Norbert Elias, George Herbert Mead, and the Promise of Embodied Sociology Dmitri N. Shalin 1 Accepted: 2 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract This paper examines the continuity between the research programs of Norbert Elias and George Herbert Mead. It shows that the two authors left us with the outlines of a sociological theory that is dialectical, process oriented, alert to the interplay of affect, reason, and society, and dedicated to an empirical inquiry into the embodied nature of socio-psychological realty. After reviewing the areas where the two researchers con- verge and follow separate routs, I discuss recent developments in social neuroscience and behavioral epigenetics that support the program of embodied sociology articulated by Norbert Elias and George Herbert Mead. Keywords Elias . Mead . Embodied sociology . Social neuroscience . Behavioral epigenetics Introduction It is conceivable that Norbert Elias had come across Mead’s name when he read Parsons, Goffman or Habermas, but there are no direct references to Mead in the Elias’s corpus, nor is there any evidence that Elias was influenced by Mead. Authors like Richard Kilminster (1991: xvii) maintain that the evolutionary perspective on language acquisition “makes Elias’s efforts unique among contemporary sociological approaches to symbol formation.” This statement is a clear indication that the remark- able parallels between these two sociologists have escaped Elias as well as students of his work. To rectify the situation, I explore the selective affinity between these sociological classics, with special attention to embodiment as a key sociological The American Sociologist https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-020-09465-x *An original version of this paper was presented at the 2001 Meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (Anaheim, August 20). It has been revised to highlight how the program of embodied sociology articulated by Norbert Elias and George Herbert Mead has been advanced in recent years. * Dmitri N. Shalin shalin@unlv.nevada.edu 1 UNLV Center for Democratic Culture, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA