sociologija?

Elias elaborates on his key concepts in the book:

• “figure” (the interdependence of individuals as the basic unit of analysis, not “individual” or “society” as separate instances)
• “process” – society is not a static state but a long-term, unintentional process (the most famous example: “civilization process”)
• “social configuration” – a network of interdependencies that shape the behavior of individuals
• critique of “homo clausus” – the illusion that the individual is a closed box, separated from others

Elias introduces familiar metaphors: society as a dance (four or more people dancing together – there is no dancer without a dance), a game (changing the balance of power changes the rules) and the example of two warring villages that, without intention, create an increasingly complex social structure.

A special chapter is dedicated to “game models” – simple schemes that show how monopolies of power, states and civilizations are born from interdependencies. In the Croatian context, the book has become required reading at universities, as it offers a completely different view of the wars of the 1990s: not as a conflict of "peoples" but as a process of disintegration of long-term interdependencies.