Process Of State Formation Research Articles

Social History and Historical Sociology

This paper deals with exchanges and misunderstandings between the German school of social history (most prominently represented by scholars from the University of Bielefeld (such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler) and Anglo-American trends in historical sociology (exemplified by the works of Barrington Moore, Theda Skocpol and Michael Mann). The social historians tended to dismiss historical sociology as too dependent on modernization theory, without taking into account the critique of that tradition by authors who brought processes of state formation and revolutionary change into the debate. On the other side, mainstream historical sociology worked with assumptions that limited its ability to change the terms and directions of sociological discourse, and to assimilate lessons from history. Among these inbuilt biases, organizational realism and materialism – particularly pronounced in the work of Michael Mann – stand out as particularly important. The paper closes with arguments in favour of bringing more history into historical sociology, with particular emphasis on three sets of problems. There is a need for more historical approaches to differentiation, less dependent on functionalist premises than the hitherto prevalent paradigm. A more explicit thematization of temporality in history and society would, among other things, help to clarify issues linked to the notion of path dependency. Finally, a reconsideration of the models and types of explanation in historical sociology would place more emphasis on their interpretive dimension.

Tunable geometrical frustration in magnonic vortex crystals

A novel approach to investigate geometrical frustration is introduced using two-dimensional magnonic vortex crystals. The frustration of the crystal can be manipulated and turned on and off dynamically on the timescale of milliseconds. The vortices are studied using scanning transmission x-ray microscopy and ferromagnetic resonance spectroscopy. They are arranged analogous to the nanomagnets in artificial spin-ice systems. The polarization state of the vortices is tuned in a way that geometrical frustration arises. We demonstrate that frustrated polarization states and non-frustrated states can be tuned to the crystal by changing the frequency of the state formation process.

The United Kingdom and British Empire: a figurational approach

Drawing upon the work of Norbert Elias and the process [figurational] sociology perspective, this article examines how state formation processes are related to, and, affected by, expanding and declining chains of international interdependence. In contrast to civic and ethnic conceptions, this approach focuses on the emergence of the nation/nation-state as grounded in broader processes of historical and social development. In doing so, state formation processes within the United Kingdom are related to the expansion and decline of the British Empire. That is, by focusing on the functional dynamics that are embedded in collective groups, one is able to consider how the UK’s ‘state’ and ‘imperial’ figurations were interdependently related to changes in both the UK and the former British Empire. Consequently, by locating contemporary UK relations in the historical context of former imperial relationships, nationalism studies can go ‘beyond’ the nation/nation-state in order to include broader processes of imperial expansion and decline. Here, the relationship between empire and nationalism can offer a valuable insight into contemporary political movements, especially within former imperial groups.

Securing Central America Against Communism: The United States and the Modernization of Surveillance in the Cold War

The US.-sponsored programs of military and police collaboration with the Central American governments during the Cold War also contributed to the surveillance capacity of those states during the period when the Central American state formation process was being completed. Guatemala is used as a case study. Washington’s contribution was framed by the conventional discourse of “security against communism” but also by an underlying technocratic ethos in which “modernization” and “security” were higher priorities than democratization.

Основные периоды и типы «урбанизации» в Древней Руси в VIII—XII вв .

This article deals with the problem of processes of city formation and the formation of urban networks in the Ancient Rus’ in VIII—XII centuries. The Author makes an attempt to systematize the main types of urban settlements within a specified period according to the following criteria: the presence or absence of fortifications, the size of settlements, their main functions, the relationship with the processes of state formation, the presence or absence of coherent urban networks, planning or spontaneity of the appearance, relationship with the agricultural community and others. Based on the characteristics identified, five basic types of urban settlements are described and analyzed— as such can be considered tribal grads, open trade and craft settlements (protocities), prince pogosts, castles of a later time, not associated with the pogosts, the ancient city of XI—XII centuries. All mentioned types, which are small and large systems (networks), succeeded each other throughout the specified period and engaged in various interactions, forming a unified urban network of Ancient Russia.

Max Weber's Concept of Legitimation in Hinduism Revisited

This paper demonstrates the continuing relevance of Weber's concept of legitimation as an intrinsic and seminal aspect of his study on the Hindu social system and processes of state formation and Hinduization. In the light of this analysis the paper questions the validity of Sheldon Pollock's recent strong critique of the concept of legitimation.

Етнокультурна структура слов’янського Полаб’я у VII–ІX ст. i вплив порубіжжя на державотворчі процеси

Етнокультурна структура слов’янського Полаб’я у VII–ІX ст. i вплив порубіжжя на державотворчі процеси

Beyond 'Tribal Breakout': Afghans in the History of Empire, ca. 1747–1818

The narrative of 'Tribal Breakout' has allowed world historians to avoid narratives of the 'decline of the East' and the 'rise of the West'—but only by casting Afghans as tribals whose incursions destabilized the Asian empires. This essay seeks to retrieve the constructive agency of Afghans during the so-called 'colonial transition' in South Asia. Their seizure of plunder was disbursed via the patronage of commercial groups, while careful economic management even led to economic expansion in a manner typical of some eighteenth-century states, thereby lubricating long-distance trade between south and central Asia. This was part of a process of Afghan state formation rooted in developments within the Mughal Empire, was typical of a process of imperial expansion evident in the histories of other empires, such as the Mughals, Ottomans, and Qing, and, thus, yields much to scholars interested in the patterns and processes of early-modern empires in general.

Jakarta: Drawing the City Near by Abdulmaliq Simone

Reviewed by: Jakarta: Drawing the City Near by Abdulmaliq Simone Emma Colven (bio) Abdulmaliq Simone. Jakarta: Drawing the City Near. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. 319 pp. While Christopher Silver’s Planning the Mega City, Jo Santoso’s Jakarta’s Fifth Layer, and Abidin Kusno’s After The New Order1 have made valuable contributions to expanding our knowledge of the macro-scale processes of urban planning, state formation, and urban development in Jakarta, Abdulmaliq Simone’s Jakarta: Drawing the City Near makes an important contribution to examining everyday urban life in Jakarta. Simone approaches the city as an urban scholar and sociologist whose research examines the everyday politics of urban life in cities across the global South. In contrast to a wealth of studies that examine the urban poor in Southern cities, Simone’s book is distinguished by its focus on those residents occupying the space between extreme wealth and poverty, which he refers to as the city’s “urban majority.” Simone draws on research conducted over multiple years in Jakarta, during which time he carried out interviews, engaged in participant observations in several neighborhoods, and collaborated with the Urban Poor Consortium, an Indonesian non-profit. He also draws on research (surveys of neighborhood residents and interviews with residents, planners, security guards, and managers of mega-developments) conducted in an urban laboratory through a partnership jointly run by the district councils of Senen, Kemayoran, and Johar Baru; the University of Tarumanagara; and the Rujak Center for Urban Studies. By illuminating the daily practices and procedures by which the city continually operates, Simone’s book offers a refreshing take on a city often unfairly caricatured as dysfunctional and disaster-prone. In this book, Simone subtly rejects the dominant theoretical concepts and categories of mainstream urban studies, such as the global South and neoliberalism, contending these cannot capture the “complex processes of urban change or the multitude of practices” of urban life (2). The book therefore makes an important contribution in its effort to engage with Jakarta on its own terms. The result is a series of “mid-level concepts,” around which each chapter is shaped: “the near-South,” “the urban majority,” “devising relations,” and “endurance.” Simone argues that these mid-level concepts are able to illustrate practices not fully captured by dominant categorizations. For example, observing that many residents employed in the formal economy depend on income earned “off the books,” such as renting a room to migrants or operating a warung (shop, stall) out of their house (87), and that formal businesses often depend on subcontracting informal labor to cut costs (196), Simone demonstrates how informal and formal economic activities often occur within the same spaces. He therefore argues that these spaces cannot be labeled as either strictly [End Page 207] one or the other, formal or informal. Similarly, he observes how residents forge fragile collaborations and contingent relations with one another not due to a shared ethnic or religious identity, but instead on the basis of necessity such that “everyday negotiations seem to ‘forget’ ethnicity as soon as they begin” (139). Chapter One introduces Simone’s concept of the “near South,” intended to connote a space “neither of the global North nor of the global South” (34). Simone examines the contradictions and ambiguities that he regards as central to urban development in Jakarta: seemingly unproductive projects operating as so-called “self-contained” developments place enormous pressure on the city; developers manipulate or lie about occupancy rates to manufacture the success of their ventures; and land transactions are, in practice, governed more often by money rather than the nearly two thousand distinct pieces of legislation designed to do so. While Simone exposes illegal or unofficial practices, he refrains from defaulting to a discussion of corruption, instead reading these processes through the lens of uncertainty. In doing so, he illustrates the centrality of these practices to the daily working of the city, rather than evidence of Jakarta’s dysfunctional nature. The concept of the “near South” stands to have great utility for urban scholars studying cities in Indonesia and across the so-called “global South.” By refusing to read Jakarta through the lens of informality or illegality, Simone invites...

Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation by Michael Brem Bonner

Reviewed by: Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation by Michael Brem Bonner Max Mishler Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation. By Michael Brem Bonner. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 260. $48.00, ISBN 978–0-8071–6212-5.) In Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation, Michael Brem Bonner explores the interrelated processes of state formation and industrialization in the U.S. South during the American Civil War. He shows how a proslavery nation obsessed with republicanism, states' rights, and free trade quickly sacrificed these hallowed principles upon the altar of national survival. Bonner makes sense of these developments by studying the Confederacy as a nation born as much out of the war as during the war. The decision to leave the Union precipitated a civil war, which, in turn, left Confederate leaders with the herculean task of cementing national loyalty, mobilizing the citizenry, and securing sufficient military resources. Southern representatives prioritized sovereignty over ideological purity and profit in ways that fostered the emergence of a "Confederate system," or wartime political economy, that was neither the culmination of antebellum politics nor a prologue to the New South (p. 9). In response to the exigencies of war, Bonner argues, "the Confederacy implemented one of the world's first examples of a corporatist political economy" (p. 9). While corporatism tends to evoke twentieth-century political regimes in Italy or Brazil, Bonner suggests it [End Page 172] encapsulates the articulation of authoritarian political culture and public-private industrialization schemes in the Confederacy. Drawing on extensive government and company records, newspapers, legislative debates, and private correspondence, Bonner deftly shows how military imperatives unleashed antidemocratic political practices, including holding secret legislative sessions and maintaining a strong executive branch that was free from judicial restraint, and protectionist economic policies, such as tariffs and government subsidies, that were designed to bolster the industrial production of war matériel. These anathemas to antebellum southern politics were deemed necessary to sustain the war effort. The Confederate system was not, Bonner insists, a "command economy," in which private industry was completely subsumed within the state; rather, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement through which private industries—including iron, munitions, and railroads—secured profitable government contracts for the duration of the war (p. 3). This unique amalgam of authoritarian politics and profit made up what Bonner calls "expedient corporatism," which reflected a mutually beneficial public-private partnership that enabled Confederate leaders to wage war and ensured that private industries had access to government subsidies, patronage, and protection from competition and were even able to influence national policies (p. 9). Confederate Political Economy is a well-researched and cogently argued book. While some readers may take issue with Bonner's use of twentieth-century concepts like corporatism to explain nineteenth-century developments, defining the Confederate system as expedient corporatism is productively provocative. The term invites scholars to think about the historical relationship between war and capitalism comparatively and across time. Subsequent research might fruitfully explore other facets of the Confederate system that remain opaque in Bonner's work. A deeper engagement with the actual dynamics of production, that is, labor and subaltern politics on the ground, for example, would have likely allowed him to paint a more comprehensive portrait of the Confederate political economy on its own terms. Unfortunately, Bonner justifies the conspicuous absence of white women and enslaved African Americans from his central cast of characters by dismissing their relative importance to southern political economy. This claim is belied by his own evidence that enslaved African Americans, white women, and white children composed a significant labor force within the industries that lay at the heart of the Confederate system. Nevertheless, Confederate Political Economy has much to teach students of the Civil War era about the political culture and economic policies of a proslavery republic. Max Mishler Columbia University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Fragmented sovereignty and the geopolitics of illicit drugs in northern Burma

The study of the relationship between illicit drugs and state formation opens new directions for empirical inquiry into modalities of sovereignty. This article investigates the process of state formation in northern Burma, a highland notorious for illicit drugs for several decades, by examining how the drug trade both lubricates the Burmese state's territorial expansion and coercive control, and undercuts its sovereignty in the highland. Building upon Gramsci's theory of hegemony, I argue that illicit drugs foment domestic tensions and external intervention, and thus bolster a condition of fragmented sovereignty in which the Burmese state's crisis of hegemony is protracted. Regarding the role of illicit drugs in the process of state formation in source countries, we must transcend the debate on state failure or state consolidation and take fragmented sovereignty seriously as the dysfunction of state hegemony in relation to multiscalar political struggles among relatively autonomous, sometimes competing, cores of power.

Scripts, regions and states of the Konkani language in independent India

ABSTRACTThe linguistic pluralism with its democratic enunciation has remained internal to the political processes of state formation in independent India. Konkani language acquires a distinctive status in debates on language-based political autonomy movements in twentieth-century India. As an inter-state, inter-regional language with scriptal plurality, it has a wider expanse with multilingual and multicultural historical ancestry and lineage. The Konkani controversy shows the magnitude of an interface between languages, scripts, regions and states having axial effects on the social, cultural and political survival and sustainability of languages in a multilingual country. The case of Konkani shows that language is not simply a means of communication but a marker of ethnic-regional identities and boundaries drawn around their linguistic differentiations. The question of Konkani language and script controversy is as much about the processes of linguistic democratization and mobilization. Konkani question is also one related to the linguistic–cultural right, linguistic equality, identity and democratic equity amidst linguistic plurality and its complex registers of identity formation and resistance. The conflict and consensus over Konkani language reveal dense and complex set of interlinkages between caste, class, community, religion, language and state and their uneasy alliances at various points of time in the making of the nation-state project of post-independence India.

THE ETHNIC DIMENSIONS IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS*

This article draws on work in the social construction of race and ethnicity to explain why racial/ethnic divisions are so often axes of domination and why these divisions are central to social movements. Racial/ethnic groups are constructed in political processes that are intertwined with state formation and social movements. Processes of state formation and collective action create racial/ethnic groups, define majorities and minorities, and create racial/ethnic structures of domination. Physical and social segregation in tandem with intergenerational inheritance creates network cliquing that reinforces group boundaries, group differences, and group interests. Movements by members of dominant racial/ethnic majorities differ from movements by members of subordinate racial/ethnic minorities in key ways, including access to democratic processes for achieving group goals, experience of repression, need for allies, identity construction, processes of consciousness raising, and bases of mobilization. These “ethnic dimensions” matter for all social movements.

The Creation of Illegal Migration in the German Confederation, 1815–1866

ABSTRACTThis article puts the control, regulation and management of migration into the historical context of Germany’s nascent statehood in the 19th century. Underlying the discussion is the basic premise that regimes of illegal migration are characterized by the interrelation between migration movements and the way the state administration deals with them: “Illegal migration” crystallizes around the ideological and political principles of migration and sedentariness which exist at a given time, and those authorities and tools which are used for its administration. In the German states, migration and migrants were gradually illegalized in the first half of the 19th century and became a driving force in the formation of the German state. “Individuals without legitimation” and “homeless people” were to be tracked down, expelled and, wherever possible, accepted back by their “home states.” The search for “domestic security” and “welfare” was one of the core motivational factors for the German states, expressed in the three patterns of argumentation regarding the demarcation of borders: economy, cultural identity, and political danger. As a result, the ensuing criteria for illegalization consolidated ideas of desired and undesired populations and gave rise to a regime of illegal migration, the structure of which was essentially characterized by inter-governmental “cartel conventions” on expulsions, culminating in the Gotha Treaty in 1851. This article provides the first systematic evidence for the utilitarian mechanisms which led to the illegalization of migration and migrants during the process of state formation and analyses the related discourse on “desired persons,” “tolerated persons” and “troublesome persons.”

«La reconstrucción de la nación». Homogeneización cultural y nacionalización de masas en la España franquista (1936-1959)

The Francoist state was founded as a radical solution to the historical confrontation between two great and mutually incompatible visions of the nation: the liberal and the Catholic one. Expanding on the concept of “national homogenization”, the article explores the processes of State formation in Eastern Europe as a pattern in the formation of the Francoist nation state. It argues that Francoism was substantially an ethnonationalist political regime that fostered an aggressive nationalization of the masses founded upon political violence and Catholic religion. As a result of this political program, which is analyzed, the Republican national community was dismantled and erased, and Spain was “reconstructed” as a culturally homogeneous Catholic national community.

State Formation from Below and the Great Revolt in Palestine

The Great Revolt (1936–39) represented the most fervent and sustained Palestinian challenge to British and Zionist colonialisms during the thirty years of British rule in Palestine. Although its ultimate defeat has led to negative appraisals of its historical significance, the uprising was in its day the largest mass mobilization in Palestinian history and, at its apex, threatened to overturn the British regime. The rebellion was characterized by considerable organizational ingenuity as Palestinians created novel institutions that embodied their drive for popular sovereignty and an end to colonial domination. This article principally examines two such sets of institutions, the national and popular committees of 1936, and the rebel court system from 1937–39. In doing so, it argues that much like revolutionary peasant-based movements elsewhere in the colonial world, insurgent forces in Palestine embarked on a process of state formation from below. This process aimed to sap the colonial regime of its authority and weaken its capacities while augmenting those of the rebels by integrating broad segments of the population into insurgent frameworks. It further contends that it is the dynamic of state formation from below, and the popular character and leadership of the rebel movement, that lent the revolt its resilience and enabled it to push the colonial state to the wall.

Herrschaft im Land und Herrschaft auf dem Land. Zur Genese frühmoderner Staatlichkeit

EnglishRuling the country and in the country. On the process of state formation in early modern limes. For more than a decade, the concept of has been very popular when it comes to describing processes of statebuilding in early modern times. Schennach's contribution outlines the genesis of this theoretical concept inspired by research activities on early modern good police (guie Policey), by discussions on the myth of absolutism and by new cultural history. The paper illustrates potentials and deficits of this approach by using the example of the so-called Kammerprokurator in the Austrian Hereditary Lands. It can be shown that the concept of has its limits, tends to blend out the repressive aspects of ruling in early modern times. It can only be seen as complementary to works which analyse the development of administrad ve and constitutional structures in the long run. Englishhistory of administration, constitutional history, statebuilding, early modern times, negotiating power

State formation and religious processes in the north–south corridor of Chhattisgarh (from first century bc to eighth century ad)

Chhattisgarh in central India, a hilly and forested region, offered passages connecting the Gangetic basin with the Deccan, which opened it to influences from both the north and the Deccan. This made possible a secondary stage of state formation, marked by royalty, bureaucracy and army, with offices and practices influenced by those in vogue in the established states in the surrounding regions. The paper examines the process in the light mainly of epigraphic evidence. Such state formation created superior landed classes, mainly through land grants. The dynastic rulers patronised Vishnavism and Śaivaism, which were Brahmanical intrusions into the area, rather than any local deities or cults.

Transnational South America: Experiences, Ideas, and Identities, 1860s–1900s

Transnational South America: Experiences, Ideas, and Identities, 1860s–1900s

Procesos de exclusión e inclusión social. Un análisis bibliográfico sobre la formación cultural del Estado en América Latina

In the last twenty-five years, a post-revisionist school has emerged to study and write the history of the establishment of Latin American states. With the purpose of attributing more agency to the people, this historiography –paying attention to symbolic elements and to the limitations of the exclusively institutional and economic points of views– examines processes of state formation from a cultural perspective. Specifically,they have focused on the means and strategies through which elites have governed and retained power. Through the bibliographical analysis of some of the most significant work of this school of thought, this essay reviews Latin American history between the beginning of the 19th century and the 20th century. This article proposes that –in spite of successive state projects to incorporate the popular sectors of the public– inequality, exclusion, and the structuring of society in social, racial and gender hierarchies constitute a long-standing trend in the history of the formation of the State in Latin American countries.