Published for the first time in 1965, its origin is a study of a community in the center of England made by John Scotson, teacher of a local school interested in juvenile delinquency, in the decade of 1950 and the early years of the next one. However, in hands of Norbert Elias, one of the most renowned sociologists of the twentieth century, this local study was remade to shine light on social processes through the analysis of marginalization's effects and experiences of the people in and out of the traditional society's limits. It examines how a group of people can monopolize the possibilities of power and use them to exclude an stigmatize the members of another similar group (through gossip, for example), and how its experienced by the collective images of both groups.
La opinión interna de todo grupo con un alto grado de cohesión ejerce una profunda influencia sobre sus miembros como fuerza reguladora de sentimientos y conducta.