Reflexiones sobre el surgimiento del Estado en los intersticios del parentesco

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

From Zalmoxis to Quetzalcoatl. Studies in Honor of 65th Anniversary of Assoc. Professor Stefan Yordanov

Izdatelstvo ITI

Lugar: Veliko Tarnovo; Año: 2020; p. 199 - 208

What's specifically new with the emergence of the first states? Taking as a starting point the "list" of indicators that Gordon Childe defined as the main characteristics of the "urban revolution", it is possible to note that the qualitatively new features of this process have a common denominator: the existence of what Max Weber identified, in his characterization of the state, as the legitimate monopoly of coercion. Certainly, it is through the availability of the means of coercion that a minority of society is able to impose its will on the majority, to extract a regular and permanent tribute, to organize and support bureaucrats and other specialists.Current hypotheses about the origin of the State, when focusing on the problem in terms of evolutionary growth, tend to assume that the elements that constitute state societies are already present, on a smaller scale, in previous societies. However, the state logic is radically divergent from the reciprocity principles that sustain the kinship logic, which is dominant in the organization of non-state societies. Therefore, the logic of kinship does not propitiate the emergence of the state. But then, how could state societies emerge?To consider this matter, it is worth noting that the limits that kinship imposes on social differentiation operate only with respect to those who are kin, that is, within the kinship network. Beyond the group, kinship rules do not apply. Therefore, it is most plausible that the process of state advent begin outside those networks, in the interstitial spaces between kin groups, and the first state practices had been between strangers, that is, between individuals not linked by kinship ties.The specific features of these interstitial spaces could vary considerably depending on the historical situations, but it is possible to think of two main scenarios ?not necessarily the only ones, nor mutually exclusive ?, which are regularly identifiable in the contexts in which the first states emerge. One of them points to the regional scale and to the conflicting interactions between different communities, in which each kinship group is territorially separated from the others. The other corresponds to the processes of initial urbanization and the relationships between different kinship networks that could be agglomerated in the same place as a result of the dynamics of migration and population concentration.