Abstract

PATINO GUTIERREZ, Carlos. The thought of Norbert Elias and the deterioration of the Mezican State as a mechanism of centralized domination. Derecho glob. Estud. sobre derecho justicia [online]. 2024, vol.10, n.28, pp.71-111.  Epub Feb 28, 2025. ISSN 2448-5136.  https://doi.org/10.32870/dgedj.v10i28.505.

This article aims to analyze Norbert Elias’s theory on the civilizing process and apply it to the case of the deterioration of the Mexican state as a mechanism of centralized domination. According to Elias, civilization depends on two instruments for controlling human behavior: an internal one (which is revealed in the rules of courtesy and shame) and another external (which is expressed in the coercion that we exert on ourselves through the state). Is it possible to associate drug-related violence, extortions or lynchings to the loss of the monopolies on the use of force and on tax collection in Mexico? Is it possible to associate the state absence to a collective sensitivity of exhaustion and aggressiveness? The main argument of this article is that Elias’s theory -which has not been applied to the research of Mexico’s legal system- is essential to the understanding of the spiral of extreme violence that is suffered in Mexico related to the deterioration of the state vis-à-vis the organized crime.

Keywords : Civilization; violence; law; state; behavior.

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