This article applies Norbert Elias’s ‘processual-relational approach’ to an empirical case: the influential Leicester Department of Sociology between 1954 and 1982. Based on 42 qualitative interviews and extensive archival materials, we identify two phases: the early phase of cohesion is characterised by a strong sense of purpose and a growing influence on British sociology. The second phase is characterised by social and intellectual fragmentation. In explaining this reversal, we argue that a critical juncture of youth rebellion around 1968 provided the portents of an anti-authoritarian civilisational trend, which increasingly put strains on the established power nexus: the autocratic leadership model embodied by the department’s inspirational leader, Ilya Neustadt.