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------------------ Hello Marika & Others, I'll try to engage your points, although I hope to hear from others who perhaps have more interesting things to say. As a precursor, I just want to say that I've written much that is critical of rhetoric & discourses of "civilization" as I tend to see then as illegitimately dismissing the rights of those judged "uncivilized" (barbarians or 'savages'), so I am not writing as an advocate of civilizing rhetoric. First: can you call a colonial administration a state? I guess I would answer yes to this. Why not? It might not be a state that you or other like or admire, but if it is administering a territory (governing, providing a police or military enforcement of rules/laws) then I think it meets some kind of minimal definition of a state. Would you call it something else and if so what? Second: when can a state legitimately use force? The days when I intensively studied Max Weber are in the distant past, so I can't respond with great fluidity to this question. I think the standard answer would be that a state can use force internally to enforce laws and externally to protect the sovereign state and to conquer. [when 'conquering' is legitimate is another good question & varying philosophies underlie the various answers]. Maybe underlying your question of "when can the state use force" is "why can the state legitimately use force"? People predisposed to non-violence tend to balk at theories that allow the state to use force. In the 20th C. restrictions have been placed on the state use of force (I'm thinking of, for example, the abolition of the death penalty in EU countries after WWII). Nonetheless, sovereign use of violence to enforce the will of the sovereign is very much alive in political practice and political theory. The GW Bush administration Global War on Terror rested (for a time anyway) on a theory that the sovereign could act without any restraint to protect the nation-state. Hence its claim that the Geneva conventions and legal bans on torture did not apply to 'enemy combatants'. If the sovereign did not have a monopoly on the use of force, then a society would be subject to random willful violence. Laws would count for little, strong-men (with rifles or grenades or whatever weapon of choice) would count for much. In the broad and violent history that you sketch you ask, where is 'civilization' and where is 'the state'. Here I'd suggest looking first to answer, what is civilization? and what is a state? I've thought in _Exile to Paradise_ about the first question. I've not thought very much about the second question. maybe someone else can contribute to that? about "what is civilization" -- I would just suggest here that it is not useful or productive to cede the term civilization to those who use it in an exclusive and war-like manner (as in "we are civilized, you are not, and therefore we have the right to kill or conquer you"). I'd suggest rooting 'civilization' in broader values of humanity. Nobert Elias is one theorist a lot of scholars tend to find insightful on civilization. Or, you could look historically at how advocates of civilization/civilizing process defined their terms. But I think, to be intellectually satisfied, a philosophical foundation is needed in order to be able to make sense of the various claims to civilization. But maybe someone else can chime in on this? Alice B.
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