FROM COMMUNITY TOWARD STATE IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY: (1787-1803).
Item
-
Title
-
FROM COMMUNITY TOWARD STATE IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY: (1787-1803).
-
Identifier
-
AAI8401889
-
identifier
-
8401889
-
Creator
-
BELLER, EDWARD LAWRENCE.
-
Contributor
-
Prof. George Fischer
-
Date
-
1983
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Sociology, Social Structure and Development | History, United States
-
Abstract
-
This study addresses the sociological problem of state and community. It contrasts a centralized, coercive structure with spontaneity and voluntary co-operation. Focusing on an early American frontier, the movement from a society corresponding closely to the concept of community to one where elements of the state emerged and began to predominate is described. The social factors which fostered this movement are analyzed as is the effect of the emergence of the state on community as the basis for social life.;The first chapter defines the concepts of community and state. A composite portrait of the earliest social life of the settlements of the Northwest Territory is then presented. This social life at first conformed closely to the theoretical outlines of the concept of community.;Chapters Two through Five consist of case studies of nine squatter settlements and three settlements founded on legally recognized property rights. Using several empirical indicators of the appearance of the state, it becomes clear that as the settlements matured the centralized, minority controlled, and coercive state gained ascendance over the diffuse, voluntary, spontaneous, and co-operative community. It appears that the major social factor fostering this development was the presence of a landlord-speculator class which needed legal sanction and military protection for its holdings and supported a policy of indefinite encroachment on Indian land. Forms of political organization corresponding to the concept of the state developed as this class sought to protect its interests and ensure its control.;The emergence of the state culminates with the appearance of elaborate rituals and symbols. In Chapter Six an analogy is drawn between this final aspect of the state and the sacred as defined by Emile Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Both suggest society's collective will, authority, intelligence, and unity. Both are sharply divorced from the prosaic routines of everyday life. It is likely that the state, a form of social-political organization which arose to protect the interests of a dominant class, is shielded from rational criticism by impressive symbolic trappings of objectivity and social unity.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Sociology
