Configurational analysis is marked by its distance towards the history of ideas and intentions, which are conceived as mainstreams in historical studies.
[1] Gaston Bachelard (1938) used the term ”diagram” to describe an order of conceived reality both in scientific and in literary understanding.
Norbert Elias (1939, 1970) described certain patterns of relations between human beings as figuration [1] – in English: ”configuration” – becoming visible in play of cards, dance and football.
Configurational analysis (in German Konfigurationsanalyse) became a particular methodological approach in the framework of Historical Behaviour Studies, as they were developed at the University of Stuttgart during the 1970s by the historians August Nitschke and Henning Eichberg.
[5] This analytical approach was comparable to concepts, which in recent time have challenged historiography: mentality (Georges Duby), affect control (Norbert Elias) (→Affect control theory), perception (Lucien Febvre), structural thinking (Claude Lévi-Strauss), needs (David McClelland), and interaction (George Herbert Mead).
[7] The configurational analysis was especially applied to comparative and historical studies of sport and dance as indicators of social change.
The comparative analysis of athletics, ball games, equestrianism, martial arts, gymnastics, and dance showed some common configurations as: the functional parceling of space, a new dynamic of “progress” and speed, the modern taste of suspense, the principle of competition, and the production of result tables.
The configurations of movement culture prefigured the patterns of productivity orientation, which characterized the Industrial Age.
[8] The applied concept of “configuration” was here different from "system" (→cultural system) (being more static and systematic, and related to the negative term of the non-systematic), from “style” (being more aesthetic and having undertones of taste, subjectivity and stylization), and from “structure” (having undertones of “the functional”, as a heritage from structural functionalism in sociology).
[9] Studies of body culture, which spread in Denmark during the 1980s, developed the configurational analysis further, revealing inner tensions and contradictions of a given society.
In any of these approaches, “configuration” made it possible to compare concrete human practice – i.e. “material” bodily phenomena – with larger spheres of society and culture.
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Bourdieu, Pierre 1966/67: "Champs intellectuel et projet créateur."
University of Copenhagen: Institute of Exercise and Sport Sciences Eichberg, Henning 1978: Leistung, Spannung Geschwindigkeit.