Introduction

This chapter discusses how we have applied process sociology in a health promotion intervention initiated by a Danish upper secondary school from 2010 to 2014, based on a democratic, participatory approach (Frydendal Nielsen, 2015, Frydendal Nielsen et al., 2018, Frydendal Nielsenet al., 2016; Frydendal Nielsen & Thing 2017a, 2017b; Frydendal & Thing, 2019). There has been very little sociological research conducted in Denmark about health promotion at the upper secondary school level as the focus has mainly been on primary schools. The perspective of democracy and participation is also not particularly well researched in a Danish upper secondary school context. We have employed Baur and Ernst’s (2011) notion of an interpretive process-oriented methodology, as we studied the health promotion process from a macro-micro perspective, as well as connecting these two levels in a sociogenetic discussion of the processual development at the school.

Our study therefore opens up a relatively unexplored area: democratic health promotion processes in the Danish upper secondary school, with a theoretical perspective not previously used, figurational sociology. We combined participatory research with Norbert Elias’s figurational sociology, which enabled an analysis at both a macro and a micro level. We applied Elias’s conceptualization of civilizing processes, focusing especially on his concepts of figuration, interdependencies and power, to discuss how the school was positioned in a health promotion context on a macro level. Elias’s concept of the balance between I-, We- and They- identities as well as the distinction between established and outsider groups was employed as a way to understand the power struggles between individuals and groups within the figuration on a micro level. We also consider the use of process sociology in relation to the participatory paradigm in a health promotion intervention for young people in schools, arguing why we believe the two traditions can be fruitfully combined.

School as a Civilizing Institution in Health Promotion

In Denmark, the practice of democracy is taken to be part of institutional life in ways similar to other Scandinavian countries and characterizes decision-making procedures in the workplace, voluntary associations such as sports clubs and educational institutions at different levels (Thing & Ottesen, 2010; Kaspersen, 2014). A particular feature of physical participation in Denmark that was important to the intervention and the democratic ethos in which it was conceived is the traditional organization of sport through voluntary associations and sports clubs. This form of organization is quite unique for Scandinavian societies (Bergsgard & Norberg, 2010; Skille, 2011). The sports organizations are founded on democracy and based on annual general assemblies where members discuss and vote on priority areas (Thing & Ottesen, 2010). This non-commercial, broadly orientated political context of sport is a vital element in Danish democratic practice. If the students were to understand this, our intervention would involve students in promoting health and physical activity in a participatory, democratic manner. Wright et al. (2018) argue that a critical inquiry approach to health education can educate students to develop their capacity to engage critically in problem-solving activities about their own lives.

The school therefore took an active part in deciding that the intervention should provide students with knowledge on how to practice, understand and be able to participate in society, tackling issues related to health, sport or physical activity in their own lives. Gilliam and Gulløv (2012) argue that raising a child is no longer a matter only for parents, but a societal matter that involves community welfare institutions. According to Elias, it is in childhood and adolescence that we are most vulnerable to societal influences: he argues that a child will always be ‘scarred’ by the social bonds he or she has formed (Elias, 2012a, p. 416). Educational institutions in Denmark are a place where we look after our children and teenagers, subjecting them to the state’s ambition to make them become ‘good’ citizens who can contribute to society. This is an example of the institutionalization of childhood and youth (Gilliam & Gulløv 2012, p. 42). Through reform policy, greater focus has been placed on the democratic formation process, responsibility, co-determination and social competences, where children and young people become acquainted with democracy by being part of a democratic environment in schools.

Doing Action Research in a Figurational Perspective

Action research originates from Kurt Lewin’s studies from the 1940s. Lewin argued that the motivation to create change is strongly linked to action. If people take an active part in decisions that concern their own lives, they are more likely to change their way of life (Lewin, 1946). Action research is therefore about social change, and more specifically, permanent social change. It has a complex history because it cannot be defined as single-disciplinary, but has emerged over time from a wide range of different research approaches (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003) that have formulated this widely used definition of action research:

A participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities. (Reason & Bradbury, 2008, p. 4)

The essence of action research is that scientific value can involve a change in the participants, who in the research process become more reflective and better able to direct their relationship to a group or an organization. The main task of action research is therefore to be critical of positivistic research, where it is assumed that a neutral researcher controls the direction of the experiment (Nielsen, 2004, p. 517). The purpose of this research approach is not to move beyond an understanding and interpretation of specific issues in modern society, but to add action and change to the problems society has already produced (Reason & Bradbury, 2006).

According to Kemmis (2009) action research is based upon three issues: practitioners’ practices, their understanding of their own practices and the circumstances under which they practice. The ties between these three issues are not stable, but changing and fluid. They are constantly forming each other and therefore cannot be analysed separately. This connects to Elias’s (1997) way of looking at all social processes where nothing is constant but always linked to changing figurations. The focal point of action research is that the knowledge that we as researchers want to generate is not about the measurability of increased health, but of creating a framework in which the students themselves can decide what they want to change. We have tried to illustrate this process by using figurational sociology. Change is therefore influenced by interactions between the school’s practice, how the school understands its own practice as well as the circumstances of the health-promoting practice.

Kemmis (2009) suggests that sustainable change of practice is dependent on changing our sayings, doings and relatings. He writes that if we want to change practice, we have to change our doings. If we wish to change the understanding of practice, we have to change our sayings—the way we speak about our practice. And if we want to change the circumstances for practice, we must change the way we relate to others as well as our surroundings. Kemmis links this notion to Jürgen Habermas’s understanding of social life as dependent on language (understanding), work (practice) and power (circumstances) (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1986; Kemmis, 2009). This perspective formed the basis of our approach to the understanding of change processes in an upper secondary school. As researchers we cooperated with teachers in designing a course with the purpose of creating a space where students could participate in changing the sayings, doings and relatings related to physical activity and health in their own school. Thus, action research has a dual goal: to change—but also create knowledge about the world. According to Laursen (2012), these two goals are mutually supportive, as knowledge about the world is created through an attempt to change it, in a direction that participants want.

This is in line with Elias’s own perspectives on processual change, as he regarded the static subject-object relationship of sociology of little value. His argument was that in the knowledge-generating process, knowledge changes, the subject itself changes and people change simultaneously as more knowledge is produced (Baur & Ernst, 2011). Elias, like Kurt Lewin, was inspired by Ernst Cassirer, who demonstrated that researchers have moved away from viewing the world as substances, instead looking at the dynamic relationships they contain (Van Krieken, 1998). However, Elias developed Cassirer’s understanding of relationalism, exploring in further depth its historical and social context—it was from Cassirer’s point of view that he developed the idea that one must study the structure of the whole in order to understand specific parts (Van Krieken, 1998). Elias is therefore linked to many of the theories that also inspired the first thoughts in action research as figurational sociology recognizes that all social research is, to some extent, participatory. Social scientists must recognize that they are part of the social process they are investigating (Elias, 1956, p. 227). As researchers, we have to be receptive to the observation and analysis of an ever-changing world (Van Krieken, 1998). Elias referred to this as the balance between involvement and detachment (Elias, 1956), which we will now discuss.

A Relational Approach to the World: Between Involvement and Detachment

For Elias, the relationship between people is both the research object and the analytical starting point (Olufson, 2005). He discussed the position of modern science within the civilizing process (Elias, 1956, 2007), as well as how it is a product of competition and power relations between scientific disciplines, especially between natural science, humanities and social science. His theory of involvement and detachment was designed to break away from dichotomies such as free will/determinism and individual/society. Van Krieken (1998) suggests that Elias’s argument for a relational sociology is an attempt to distance himself from the self-appointed monopoly on truth within social sciences, which can help researchers to clarify their relationship to the research field.

In the paper ‘Problems of Involvement and Detachment’, first published in 1956, which later became a part of the book Involvement and Detachment (2007), Elias develops his approach to understanding the development of scientific knowledge. Despite his claim that scientific knowledge can be separated from ideology due to its ‘relative autonomy’, he also argued that scientists can never obtain absolute autonomy from their social context. In principal, however, Elias was strongly against action research. Elias, who conceives himself as a challenger of myths, makes a strong point against partiality—he rejects the theoretical concepts of action research and system theory for their ideological content and for ultimately obscuring their biases by employing inflated levels of abstraction, preconceived assumptions and secret codes (Baur & Ernst, 2011, p. 121).

However, what we find particularly useful about the connection between these two traditions is based on the argument that social sciences are always to some extent participatory; all social scientists are part of the social process they study.Footnote 1 According to Elias involvement and detachment do not refer to two separate classes of objects; ‘used as universals they are, at best, marginal concepts’ (Elias, 1956, p. 227). This perspective can be connected to the participatory research tradition, where knowledge about people is contextual and therefore always emergent and fluid (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003). Elias’s point is that certain situations demand certain ways of weighing the balance between involvement and detachment: knowledge is therefore a product of the situation within which it is produced and the role it plays within the power relations that frame it. Moreover, Baur and Ernst (2011) argue that the question is not whether the subject influences the situation—this is a given. The question is how the subject frames the perception.

The Case Study: Creating Action in Schools

The following section is an outline of the democratic health promotion process. In 2008 the research team was approached by the principal of a local upper secondary school to assist them in their endeavour to address physical activity and health among the students. In 2007, a ‘think tank’ consisting of all students, teachers and management at the school was established to envisage the first steps towards a new future vision for the school. Health became one of three strategic strands that students, teachers and management wanted to develop over the coming years. As part of this plan, and in cooperation with a nearby sports facility centre, free access to fitness and swimming facilities were provided for all students and employees at the school. Two hours were reserved in all classes’ weekly schedule for using these facilities (voluntarily). The students were also offered voluntary after-school sports every Friday afternoon. These initiatives were organized to involve more students in physical activity without making it compulsory. However, the school discovered that the students using the facilities were the ones who were already physically active (Frydendal Nielsen et al., 2011, 2018). At this point the school contacted researchers in order to explore how to proceed in the future.

During the fall of 2008 the principal, teachers, researchers and voluntary students met several times to discuss how this issue could be approached, and we agreed that an active involvement of the students themselves would be the best way to understand physical activity and healthy lifestyle connected to youth life in the school. Several core elements of democratic governance were apparent in the values of the school. The decision-making structure of the school and Danish upper secondary schools are usually democratic, through an atmosphere that encourages influence and dialogue, but also responsibility for the school as a community. Inspired by this we found that an intervention using the democratic values already embedded in the school was a useful basis for designing an intervention to increase students’ interest and participation in physical activity. In line with the school’s own values and in collaboration with teachers and students, we designed a course with the purpose of investigating, discussing and reflecting upon health and body culture.

The AT-Course: A Democratic, Interdisciplinary Teaching Process in PE and Social Sciences

The project team, consisting of teachers, researchers and students, decided that a way to initiate the development and promotion of health and physical activity at the school would be to work with the topic as a part of the students’ curriculum, thereby integrating an authentic problem in the students’ own learning processes. Therefore, we designed a thematic part of an already existing course called the AT-course, where the students worked in an interdisciplinary way, using a combination of their subjects to study a specific problem. This thematic part of the AT-course, designed for this intervention, combined PE and Social Sciences. The AT-course was repeated with one new first year class each year for a period of five years. The classes involved in the AT-courses had a subject combination with more PE in their weekly schedule than the rest of the students in their year. These classes were selected on the assumption that these students would have a stronger wish to engage in promoting physical activity and health at their own school. The hope was that they would then find it valuable and interesting (with help from teachers and researchers) to involve the rest of the school in a democratic student-based health promotion process.

Figure 11.1 is a timeline that illustrates how the intervention developed over the years. Teachers, researchers and students met several times during 2009 to plan and organize the AT-course. Below are the first components of the designed AT-course:

  1. 1.

    Teaching in PE and Social Science:

    For a period of 8 weeks the lessons in PE and Social Sciences evolved around the topic ‘Health and Physical Activity at Our School’; the students worked from a critical perspective, both theoretically and practically in PE and Social Sciences. They covered definitions of health; distinctions between physical activity, sport and exercise; qualitative and quantitative methods; developing a research question; physical fitness testing; sports preferences among different groups in society.

  2. 2.

    Knowledge days:

    The students were invited to two theme days at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports:

    1. (a)

      A sociology theme day, with an entry point in sports and health sociology.

    2. (b)

      A physiology theme day in cooperation with our colleagues in human physiology.

Fig. 11.1
A timeline of the intervention process. 2008, all students get free access to swim and fitness facilities at a sports center across the road. 2010, students who had participated in the A T course formed at committee working with health, exercise and play. 2012, the student committee repeat the event from 2011.

Timeline of the intervention process

Full size image

The above outlines how the students were provided with knowledge and encouraged to critically discuss and debate how the issue of health and physical activity is understood among young people broadly and within their school. They reflected upon these issues and how they have developed over time. Both lessons from their own teachers as well as lectures from researchers provided a knowledge base on which it was possible to develop visions for health and physical activity in their own school.

Developing a Vision for Health Promotion at the School

Following the knowledge and capacity-building phase, the students participated in workshops where they were encouraged to develop ideas and visions which they could imagine putting into practice. The workshops were all led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen for the full five years.

Workshops as Future Scenarios

Four workshops were organized, during which the students were involved in developing a strategy of change regarding ‘Health and Physical Activity at Our School’. This was to encourage their creativity and innovative skills in order to view their school and themselves in new ways. Each workshop had a duration of 3½ hours. They are each described below:

  1. (a)

    Self-assessment—who am I and how do I control my body?

    The objective of this workshop was to obtain knowledge of one’s own preferences regarding sport, body and health as well as reflection and discussion in relation to others’ preferences. The methods were interviews and dialogue groups.

  2. (b)

    Studies on space and location—discovering the school’s sports facilities.

    This workshop evolved around the students’ observation studies of the school environment. The purpose was to analyse what opportunities the school had for sport, health and physical activity, with students mapping the physical environment through their own observational studies.

  3. (c)

    Democracy and involvement.

    The workshop aimed at encouraging debate and reflection on the ‘Health and Physical Activity’ policies in order to raise awareness of the societal frameworks influencing the organization of sports and voluntary organizations in Denmark. In groups the students discussed how power is distributed in their school, what affects power distributions and whether or not change was needed.

  4. (d)

    Go create

    The final workshop focused more concretely on what ideas young people themselves have in order to solve problems regarding physical activity and health in their own school. Using the knowledge they had obtained during the AT-course, the students worked proactively with change and innovation in relation to lifestyle, physical education, recreational sports and environmental significance. The focus was not just on the individual student, but in a broader sense on the organizational change for the school. In groups the students created specific suggestions for a concrete proposal.

Based on the knowledge-building phase and the development of visions through the workshops the students wrote a synopsis as part of the general curriculum for the AT-course and were assessed orally on that synopsis. The students collected empirical data by questionnaires, interviews or through observations, and reflected on what alternatives were possible within their school context and what alternatives they would prefer.

Action and Change

After the first class completed the AT-course in 2010, some of the students wanted to keep on working with some of the ideas they came up with through the workshops, in their assessment papers and from the discussions during the AT-course. Therefore, with help from researchers and teachers, the students founded a committee in the school, working with health promotion: the SMIL-committee. SMIL is an abbreviation of four Danish words—Sundhed (Health), Motion (Exercise), Idræt (Nordic word for physical activity, leisure and sport) and Leg (Play) (‘smil’ means ‘smile’ in English). The committee acted as a key stakeholder in the first major student-based health initiative—the SMIL-day, the purpose of which was to provide an alternative event to promote physical activity and health. In 2011, 600 students participated in the event. The students themselves were responsible for keeping track of student attendance, for organizing activities in a public park area for all the students at the school and for a social barbecue event in the schoolyard after the activities had finished.

The event was centred on traditional old games that do not require any specific skills. This, according to the students, makes participation more equal and appealing for all. The event was repeated by the SMIL-committee for two consecutive years. Students who participated in the AT-course in the following years joined the committee and were also able to recruit other students at the school. Another initiative from the committee was organizing alternative activities during voluntary after-school sport (Zumba, Yoga, Jump style), which was usually dominated by traditional sporting disciplines such as football, volleyball and basketball. A significant change in the school, based on this intervention, was when the school adopted the design of this specific thematic part of the AT-course. From the spring of 2014 all students participated in an AT-course based on this course design, dealing with the theme: ‘The Good School’, and all students worked with ways to improve the school environment.

Studying an Action Research Process with Process Sociology

Our approach to the study is based on Norbert Elias’s own methodological work, which is to combine an outsider perspective, where the researcher tries to refrain from bringing their values into the field of research, and an insider perspective, where active involvement is necessary to fully understand what is being explored. It is the balance between these two parameters that is crucial for any research investigation. Baur and Ernst (2011) have put this into a more systematized and application-oriented methodological framework, developing a proposal on how to use Elias’s methodology. We are inspired by their suggestions on how it is possible to study an action research process with a process-oriented methodological approach. Baur and Ernst (2011, pp. 123–126) set out three steps in an interpretive process-oriented methodology:

  1. 1.

    Reconstruction of the macro level: rules and social structure in the figuration

  2. 2.

    Reconstruction of the micro level: the individual’s placement in, perception of and ability to change the figuration

  3. 3.

    Reconstruction of the sociogenesis of the figuration

Reconstructing the Macro Level: Rules and Social Structure Within the School Figuration

Baur and Ernst (2011) define this part of the analytical process as the clarification of the framework of the figuration. This is necessary as the framework is crucial for the actions of groups and individuals, regulating and orienting their behaviour and communication. That is, making visible the positions that frame and connect groups of individuals within a figuration (Baur & Ernst 2011, p. 124). It is through a reconstruction of the macro level of a figuration that we can create an understanding of the interdependencies between individuals and groups at the school. We will discuss which rules and structural conditions help to maintain the school figuration, as well as how this contributes to inadvertently creating the ethos of the school. For example, it can be useful to understand why the school was built and what opportunities the building has for learning within the school community. We have compared this with different historical documents ranging from students assignments, meeting minutes, homepage texts, working documents from the student committee, strategic documents from the school, ministerial orders and consolidation acts from 1987 to 2013.

The school can also be seen as a figuration that changes and develops over time in accordance with both internal and external requirements. According to Elias, this development is not planned, but is an important part of the processual character of the figuration. The physical environment at the school therefore has an impact on how and where the members of the figuration move around. At school, you belong, as both a student and a teacher, in certain domains depending on your educational standards. The PE facilities are, for example, the domain of the PE teachers, just as the music room and the science rooms are also inhabited by certain educational groups. Thus, one moves around according to certain regulations. The expansion and specialization of the facilities at the school can be seen in connection with the development that the upper secondary school in Denmark has undergone. Today, there are higher demands for project work and interdisciplinarity, but also a more academic approach to learning which should prepare the students for higher education (Ministry of Education, 2017). As such, the physical environment changes alongside the political requirements for learning in upper secondary schools.

This development has also had an impact on PE, which today has a much greater focus on health and physical capacities (Ministry of Education, 2017). Thus, PE must be able to take on other tasks than before, which shows how the subject enters a project culture which the regulation of upper secondary school requires. This health promotion project and its incorporation into the teaching at the school was part of many years of work based on integrated values at the school. However, these socially planned actions are a product of a longer historical process of unplanned events (Elias, 2012a). These have helped to model the school physically and are a major reason why the school looks the way it does today. The work with health promotion is therefore part of a dynamic process, where power ratios change and influence in an unintended way how the school develops: there are new sports facilities where the members of the figuration have free access to training and several specialized classrooms have developed around the local area. The school project can thus be placed in a larger figurative context, where youth preferences, areas of interest of the teaching staff, school policies and social economy are highly interdependent.

Reconstructing the Micro Level: Students’ Understanding of and Ability to Change the School Figuration

As the figuration influences certain power relations, and thus sets the framework for individuals’ actions, Baur and Ernst (2011) argue that it is important to analyse how individuals perceive the figuration they are part of. One must study the position of the individuals within the figuration: how their actions are embedded in the actions of other members and how and why they either enter or leave the figuration. It is also important to examine how their position in a figuration changes through life, as well as how they either manage or fail to change the figuration (Baur & Ernst, 2011). Therefore, we have studied how students perceive their school and how the members of the school figuration influence and are influenced by each other’s actions. We have closely examined the interdependence between members of the figuration, how their position or status changes and whether they are able to change the culture around sport, body and health at the school.

When working with health-promoting strategies in a school, the target group varies. The composition of students changes year by year and their positions within the figuration can change constantly and rapidly. Thus, it is important when the figurative constellation significantly changes from year to year that the approach to students’ wishes and interests also follows this dynamic development. Our study showed that the young students at the school live in a world of interdependence where they have to participate in many areas. Youth life has many dimensions such as homework, friends, parties, spare-time jobs, family and hobbies (Frydendal Nielsen & Thing, 2017a, 2017b; Frydendal Nielsen et al., 2016). It can be difficult for the students to continue to find time for sports in their lives, as there are other areas that are considered more valuable. Life as an upper secondary school student therefore places great demands on their ability to prioritize. It is not always easy to connect a sporting lifestyle with the drinking and party culture in an upper secondary school, but the students believe it is important that they can be part of both areas. Here is an example of how the students negotiated and debated this tension between their I we and they identities:

Vilda: At least in the beginning, many people thought that we were hard hitters who did nothing but sport all the time, and I think it took half a year before they realized that we actually took social science at the A-level … (laughs) … (…). I don’t know … 3.z were social but 2.z were the ones who just played around with balls all the time and hung out only with themselves. I just think that people believe that we are some kind of sports idiots who just run around and are stupid ….

Emilie: I really agree with Vilda, I actually think it was really shitty at the beginning, because it was as if people looked at us a bit like; ‘Ooooh you’re into sports’ and it took a really long time before they found out that we were normal people (laughs) … no but, I experienced people being like ‘Well, you’re in Z’ … ’yeah, what’s weird about that? …’. And no-one knew we had social science at the A-level, they just thought we had PE every day … ‘they don’t do anything else but that’ … and I think that was really annoying, because we are active, but we’re just like them … so I think that was the downside, but now it’s starting to dawn on people that we’re normal, that we also do some of the same things that they do, funnily enough. But I still think there can be a little … ‘Are you going to the gym? (…) It is almost looked down on. And I think that really sucks ….

I: How can that be, do you think?

Emilie: It probably has something to do with a guilty conscience. (…). They may not even know that it is a guilty conscience … that must be what they are reacting to … well I mean, what else could they be wound up about?

As the example shows, there is a tension between different ‘we’ identities at the school that can seem stressful to the students. This tension between cultural expectations and the demands of the sports class creates some conflicts in the balance between ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ identities among the sports students (Elias, 2010). Sports students find security in the ‘we’ identity that is constructed in their own class because it supports an ‘I’ identity that falls outside the youth cultural expectations centred around partying and alcohol. At the same time, a ‘they’ identity is constructed about the rest of the school, who, according to the sports students, are afraid of missing social activities if they engage in sports. The ‘they’ construction helps to justify the sports students’ own lifestyle in the classroom.

Students were also not so concerned about the negative aspects of the health discourse such as risk factors and lifestyle diseases. Instead, what was meaningful to them was that health messages were communicated in a positive way and revolved around ‘fun’ and ‘playfulness’. The students placed a great deal of emphasis on linking sports and health to the existing values in the youth culture, such as partying and socialization. A democratic health promotion process therefore requires a middle ground in the dialectic between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches. The students wanted to be involved in health promotion work, but they are mutually dependent on management and teachers in a future anchoring of a new habitus about sports and health. Their work, in their own view, has a universal function at the school so it is vital that they receive recognition from school management. The democratic debate thus emphasizes the balance between letting students decide for themselves, but at the same time providing them with some tools to become involved in health promotion.

Sociogenesis Within the School Figuration

The micro level and the macro level are not static, although it may seem so when studied separately. On the contrary, Baur and Ernst (2011) argue that both individuals and their figurations change constantly over time and are intertwined with each other. Sociological analysis is therefore always process-oriented with the purpose of explaining social processes, which are influenced by both individuals in the figuration (micro) and the framework of the figuration (macro). According to Baur and Ernst, sociological methods have not yet been sufficiently developed to analyse the relationship between micro and macro levels, but a compromise may be to study the sociogenesis of a figuration. This involves looking at the past or history in order to understand the relationship between the micro and macro levels, where the figuration’s becoming, changing and ending are made visible (Baur & Ernst, 2011). We will now discuss the sociogenetic development at the school based on the figuration’s becoming, changing and ending.

Becoming a Democratic Health Promotion Process

Elias argued consistently against what he regarded as a dualism between the individual and the environment (Elias, 2012a). To overcome this dualism, Elias developed the concept of figuration which conceptualizes people in functional interdependencies. These networks of interdependent individuals are characterized by fluid balances of power which create a constant tension in a continuum between cooperation and conflict (Elias, 2012b). According to Elias, the concept of power should not be seen as something substantive, but as relational (Elias, 2012b). In a figurative process, power is elastic, moving back and forth between members of a figuration. All social units can be characterized as figurations (Elias & Dunning, 2008), and in a relatively small figuration like this school, the balance of power is changing and fluid.

An important finding in this study was that the students felt that teachers had too much power in relation to what the understanding of sports and health should be. By working with health promotion as an integral part of teaching, the balance of power in the figuration had shifted. The students had become relatively more powerful and were now considered as a serious stakeholder in health promotion processes in their school. Connolly and Dolan (2012) argue that changes in organizations (in this case the incorporation of health as part of a school organization) are part of long-term figurative dynamics in which ‘we’ and ‘they’ identities are developed. They suggest that the development of organizations can be explained by the changing identity formations and the balances of power associated with groups and individuals at different levels of integration (Elias & Scotson, 2008). These processes also occur between organizations, what Kaspersen and Gabriel (2008) refer to as the relationship between internal and external tensions, their intertwining explaining the degree of organizational change (Connolly & Dolan, 2012). The students explained how it can be difficult to continue to find time for sports in their lives as they consider other areas in the upper secondary school to be more valuable. They were therefore part of several figurative contexts that constitute and continue to shape the social habitus of the school.

Changing a Democratic Health Promotion Process

A central principle of Elias is that all social life is in motion or in process (Elias, 2012b). This includes social structures, organizations, attitudes, values, norms, identities and even what could be loosely termed ‘psychological’ mentalities. Elias preferred to use the term ‘habitus’ (Elias, 2010), which refers to embodied social learning. Therefore, in order to have an adequate (Elias, 1956) understanding and explanation of social life, we must refrain from reducing social processes to states or substances. Figurations are not ideal types, which the researcher imposes on the people being studied. They are as real as the people who inhabit them (Elias, 1998). This study has shown that trends and currents within a school figuration change as fast as its target group, which differs from year to year, as one-third of it is new and one-third of the students who were part of the context the year before have left the figuration. The upper secondary school culture is thus a good example of a dynamic and processual figuration, where the social habitus is always changing.

Connolly and Dolan (2012) suggest that figurations help to better capture the complex and contradictory nature of this dynamic process, and are therefore a valuable tool when analysing an action research project. By studying the strength of the ‘we’ feelings and the restrained compulsions they generate, comparing them to the shifts in power relations in one figuration relative to other overlapping figurations, we can more clearly identify how and why specific changes occur. It is important to point out that Elias’s conceptualization of interdependence and power differs significantly from how these concepts are understood within other theoretical frameworks. For Elias, there is an implicit, relational aspect of function and power in the understanding of interdependence: where there is functional interdependence between people, there are always balances of power (Dopson & Waddington, 1996, p. 535).

Power and interdependence are processual and characteristic of all human relationships. From this perspective, no one is completely powerless, but this does not imply that extremely unequal power relations do not exist. When social organizations and individuals are interdependent and possess a function in relation to each other, they are forced to moderate their actions to some degree. Change is thus created by virtue of the interdependence that applies to the figuration. If we want to understand how a health promotion process driven by young people themselves can develop, this understanding of power relations is crucial. Young people found it enabling, but also restricting to be part of the health promotion process at school. Enabling because they felt they were being heard, but also restricting because they occasionally felt looked down upon by other students because they advocated a health message. This reflection about the action research process would not have emerged without the application of process sociology.

Here it may be useful to draw attention to Elias’s conceptualization of game models and discuss how these can help to better understand the complex interweaving of actions and planned or unplanned processes among a large number of people. According to Dopson and Waddington (1996), Elias (2012b) uses game models to understand how organizations change, acting as simplified analogies to more complex social processes. The models contribute to a more pictorial explanation of the processual nature of relationships between interdependent individuals. They emphasize the changing balance of power as a central aspect in networks of mutually dependent individuals. In the organization of health changes within the school figuration, the ’game’ is about shaping the understanding of body, sports and health, implementing frameworks that provide space for the development of new health and cultural norms. The creation of change in the sports and health culture at the school can thus be seen as an expression of a game of power between stronger and weaker players within the figurative context.

Within this organizational context, the students are weaker players than teachers and management, but with a democratic approach to health promotion they can have an impact on the ’game’ itself as the balance of power between the players becomes more equal. Elias described several different types of game models and highlights as a final example, Game models on two levels: simplified increasingly democratic type (Elias, 1978 pp. 84–87). This type of game model can be useful in understanding a democratic process of change regarding health promotion at a school level. The game model exemplifies players at two different levels, a high and low level. When the difference in power between the two levels is large, there is a low degree of dependency between the two levels. One could imagine teachers and management as the high level with the greater degree of power, and the students as players on the low level with a lesser degree of power. Elias (1978) writes that when power becomes more equal, the interdependence between the two levels becomes stronger and the players will be more aware of each other.

When the democratic health promotion process at school is seen as such a model, it becomes easier to understand why solutions and answers to health promotion, sport and exercise in a youth culture are difficult to predict. The result of a democratic health promotion process where the balance of power is moved from the higher level of the figuration to a lower level—by virtue of the students’ involvement in the health promotion process—is not able to be predicted from year to year, but will always be a product of the power relations which at the given time are established within the figuration. This study showed how it is possible to construct such a game with the AT-course. Thus, rules that apply to the ‘players’ involved at the school have been set. Such a game can be played in several places, but, just as in two football matches, they are never the same. The outcome of such an AT-course will always be different because the players are mutually dependent on each other.

Ending the Democratic Health Promotion Process

According to Baur and Ernst (2011), the third step in the reconstruction of the sociogenesis is to study the resolution of the figuration. It may seem exaggerated to claim that the figuration has been resolved during the years we followed the democratic health promotion process at the school. But there was a development where some of the initiatives disappeared and the enthusiasm from the students declined. In this section, we will discuss how this could be and what could be the reason for this ‘resolution’. Velija (2012) highlights three important characteristics in Elias and Scotson’s (2008) theory of established and outsiders: (1) there is fragmentation within outsider groups and so there is often a greater unity in established groups as opposed to outsider groups. (2) Another characteristic of outsider groups is that they often identify more with established groups than with other outsiders. (3) A third central aspect is the nature of power between the two groups, the extent to which power between the groups shifts through functional democratization, where the differences in power are reduced but not necessarily equalized. This corresponds to Elias’s ‘increasingly democratic type’ of game model. Hence, functional democratization is the process in which the chains of interdependence between groups are lengthened, where the differences in power are reduced as individuals or groups become more dependent on each other.

  1. 1.

    Fragmentation in the Outsider Group

Elias’s understanding of I, we and they identities (Elias, 2010) can show that there was a unity within the sports classes, but at the same time the students felt divided between the sports culture and the wider school culture. The sports culture was seen as an outsider culture at the school: students felt that sports classes were not status-giving in the same way as the party culture. They emphasized that it was important to combine both if more young people at the school would become physically active. A development we also noticed over the years was the division between wanting to belong to a sports culture where it is ‘okay’ to be active, downgrading parties and social events, but at the same time needing to be part of the youth culture where parties and a drinking culture are dominant. This development is an expression of the internal dynamics of the power struggle within the sports classes, where there is a division in the perception of where it is important to be and what gives value in life.

  1. 2.

    How the Outsider Group Identifies with the Established Group

In relation to the second characteristic, Elias and Scotson (2008) have argued that the strong unity in established groups arises primarily from increasing forms of interdependence characterized by an unequal balance of power that does not necessarily function in other social contexts. The increasing interdependence between the sports students and other students which was created by this project led to a stronger unity among the established student groups and a greater division among the sports students. Despite more or less similar behaviour the established group, according to Elias and Scotson, manages to create a self-image based on its ‘best citizens’ through greater social cohesion and control, whereas the outsider group’s identity is created based on their ‘worst citizens’ (Elias & Scotson, 2008).

Being part of this project was both enabling and constraining for the students if they are taken seriously in the AT-course and given the opportunity to influence the culture of their own school. For those students who are comfortable in this power relationship, it is possible to create change. But their position can also constrain them because they believe that the rest of the school think they are behaving as if they are better than them. It is therefore important for the students that health and sports can be reconciled with the dominant youth culture, where partying and alcohol play a large part—in some contexts they need to identify more with this established culture than the sports culture (Velija, 2012). This division between these two groups has, as Elias and Scotson (2008) pointed out, very little to do with social class, gender or race but arises because the dominant established group has greater access to power resources than the ‘outsider’ group.

  1. 3.

    Functional Democratization

The third characteristic concerns the extent to which power between groups shifts through what Elias (2012b) calls functional democratization where differences in power are reduced but not necessarily equalized. Velija (2012) argues that it is important as a figurational sociologist to have a critical approach to the theory of established and outsiders. She questions which processes help to maintain a position as an established person or outsider, especially when the power relationship between groups undergoes functional democratization. She writes that first, it is important to focus on what enables people to be established in one figuration and outsiders in another. Second, she believes it is important to consider under what circumstances a lack of unity helps to characterize an outsider group, and to what extent it is possible to understand complex power relations between established groups and outsider groups. We observed how the democratically anchored health promotion project in some contexts gave young people a feeling of being outsiders in such a process, illuminating established attitudes towards the development of a sports culture.

In this connection, the students began to question why not all students should complete the AT-course: they wouldn’t have to act as the ‘health police’ at school (this is how some of them put it) but through their involvement they believed that all students could help to influence the sports culture. Since then, this has been noted at the school and now all 1st year classes participate in a similar course. When developing health promotion it is therefore important to keep up to date with what is happening among the students because the composition of the school figuration is constantly changing. This continual change complicates the unity of the outsider group (Velija, 2012) as established-outsider group relations are part of a dynamic and changing figuration. The sport students’ position became even more visible, but this visibility and their increasing power-ratio also contributed to a stigmatizing process as they were perceived as dictating to other students. Thus, it was possible for them to become relatively more ‘established’ in one context but ‘outsiders’ in another.

Conclusion

This chapter has argued that Norbert Elias’s process sociology provides us with a critical tool in understanding how participatory democratic health interventions in schools are both enabling and constraining. We demonstrated that it is possible to promote change in the sports and health culture of a school by creating a structural, democratic framework that enabled students to set the agenda and change the power differentials between teachers and students. This was achieved by constructing a teaching course based on the values at the school. In the development of such a health promotion process a distribution of power-balances between the various participants in the school emerged, one that made it difficult to ascertain certain results. Using Norbert Elias’s sociology to understand such a process shed light on the importance of recognizing that a school organization consists of groups of individuals who constantly influence each other. It is also important to be aware that, as an unintended consequence, such an approach can create an uneven balance of power amongst students themselves.