Structural work

Abstract

The structural-cum-symbolic amplification of minor differences: how small-scale, interpersonal or factional disputes are turned into large-scale struggles between nations, kingdoms or their totalized like - thus making macrohistories out of microhistories and vice versa. The phenomenon depends on structural relays of various sorts that endow the opposing local parties with collective identities and the opposing collectives with local or interpersonal sentiments. In the occurrence, the small-scale struggles are transformed into abstract and irreconcilable causes-to-die-for, their outcome depending now on the larger correlation of forces. The discussion focuses on three ethnographic/historical examples: the recent Elián Gonzalez affair in the US; the nationalization of peasant disputes in the Cerdanya, Catalonia during the 17th to 19th centuries; and civil strife in Corcyra and other Greek city-states during the Peloponnesian War. The last was an important source of Hobbes’s idea of the state of nature. It shows that it takes a lot of culture to make a state of nature.