De paradox van de pacificatie

Samenvatting

The Paradox of Pacification. Insights into the monopolization of violence developed by Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process (1982) are applied to human history at large. It is argued that organized violence tends to entail the paradox of pacification because, in order to be effective, it generally requires a high degree of internal pacification. Two sorts of pacification processes are distinguished: recurrent short-term peace making, such as also occurs among chimpanzees; and long-term pacification at an increasingly larger scale. The latter process, which is uniquely human, is related to stages in the monopolization of organized violence: successively by adult males, warrior elites, and states. 13 References. Adapted from the source document.