Repository | Book | Chapter
(2018) Excitement processes, Dordrecht, Springer.
Boxing and duelling
critical remarks on Elias on violence and state-formation from a historical perspective
James Sharpe
pp. 217-233
This essay attempts to examine Norbert Elias's views on the connection between state- formation and the decline of violence, and to examine his analyses boxing and duelling within that context. Crucially, recent research and rethinking on French absolutism now presents a very different interpretation of that phenomenon from that which was available to Elias in the early twentieth century. Moreover, work on English state-formation has laid emphasis on the emergence of the "fiscal-military state after 1688, and also on the importance of a "history from below" approach to state-formation. Elias's interpretation of boxing in England and duelling in both England and France is re-assessed in the light of these historiographical developments.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-14912-3_9
Full citation:
Sharpe, J. (2018)., Boxing and duelling: critical remarks on Elias on violence and state-formation from a historical perspective, in J. Haut, P. Dolan, D. Reicher & R. Sánchez García (eds.), Excitement processes, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 217-233.