Family Power : Kinship, War and Political Order in Eurasia, 500-2018

• This book demonstrates that elite families and political order evolved in symbiosis throughout European, Central Asian and Middle Eastern History. Noble families and royal dynasties were preconditions of stability and legitimacy of political orders. The state did not evolve in opposition to kinship-groups or to kinship-based principles of legitimacy. By re-telling the development of the state this book pinpoints exacly how kinship-based groups can both support and undermine political order. This book analyses Europe, the Middle East, Eurasian Steppe Polities, and the Ottoman Empire from the early Middle Ages to the present. The book pushes against conventional state-formation theory. Interdependence rather than conflict characterized the relation between powerful kinship groups and the political order. Hence, political science and sociology have overemphasised the coercive aspect of the state and the centrality of a monopoly of legitimate violence for the existence of political order. I offer a new understanding of successful political orders by emphasising co-operation with power elites in a common framework. Doing so in turn allows us to understand how to build stable polities today.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

state-formation

political order

state theory

war

aristocracy

kingship

historical sociology

kinship

modernity

multiple modernities

Krigsvetenskap

Krigsvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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