Abstract
State-formation is one of the oldest subjects of sociology and arguably a central one to the entire discipline. Norbert Elias made a seminal contribution to our understanding of how the state was formed in European history and, along with it, modern societies and modern individuals. His work The Civilizing Process was first published in 1939 and remains a classic point of reference until this day. Despite his well-known contributions to sociology, Lars Bo Kaspersen’s War, Survival Units, and Citizenship: A Neo-Eliasian Processual-Relational Perspective argues that the most significant implications of Elias’s scholarship on political orders have remained fairly unknown and underutilized. Hence, once of its missions is to elaborate on the concept of the “survival unit,” the idea of figurations and how they affect the way we understand not only how political orders formed in history but how they operate.
The book is divided into three parts. The first lays out a very considerable theoretical framework, the second charts the history of political orders (or “survival units”) from the Carolingian era until the 1500s, and the third focuses on France, England, and Germany during what is usually seen as the key period of “state-formation,” 1500 to 1660. Kaspersen, who is a Professor of Sociology at Copenhagen Business School, certainly knows the historical material and the classic literature on state-formation theory inside and out. The book contains a great number of theoretical and empirical points that will be valuable both to students and to seasoned scholars. Therefore, this book offers a kind of “two for one” deal: one gets both a thorough overview of classical theories and materials and an innovative theory.
Kaspersen outlines a comprehensive and very persuasive theoretical account of how different forms of polities (city-states, feudal networks, empires, Ständestaaten, and territorial states) evolved over time. A key component in this account is the idea of a figuration, which is “a web of interdependent entities . . . interacting with each other, with a shifting ratio of power between them” (p. 50). This is a relational, rather than substantivist, approach that emphasizes interconnections and interdependencies instead of insisting that “entities” can be understood automictically, as separate and isolated units that interact with each other. Instead of thinking that fully formed units form a system, we must understand the system and units as interdependent and the units as being formed by mutual relations. This way of seeing social forms, whether states, organizations, or individuals, offers a wholly new take on a wide range of social and political issues, not just polity-formation.
The account is powerful as it is, and the prospects are exiting, but I sometimes wish that Kaspersen could have outlined a broader range of applications of his theory. But that is just this reviewer asking for another helping of this intellectual feast. Primarily the book is concerned with the question of why the territorial state emerged as the dominant form and not the city-state, empire, or feudal network. The explanation has to be sought not in the capabilities and characteristics of the territorial state in isolation but in the nature of the shifting figuration in which it coexisted with the other forms.
The basic unit in which Kaspersen is interested is not “the state” but survival units that come in different shapes and sizes. A survival unit has been the basic form of human coexistence since time immemorial, and its primary purpose it to protect its members from external threats and to contain and restrain violence within it. Hence, the book is firmly within the field of social theory that stresses the centrality of violence and warfare to social life. Intriguingly, however, survival units are highly interdependent. All survival units require other survival units in order to satisfy a crucial need: Recognition. Building on Hegel, Kaspersen points out that it is only in relation to other but similar creatures that we recognize that we can attain and maintain an identity, a self. For this reason alone, a world state could never come into being since there would be no one to recognize it. This is indeed a very important argument well worth considering.
Still, I sense that there is a tension between the search for recognition on the one hand and the need for survival on the other. Kaspersen argues that there are military-operational limits to how successful campaigns of conquest can be—arguing with Clausewitz, he states that the defense is always stronger in the end, not least since the attacker will always reach a point of exhaustion. However, if survival units always and perhaps mainly seek recognition, does not this also dampen the urge for conquest? Hence, is there a really such a strong need to emphasize the struggle for survival in the framework? Perhaps this tension is not a flaw in the analytical framework but rather an astute observation of an unresolvable tension in social life and in world politics. An elaboration of this point would be of considerable theoretical importance not only to sociology but also to International Relations and Security Studies. The emphasis on the need for recognition provides considerable analytical mileage in the study of war and political order. It actually might provide an explanation for why so many wars in world history have not been wars of all-out conquest but have actually been fought for more limited aims. Said aims have often had to do with being recognized, either as an equal, as an overlord, or as the identity that one claims for oneself.
This brings me to another point, namely the coexistence, collaboration, and cohabitation of different kinds of survival units over time. The theoretical framework elaborated in the first part of the book certainly opens up for such an empirical analysis. However, such a dimension is not emphasized in the empirical chapters. It would have been interesting to see Kaspersen analyze not just the coexistence between different kinds of survival units, such as the city-state, the Ständestaat, and the territorial state in competitive figurations but also in collaborative ones. I suspect that collaboration might provide a key to understanding the success of the territorial state. There is a fascinating argument in Chapter Eight about how a territorial state could create, maintain, and guarantee many different forms of money—something that alternative forms were unable to do. To me this illustrates a point about state-formation that I have not previously encountered, that the territorial state could provide win-win situations for a large number of groups who would then choose to support it. This is turn could provide a take on the question, what is the state? It seems that the territorial state created a legal and administrative space that other forms did not, could not, or would not. Perhaps it was this unique characteristic, not its comparative advantages in war, that made it more attractive?
On numerous occasions, Kaspersen states that he is working on a more comprehensive book on survival units, figurations, and relational sociology. Anyone reading War, Survival Units, and Citizenship cannot help looking forward to the coming work with considerable intellectual excitement. Kaspersen has now given us a very rich volume that contains resources and inspiration for new orientations in sociology. The promise of more to come makes me suspect a revolution on the horizon.