The sociogenesis of the state in Elias: notes for a debate and remarks for its application in nineteenth-century Chile

The interest for the sociogenesis of the state accounts in part for the contemporary diffusion of Norbert Elias’s theory of the civilizing process. Although this emphasis tends to neglect the psychogenetic axis of the theory, it has nonetheless assured its wide acceptance among scholars interested in the dialectics of fiscal and military structures. The first section of this article deals with the assumed convergence between Elias’s sociogenetic approach and simpler models of fiscal-military interaction. The second section offers a brief sketch of the state-building process in Chile during the nineteenth century as an example of the application of Elias’s insights into non-European processes of monopolization of force and taxation