The Modern State and the Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

Author(s): Mara Loveman

Source: American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 110, No. 6 (May 2005), pp. 1651-1683
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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The Modern State and the Primitive
Accumulation of Symbolic Power1
Mara Loveman
University of Wisconsin, Madison

The exercise of symbolic power has become a privileged focus of

scholarship on the state, but without much attention to how states
acquired this power in the first place. This article lays a foundation
for systematic historical inquiry into the primitive accumulation of
symbolic power by modernizing states. It introduces an analytical
framework for research on how new domains of administrative ac-
tivity become recognized as legitimate state practices. This frame-
work is deployed to analyze how a popular revolt in northeastern
Brazil managed to frustrate the Brazilian state’s attempt to imple-
ment civil registration in the mid-19th century. The conclusion con-
siders broad implications of this analysis for students of modern
state formation and suggests the need for comparative historical
analyses that historicize the naturalization of state power.

Drawing inspiration from Max Weber’s enduring definition of the state

as a compulsory political organization that claims the monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force within its territory (Weber 1978, p. 54),
accounts of the rise of modern states in Western Europe have devoted
sustained attention to the political-military dimensions of state formation.
Struggles to wrest the capacity to legitimately coerce from the array of

1
Many thanks to Rogers Brubaker, Michael Mann, Peter Stamatov, Brian Loveman,
Mustafa Emirbayer, Phil Gorski, Chad Alan Goldberg, Peter Beattie, Dain Borges,
and Farid Abdel Nour for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks
also to the AJS reviewers for particularly incisive comments and suggestions for im-
provement. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the UCLA Center for
Comparative Social Analysis (2001); the comments of participants are much appre-
ciated. Archival research was supported by an IDRF fellowship from the Social Science
Research Council. Writing was supported in part by a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship
at the UCLA Center for Modern and Contemporary Studies and the Humanities
Consortium. Direct correspondence to Mara Loveman, Department of Sociology, 8128
Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. E-mail:
[email protected]

䉷 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0002-9602/2005/11006-0003$10.00

AJS Volume 110 Number 6 (May 2005): 1651–83 1651

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American Journal of Sociology

historical contenders have received pride of place in the literature. Modern

state formation is seen as driven by the intertwining historical imperatives
of waging war and collecting taxes to pay for waging more war. From
this perspective, the advent and expansion of modern, centralized, rational
administration is the cumulative product of successive “extraction-
coercion cycles” in the drive to ward off external threats through prep-
aration for war (Tilly 1992, p. 75).2
This “bellicist” perspective, as Philip Gorski (1999) refers to it, illu-
minates the modern state as a military, political, and economic accom-
plishment. But it tends to obscure the fact that the modern state is also,
and essentially, a symbolic accomplishment (Bourdieu 1999, p. 40).3 In-
deed, historical struggles over the exercise of symbolic power were integral
to historical struggles over the legitimate exercise of military, political,
and economic power.
The neglect of the accumulation of symbolic power as a central dynamic
in modern state formation is not surprising given that an essentially ma-
terialist conceptualization of the explanandum serves as the point of de-
parture for most existing accounts of the rise of modern states. Traditional
definitions of the modern state highlight the tight linkage between political
organization, territorial jurisdiction, and control over the exercise of phys-
ical coercion as constitutive of modern statehood (e.g., Tilly 1975, p. 27).
Such definitions are not wrong, but they are incomplete. In part, as Gorski
(2003, pp. 165–66) notes, they are incomplete because “states are not only
administrative, policing and military organizations. They are also peda-
gogical, corrective, and ideological organizations.”
The problem, however, is not just that conventional approaches priv-
ilege the military, political, and economic power of modern states, paying
only secondary attention to their ideological power. More fundamentally,
such approaches fail to recognize explicitly that the state’s capacity to
carry out its ideological, economic, political, and military functions hinges
in crucial respects on the exercise of symbolic power. Even the most
material aspects of modern state formation have a cultural dimension that
has been largely neglected by existing accounts. Of course, Weber himself
was clearly aware of this, as the centrality of legitimacy to his concep-

2
See also Porter (1994), Downing (1992), Mann (1993), Finer (1975), and Ertman (1997).
3
This insight pertains to all cases of modern state formation, but it may be especially
relevant for understanding cases outside the Western European “core.” In ex-colonial
contexts, in particular, the historical roles of coercion and capital as stimuli to bu-
reaucratic development are ambiguous, leaving a much greater explanatory void (e.g.,
Centeno 1997, 2002).

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

tualization of the state makes clear.4 And neo-Weberian approaches to

modern state formation also generally recognize that cultural processes
were involved. But until recently (cf. Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Coronil
1997; Adams 1994; Gorski 2003; and the essays collected in Steinmetz
[1999]) cultural dimensions of the historical dynamics of modern state
formation have not been a central analytical focus.
This neglect has become more glaring in light of the growing body of
scholarship focused on the symbolic dimensions of state power. Indeed,
many analysts see the capacity to exercise symbolic power as a defining
characteristic of the modern state.5 To cite only a few well-known ex-
amples from a rapidly growing field of inquiry, we know that seemingly
mundane state practices like taking censuses, making maps, and building
museums (Anderson 1991) can become powerful instruments of state rule,
as they help to constitute what they appear merely to represent. Similarly,
the development of civil registries, tax lists, land surveys, and other strat-
egies to render land and people “legible” for administrative purposes help
to remake geography and society along lines deemed relevant to the state
(Scott 1998). Systems of national primary education, meanwhile, impart
to their students more than a curriculum of standardized substantive
knowledge; schools also introduce and naturalize fundamental categories
of perception, “principles of vision and division,” which then shape how
people understand society and their place within it (cf. Bourdieu 1999;
Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1993).
Through the establishment and routinization of myriad administrative
practices, the modern state may actively constitute the subjects in whose
name it claims to exist legitimately (cf. Kertzer and Arel 2002; Brubaker
1996; Giddens 1987; Weber 1976). Though clearly very important, the
capacity to give definite commands and exact conscious obedience (what
Mann [1986, p. 8] terms “authoritative power”) seems less central to the

4
Weber’s definition of the state as an organization that claims the legitimate use of
physical force yokes cultural and material power together from the beginning. Yet the
intimacy of their interconnection, implied already in the German term “herrschaft,”
was diluted by the English translation of this term as either the more ideal/cultural
“authority” (Parsons 1960a, p. 752) or the more materially construed “domination”
(Bendix 1960).
5
Pierre Bourdieu (e.g., 1999, p. 40) takes this argument further than most. He suggests
that the state claims a monopoly of the exercise of symbolic violence analogous to its
claim to monopolize the legitimate exercise of physical violence. Just as others have
qualified Weber’s emphasis on the state’s monopolization of the use of physical force
(cf. Mann 1993, p. 55; Giddens 1987, p. 18), Bourdieu’s claim of the state’s monop-
olization of symbolic power demands qualification as well. Indeed, Bourdieu himself
notes in some contexts that the state’s hold on symbolic power is never absolute (e.g.,
Bourdieu 1990, p. 137). But overall he tends to neglect other loci of symbolic power
in the modern world, most significantly, organized religion.

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American Journal of Sociology

modern state’s power than the capacity to order social life through the
notion that its practices are natural, inevitable, or self-evidently useful
(what Mann [1986, p. 8] terms “diffuse power”).
The culturalist revision of what the modern state is has not yet been
adequately extended to accounts of how modern states came to be. Recent
work has focused on the variety of ways modern states exercise symbolic
power, but not much consideration has been given to how states acquired
this power in the first place. There are some important exceptions, most
notably the work of Torpey (2000) and Gorski (1999, 2003). For the most
part, however, existing work has explored how and to what ends modern
states wield symbolic power, as opposed to how the gradual accumulation
of symbolic power helped constitute modern states as such. Consequently,
while we know much about the historical dynamics that concentrated
military, political, and economic power in the modern state (and there are
several competing theories that seek to explain the rise of modern states
construed in these terms), and we know quite a bit about how states
exercise symbolic power in the modern world, we know relatively little
about how the modern state accumulated symbolic power.
This article lays a foundation for systematic inquiry into the primitive
accumulation of symbolic power by modernizing states. Following a brief
discussion of the concept of symbolic power, it introduces an analytical
distinction between two phases in the relationship of symbolic power and
the state: (1) primitive accumulation of symbolic power, and (2) routine
exercise of symbolic power. It then presents a conceptual framework for
research on the primitive accumulation of symbolic power by modernizing
states. The leverage provided by this framework is then demonstrated
through analysis of “the war of the wasps,” a little-known popular re-
bellion against the implementation of civil registration in mid-19th-
century Brazil. The war of the wasps frustrated the Brazilian state’s
attempt to establish civil registration as a legitimate state practice; it
represents a significant missed opportunity for the accumulation of sym-
bolic power by the modernizing Brazilian state.
The article concludes with a discussion of broader implications for
students of modern state formation. To anticipate, it suggests, first, that
our understanding of modern state formation would be enhanced by a
broadened conceptualization of the explanandum, and particularly by
supplementing the analytical focus on cycles of extraction and coercion
with critical attention to the dynamics of early administrative extension—
dynamics that enabled the accumulation of symbolic power and helped
make sustained extraction and coercion possible. Second, it suggests the
need for closer scrutiny of causal sequence in accounts of modern state
formation to clarify the role of war making as a stimulant to adminis-
trative growth (cf. Centeno 1997). Third, the analysis lends support to

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

Gorski’s (2003) suggestion that particular forms of state-society interde-

pendence in the early phase of modern state formation may be a sign of
state strength rather than weakness. In some cases, the dependence upon
nonstate actors and resources could be pivotal for the state’s administra-
tive development. Finally, the analysis points to the general importance,
in the current context, of research that historicizes the symbolic power of
modern states.

SYMBOLIC POWER
Symbolic power is the power to “constitute the given” (Bourdieu 1991, p.
170). It is the ability to make appear as natural, inevitable, and thus
apolitical, that which is a product of historical struggle and human in-
vention. Through practices of classification, codification, and regulation,
for example, modern states not only naturalize certain distinctions and
not others, but they also help constitute particular kinds of people, places,
and things (cf. Hacking 1986; Starr 1987, 1992; Patriarca 1996; Scott
1998).6
Symbolic power, in Bourdieu’s sense of the term, derives from the
recognition of authority as legitimate, be it authority originally based in
political, economic, or cultural power. The recognition of authority as
legitimate confers its carrier with an additional “value-added” power
above and beyond the specific form and amount of power upon which
that authority is originally based. Somewhat paradoxically, while symbolic
power derives from the recognition of legitimate authority, symbolic power
produces its effects through misrecognition, that is, through the appear-
ance that no power is being wielded at all (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992,
p. 168).7 Thus, if legitimacy, in the Weberian sense, is enjoyed when the
basis of a claim to exercise authority is recognized as valid (Weber 1978,
p. 214), symbolic power renders particular legitimizing claims superfluous,
because the exercise of authority is no longer recognized as such.
Symbolic power is not of the same “kind” as other forms of power. In

6
Thus, for example, when the inclusion of a “Hispanic” category on the U.S. census
helped to bring a new social grouping into existence (Petersen 1987; Goldberg 1997),
this act of constitution was generally perceived as an act of mere description. A more
ominous example: when the Belgian colonial government issued identity cards to Hutus
and Tutsis in Rwanda, what appeared to be simply an act of registration was actually
an act of (re)constitution that helped to alter fundamentally popular understandings
of ethnic identity, helping to set the stage for genocide (Longman 2001).
7
Bourdieu refers to this phenomenon as “misrecognition” in order to emphasize what
he sees as the contributing role of the dominated to their own domination: their “doxic
submission” to “the objective structures of a social order of which their cognitive
structures are the product” (Bourdieu 2000, p. 177; also 1992, pp. 167–68).

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American Journal of Sociology

Michael Mann’s (1986, pp. 2, 22–32) model of four sources of organized

power, for example, symbolic power would not be an additional, parallel
source of social power that exists alongside ideological, economic, military,
and political power. In contrast to these other forms of power, symbolic
power does not have its own distinctive networks of social interaction
and institutions. Rather, symbolic power may be based on any or all of
Mann’s four forms of social power. Symbolic power is a sort of metapower
that accrues to the carriers of specific forms of power to the extent that
their particular basis of power is recognized as legitimate.
Symbolic power is a crucial stake in the struggles between the carriers
of cultural, economic, political, and military power, precisely because it
is the power to shape the terrain upon which such struggles take place.
Symbolic power is not simply the power to set the rules of the game, but
the power to “enframe” (Mitchell 1990) the game itself, establishing the
practices, categories, and cognitive schemes through which the game is
understood and experienced. The outcomes of competitions for ultimate
legitimacy, meanwhile, are cumulative; the recognition of one basis of
power as more legitimate than another in a given domain gives an upper
hand to the victor in future competitions on that terrain.
Symbolic power is thus not equivalent to cultural power per se, at least
not as cultural power is traditionally understood in the literature on mod-
ern state formation. Cultural power has figured in existing theories of
modern state formation primarily as ideology. In particular, state-created
nationalism is highlighted as a crucial ideological tool of modernizing
states, used to foster the loyalty of citizens (Hobsbawm 1990; Giddens
1987). The modern state’s deployment of ideological power hinges in
crucial respects on the exercise of symbolic power, but the two forms of
power are not one and the same. Ideological power, as traditionally un-
derstood, is exercised through the use of specific symbols, the promotion
of specific cultural messages, or the inculcation of particular beliefs.8 Sym-
bolic power, meanwhile, is exercised through the naturalization of the
practices and cognitive schemes that make it possible for such messages
to resonate with their intended audiences. Symbolic power is exercised
through that “which goes without saying” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992,
p.168). As it accumulated in the modern state, symbolic power therefore
increasingly facilitated the state’s capacity to exercise ideological power.
For example, it bolstered the state’s capacity to “invent traditions” that

8
Of course, ideological power and symbolic power are both “symbolic” in the sense
that they both rely on symbols (including symbolic practices) to exert their effects. The
point here is not to engage in terminological casuistry, but to draw attention to a
“cultural” dimension of state power that is not adequately captured by conventional
understandings of ideological power.

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

seemingly confirm the primordial origins of national identities that were

only recently constructed (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

SYMBOLIC POWER AND THE MODERN STATE

Bourdieu (1999) has argued that modern states are the primary repositories
of symbolic power in the modern world.9 The exercise of symbolic power
may not be a complete monopoly of modern states, but these do play with
a loaded deck in struggles “to impose the legitimate principle of vision
and division” of the social world. States are simultaneously contenders
for particular symbolic prizes, and referees who authoritatively proclaim
and enforce the rules of the game (Bourdieu 1990, pp. 134, 137). But of
course this was not always the case (as Bourdieu [1999] himself strongly
cautions). How, then, did symbolic power accumulate in the modern state?

From Primitive Accumulation to Routine Exercise

Addressing the question of how symbolic power accumulated in the mod-
ern state requires a conceptual distinction between two phases in the
relationship of symbolic power and the state: (1) the primitive accumu-
lation of symbolic power,10 and (2) the routine exercise of symbolic power.
In both phases, the realm of administration is of primary importance.
But different aspects of administration demand analytical scrutiny during
each phase. To grasp the dynamics of the primitive accumulation of sym-
bolic power requires a focus on the particular modes of extension of the
state’s administrative reach. Elucidation of the state’s routine exercise of
symbolic power, on the other hand, demands attention to the broad array
of state practices involved in the administrative regulation (broadly un-
derstood) of social life.
Symbolic power is incrementally accumulated in modern states as (or
to the extent that) their administrative activities are recognized as legit-
imate. To begin to accumulate symbolic power, the state must carve out

9
Note that while Bourdieu writes about modern states as “repositories” of symbolic
power, invoking the language of monopolization, he nonetheless conceives of the ex-
ercise of symbolic power as characteristically diffuse, implying a more Foucauldian
perspective on how symbolic power operates.
10
The phrase “primitive accumulation” is, of course, borrowed from Karl Marx (Cap-
ital, vol. 1, in McLellan 1977, p. 484). It is used to capture the idea of a historical
process that was part of the “prehistory” of the modern state: it is a process that is
both a necessary precursor to, and constitutive of, the realization of modern statehood.
Unlike the primitive accumulation of capital, however, the primitive accumulation of
symbolic power is conceived as a process that may be zero sum, but is not necessarily
so.

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American Journal of Sociology

a new domain of social life to administer, co-opt the administrative prac-

tices of others, or wrestle existing administrative functions away from
their traditional executors, imbuing them with new meanings in the pro-
cess. In order to take a census of the population, for example, the state
had to establish political and administrative control over a given territory.
But census taking was not purely a logistical feat. The state also had to
establish its legitimacy as social accountant. At least in some places, this
entailed hard-won battles with existing secular and religious authorities
and with local populations. The state had to engage in concrete struggles
with an array of historical contenders to establish legitimate authority in
a new domain. As this example suggests, during the phase of primitive
accumulation of symbolic power, conflicts occur over the boundaries and
nature of state involvement in particular areas of social life. State victories
in such struggles are the watershed events in the historical process of the
accumulation of symbolic power in the state.
Once the state has accumulated sufficient symbolic power in a given
domain, subsequent struggles within that domain take place on a recon-
figured terrain. The state’s routine exercise of symbolic power begins when
activities that were once controversial—whether issuing birth certificates,
establishing standardized weights and measures, or taking a census—are
no longer challenged. They come, like the modern state itself, to appear
as natural features of the social landscape. As a given state practice be-
comes taken for granted, conflicts over the state’s right to engage in that
practice become increasingly rare. Attention turns instead to the specific
mechanisms and techniques the state employs to get the job done. To
return to the census-taking example introduced above, contemporary de-
bates over official counts of the population may rage over which questions,
categories, and sampling methods to use, but few question the right of
the state to count the population in the first instance.11 With the accu-
mulation of symbolic power, the institutional reality of the state becomes
naturalized. And to the extent that the array of state practices is taken

11
This may be changing, however, as certain groups organize to denounce this tra-
ditional state activity (see, e.g., Scheuch, Gräf, and Kühnel 1989). The questioning or
challenging of previously legitimate state activities—those that are routinely “misre-
cognized” as part of the natural order of things—is the primary means of undermining
the state’s capacity to exercise symbolic power. It is important to note, however, that
efforts to denaturalize state power are not analytically equivalent to resistance to the
extension of state authority into new domains in the first place. In the former case,
the challengers are confronting the state on entirely different terms—from a position
in a field characterized by the hegemony of modern states as legitimate arbiters of
“domestic” social conflicts. It is an open question, and one I do not take up here, of
whether we are now moving into some third stage, characterized by the declining
legitimacy of the modern state with a concomitant dissolution of the state’s symbolic
power.

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

for granted, it becomes increasingly difficult to think—let alone act—

“outside the state” (see Bourdieu [1999] on “minds of state”). Table 1
summarizes two dimensions of contrast between these two phases in the
relationship of symbolic power and the state.
Like all ideal-typical constructs, the distinction between the primitive
accumulation of symbolic power and routine exercise of symbolic power
is a heuristic tool for analytical purposes. As complex organizational webs,
modern states may engage in primitive accumulation of symbolic power
in one domain while they already exercise symbolic power in another.
Similarly, though the types of political struggles characteristic of the rou-
tine exercise of symbolic power presume that earlier struggles to accu-
mulate symbolic power have already been settled in the state’s favor, both

TABLE 1
Symbolic Power and the Modern State

Phase Types of Practices Types of Opposition

Primitive accu- Extension of the domain of Struggles over what
mulation of legitimate state practices counts as legitimate
symbolic through administrative state practice (e.g., the
power innovation, imitation, co- boundaries of the
optation, or usurpation. state’s administrative
reach).
Routine exercise Naturalization of catego- Struggles over the me-
of symbolic ries, cognitive schemes, chanics or techniques
power and social practices of state practices that
through administrative are recognized without
regulation, codification, question as such.
routinization, and
socialization.

types of struggles could occur simultaneously over different state practices.

Even within a single domain, once states have accumulated a modicum
of symbolic power, they may begin to exercise it in ways that favor the
accumulation of more. Of course, the conceptual distinction between the
primitive accumulation of symbolic power and its routine exercise in itself
explains nothing. But it is a necessary starting point for any analysis that
seeks to understand how states became the primary repositories of sym-
bolic power in the modern world. The next step is to develop an analytical
framework that illuminates the principle mechanisms through which the
primitive accumulation of symbolic power occurs.

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American Journal of Sociology

Administrative Extension and the Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic

Power
Bureaucratic administration is at the heart of the modern state’s ability
to exercise symbolic power. Crucial to the surveillance capacities of mod-
ern states (Foucault 1979), the written documents and registers that un-
dergird bureaucratic administration (what Weber referred to as “the files”)
enable the state to “contain” (Giddens 1987), “embrace” (Torpey 2000),
and “penetrate” (Mann 1993) individual lives. Bureaucratic administration
also enables the state to define more effectively the parameters of indi-
vidual identities and existence (Brubaker 1996; Longman 2001; Caplan
and Torpey 2001; Burleigh and Wippermann 1991).
The extension of the means of administration enables the state to gain
control over the production, unification, codification, and dissemination
of knowledge (what Bourdieu [1999] terms “informational capital”) that
is central to the state’s routine exercise of symbolic power. Whether a
given administrative practice primarily operates within, or is oriented to,
the cultural, economic, political, or military sphere, the informational cap-
ital it generates facilitates the state’s exercise of symbolic power by helping
to constitute (what is then taken to be) the natural order of things. To
understand better where the state’s capacity to exercise symbolic power
came from, it thus makes sense to focus on the historical development of
the state’s administrative infrastructure.
Of course, existing accounts of modern state formation have emphasized
the development of the means of bureaucratic administration. This em-
phasis follows Weber (1978, p. 223), who saw the development of bu-
reaucratic administration “at the root of the modern Western state.” How-
ever, bellicist accounts have treated this development in almost entirely
“materialist” terms. To take one well-known example, Tilly’s account of
the rise of modern states in Western Europe highlights how administrative
structures were generated by preparations for war: “A ruler’s creation of
armed force generated durable state structure. It did so both because an
army became a significant organization within the state and because its
construction and maintenance brought complementary organizations—
treasuries, supply services, mechanisms for conscription, tax bureaus, and
much more—into life” (Tilly 1992, p. 70). Administrative structures are
viewed as a by-product of the material demands of preparing for war.
The cultural dimension of administrative development is all but lost
in such accounts. To develop administrative capacity, the state had to
succeed in harnessing existing material and human resources and putting
them to work for its purposes. Brute force alone could not accomplish
this, at least not on the scale or for the duration necessary to yield “durable
state structure.” To be sustained on a broad scale, administrative under-

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

takings such as conscription, taxation, or systems of individual identifi-

cation required the compliance that comes from recognition of the state’s
legitimate authority to engage in such activities (cf. Weber 1978). The
early development and expansion of bureaucratic administration thus
hinged on establishing such activities as legitimate state practices.
States accumulated symbolic power as they succeeded in making par-
ticular administrative activities recognized as legitimate state practices.
As specific administrative practices came to appear as naturally, rightfully,
or inevitably the prerogative of the state, the power of the state to “order”
more of social life was enhanced. To understand the historical foundations
of the state’s symbolic power, the question thus becomes: How, or through
what means and to what extent, did states manage to garner recognition
of their legitimate authority to undertake particular administrative prac-
tices, especially in the early phases of their administrative development?
Or put more simply, how did states manage to extend their administrative
reach?12
The extension of the state’s administrative infrastructure was at once
a logistical and a cultural feat. The state’s administrative growth was not
a uniform, automatic, or inevitable outcome of purely “material” processes,
even though it may sometimes appear as such in retrospect. Administra-
tive development (or the lack thereof) is better conceived as the cumulative
product of concrete historical struggles, of varying types and intensity,
over the boundaries of legitimate state practice—and thus, over the prac-
tical definition of the state itself.

Modes of Administrative Extension

Generally speaking, the administrative reach of modernizing states was
extended in one of four ways. First, agents of the state could innovate,
inventing new administrative practices and carving out new domains of
social life to administer (cf. Zerubavel 1997). Second, agents of the state
could imitate the existing administrative practices of nonstate actors, pos-
sibly (but not necessarily) rendering such practices redundant or super-
fluous. Third, agents of the state could co-opt the traditional administra-
tive practices of local or religious authorities, incorporating them into the
state’s administrative apparatus. Finally, agents of the state could usurp
the administrative practices of nonstate actors, stripping them of the
means and/or authority to continue their traditional practices and taking
over these practices themselves, imbuing them with new meanings in the
process.

12
The question of how states extended their administrative reach is different from the
question of why they sought to do so; it is the former question that is considered here.

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American Journal of Sociology

Innovation.—The traditional view of state formation as a top-down,

center-out process implies that much of the administrative development
of modern states occurred through innovation: the creation of new or-
ganizations, institutions, and administrative practices to solve concrete
problems faced by modernizing states. Censuses, for example, are typically
viewed as administrative tools originally developed to facilitate resource
extraction, especially taxation and conscription. Similarly, passports are
seen as an invention of modernizing states intent on controlling the flow
of humans across (and within) their borders (Torpey 2000). The invention
and implementation of new administrative practices is most likely to suc-
ceed when such practices do not directly threaten the ideal or material
interests of local or nonstate authorities or the populations who are their
targets. To the extent that administrative innovations do challenge es-
tablished interests, the state’s success in implementing them will hinge
on its capacity to impose its will. This capacity may depend, in the last
analysis, on the effective control of the means of physical coercion. But
coercion may prove unnecessary when the state’s right or authority to
engage in such administrative practices is already seen as legitimate—
that is, where the state has already accumulated a modicum of symbolic
power. Moreover, as suggested by the case discussed below, control over
the means of physical coercion may itself depend on prior success in
accumulating symbolic power.
Imitation.—Even when it appears that modernizing states are inno-
vating, they may actually be imitating the existing practices of religious
or local authorities. For example, Gorski notes how the introduction of
systems of venality in many Catholic polities of early modern Europe
followed the model provided by the papacy, while forms of bureaucratic
office holding that eventually took hold in many Protestant polities drew
inspiration from the Reformatio, an early critique of the Roman Church
(Gorski 2003, pp. 144–54). The extension of the state’s administrative
reach could occur through the adoption by state actors of existing ad-
ministrative practices of nonstate actors or organizations. In many coun-
tries, for example, the implementation of secular systems of civil regis-
tration closely emulated the long-established record-keeping practices of
local religious authorities. The establishment of seemingly parallel ad-
ministrative practices by state actors might inspire resistance from tra-
ditional authorities and local populations to the extent that the state’s
activities are seen as a threat to traditional prerogatives or as an illegit-
imate infringement on the traditional order of things.
Co-optation.—Rather than creating parallel state agencies to undertake
administrative activities already practiced in a closely related form by
local secular or religious authorities, the state could extend its adminis-
trative reach by incorporating traditional administrative practices—and

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

practitioners—into the state apparatus. Indeed, it could be to the state’s

advantage to capitalize upon the experience and legitimacy of traditional
authorities rather than directly challenging them. One way to do this
would be through cooperative ventures. Thus, for example, a church-run
poorhouse or orphanage could be made a state institution with no change
in staff and minor, if any, change in administrative practice. Or, a state
could extend its authority by regulating economic activities and the labor
market through previously existing guilds. Likewise, a system of civil
registration could be established with parish priests serving as the local
authorities in charge of keeping the records. Such co-optation could si-
multaneously bolster the power, prestige, and administrative capacity of
local, religious, and central state actors. A more likely outcome, however,
is the eventual if not immediate subordination of the original adminis-
trative objectives, and their practitioners, to the designs of the state.
Usurpation.—Finally, states could extend their infrastructural power
by taking over and modifying the administrative practices of authorities
or organizations outside the state. This approach is most likely to yield
resistance from traditional authorities since it generally implies a dimi-
nution of their power, status, and possibly even material well-being. It is
also quite likely to spark opposition by the “administered” population,
though this will depend on, among other things, the relative legitimacy
of traditional versus central state authority in a particular context.
In important respects, the struggles between local, religious, and central
state actors that result from efforts to extend the state’s administrative
reach are akin to the “jurisdictional struggles” detailed by Andrew Abbott
in The System of Professions (1988). Two (or more) sets of social actors,
positioned in different but overlapping institutional fields, vie with each
other for authority over a particular domain of administrative practice,
and the outcomes of these battles help delimit the boundaries of each field
(i.e., where “the state” ends and “civil society” or “the church” begins).
One important difference, however, is that while jurisdictional struggles
are conceived as zero-sum games, the extension of the state’s adminis-
trative reach may result in zero-sum conflicts (especially in the case of
usurpation), but it may also generate positive-sum games (in the case of
innovation, imitation, or especially co-optation).
Modes of administrative extension that involve cooperation or coor-
dination between state and nonstate actors may enhance the symbolic
power of both parties, resulting in a greater overall capacity to “order”
social life (cf. Mann’s [1993, pp. 6–7] discussion of “collective power”; also
Parsons [1960b, pp. 199–225; 1967, pp. 378–82). Historically, however, the
overall balance of symbolic power tended to shift in the state’s favor,
suggesting another important difference from the jurisdictional struggles
analyzed by Abbott. In the context of modern state formation, one set of

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American Journal of Sociology

contenders was apt to enter into jurisdictional struggles with a loaded

deck; in successive rounds, state actors simultaneously competed with
those in other fields for jurisdictional authority over particular practices
and increasingly managed to define the nature of the game and set the
rules of engagement.
Attention to the distinct modes of administrative extension creates an-
alytical leverage to explore how, exactly, states managed to establish new
administrative activities as legitimate state practices. Which strategy was
most likely to succeed, and under what conditions? Why did state actors
opt for one strategy rather than another? How did the particular mode
of initial administrative extension in a given domain affect the subsequent
development of bureaucratic administration in that or other domains?
And building on Gorski’s (1993, 2003) findings, under what conditions
did the availability of particular institutions and cultural practices outside
the state become a resource for bureaucratic growth? What made the
potential of such resources “visible” to state actors? What conditions fa-
cilitated the “harnessing” of such resources, through “organizational en-
twining” or other means?
To theorize the formation of modern states qua repositories of symbolic
power requires comparative historical research to address these sorts of
questions. The remainder of this article takes an initial step down this
path through analysis of the 19th-century Brazilian state’s failed attempt
to establish civil registration as a legitimate state practice. As a single
instance of failure to accumulate symbolic power, the case of the war of
the wasps does not alone suffice to generate or test a fully developed
theory of how states accumulate symbolic power. Nor, in this instance,
does the negative case serve to test or expand upon an existing theory
(cf. Emigh 1997), given that no theory of how states accumulate symbolic
power yet exists. Rather, consideration of this case serves a primarily
heuristic purpose: it suggests why we ought to attend to the historical
constitution of the state’s symbolic power, illustrates how we can go about
doing this, and indicates where the work of theory building could fruitfully
begin. Cases such as the war of the wasps are ideal for exploring the
historical dynamics through which specific state practices become natu-
ralized, because it is precisely in moments of contestation over the bound-
aries of legitimate state practice that the historical contingency of the
state’s symbolic power is exposed.

THE WAR OF THE WASPS

The war of the wasps is a little-known popular revolt that frustrated the
Brazilian state’s attempt to implement civil registration and take its first

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

national census in the mid-19th century.13 Though a relatively minor ep-

isode compared to other major revolts in the history of Brazilian state
building, the war of the wasps is particularly interesting because the rural
backlanders emerged victorious from their violent encounter with state
authority. Civil registration of births and deaths and the census of the
population were suspended indefinitely. The war of the wasps forced the
retreat of the Brazilian state from this administrative domain—it would
not try to enter it again for several decades.
The failure to establish civil registration represented a significant set-
back for the Brazilian state in the 1850s. Civil registration lies at the heart
of the modern state’s extractive-coercive power, facilitating rationalized
systems of conscription and taxation. It is also central to the modern state’s
symbolic power, conferring control over the legitimate means of individual
identification (Noiriel 2001; Torpey 2000). The establishment of a system
of universal civil registration in 1851 would have represented a pivotal
administrative accomplishment for the modernizing Brazilian state.

The Brazilian State in 1850

In contrast to the Spanish-American republics that won independence
through years of destructive war with Spain, Brazil became independent
from Portugal through a peaceful negotiation that left Pedro I, son of
King João of Portugal, on the throne of the Brazilian monarchy and ruler
of the Brazilian Empire. In the decade following independence in 1822,
political battles raged over the form the Brazilian nation-state would take.
At root were competing conceptions of nationhood: “A conception of the
nation as polity based on traditional forms of inherited authority and
directed by a ruler of heroic stature was increasingly challenged by a
conception that equated the nation with the people and derived all au-
thority from the popular will” (Barman 1988, p. 131). With the abdication
of Pedro I in 1831, the latter conception emerged victorious. Brazil would
be a constitutional monarchy. The throne was left to the five-year-old
Pedro II, and regents were appointed to rule in his name. The following
six years witnessed a devolution of considerable political autonomy to the
provinces and various liberal experiments in formal political arrange-

13
The following account is a summary based on original archival research conducted
at the National Archive in Rio de Janeiro and the State Archive of Pernambuco in
Recife. For a detailed historical analysis of the revolt that situates it in the Brazilian
historiography, see Loveman (manuscript). The origins and course of this episode are
not documented in the existing historical literature in English, though it is mentioned
briefly in some general histories of Brazil (e.g., Barman 1988, p. 236). In the Brazilian
literature, I am aware of one detailed secondary account (Palacios 1989), along with
brief treatments by Monteiro (1981, p. 19) and Melo (1920).

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American Journal of Sociology

ments. By the late 1830s, the centrifugal force unleashed by the decen-
tralization of political power threatened to tear asunder the unity of the
Brazilian Empire. With the (relative) opening up of the polity, local fac-
tional disputes had triggered mass uprisings and major revolts throughout
Brazil, all of which espoused strong nativist inspirations, and some of
which included claims to independent statehood.
The suppression of regional revolts and the restoration of order became
the central goal of the second phase of the Regency period, known as the
Regresso. The Regresso leaders were intent on reestablishing the primacy
of the national government and crushing threats to the political unity and
territorial integrity of the Brazilian nation-state. The centralizing aims of
the national government fomented resentment among provincial leaders,
who envisioned Brazil as a federation of autonomous provinces. The
attempt to centralize power in Rio de Janeiro was seen as a return to
Portuguese colonial ways and fueled intense opposition in both northern
and southern provinces. With the final defeat of separatists in the south
(Rio Grande do Sul) in 1845, and the north (Pernambuco) in 1849, the
last serious threats to the political existence of the Brazilian nation-state
in its current form were eliminated (Barman 1988).
In the 1850s, the national government undertook to consolidate the
triumphant nation-state through the development of the central state’s
administrative apparatus and its extension into the provinces. The slew
of new laws that aimed simultaneously to concentrate power in the central
state and extend the state’s administrative reach into the “interior” (i.e.,
beyond the court in Rio de Janeiro) included decree 797, calling for the
first census of the entire population of Brazil and, as prelude to this,
decree 798, calling for civil registration of births and deaths.

The Civil Registration Law

In September of 1850, a provision for the government to incur the nec-
essary expenses to undertake a general census of the empire and to institute
regular registration of births and deaths was included in the budget law
for the following year. The first census of the Brazilian Empire was sched-
uled to take place in June of 1852. Civil registration of births and deaths
would commence six months earlier, beginning January 1, 1852.
By the provisions of decree 798 (June 18, 1851), civil registration was
placed in the charge of notaries of the justices of the peace. Notaries were
to register newborns within 72 hours of birth. Without official certification
of birth, parish priests were to withhold baptism “except in cases of evident
danger to the life of the newborn.” Registration of death was to occur
within 24 hours. Without an official death certificate, cadavers were not

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

to be buried in cemeteries (Coleção das Leis 1851, decree 798, articles 5

and 10).
The civil registry decree did not formally encroach on the traditional
recording activities of parish priests. Indeed, the wording of decree 798
carefully avoided any suggestion of a jurisdictional struggle between sec-
ular and religious authorities over the control of the legitimate means of
identification. The final article of the decree stated explicitly: “By the
dispositions of this Law it is not to be understood that the Ecclesiastical
registers, which the Parish priests customarily do, are suppressed. . . .
These will be continued, as they have until now, to prove baptisms and
marriages” (Coleção das Leis 1851, decree 798, article 33). Civil registra-
tion was envisioned as a parallel, secular system of documenting indi-
viduals’ existence that would not challenge or replace parish registers.
The judicious wording of decree 798 suggests that the state anticipated
the possibility of opposition from religious authorities and attempted to
preempt it. Apparently, this preemptive move succeeded. Though parish
priests and their superiors registered some disapproval of how the decree
was to be carried out, disruptive opposition to the decree came not from
church authorities but from the population to be registered.

The Revolt
In the days following January 1, 1852, when decree 798 was meant to
take effect, reports of violent uprisings began to appear in local news-
papers and were reproduced in the papers of the court in Rio de Janeiro.
In settlements and small towns across the northeastern interior, hundreds
of men and “even women armed with knives” threatened the lives of local
authorities who attempted to comply with the law. In some settlements,
anywhere from 600–1,000 people swarmed the central square (matriz) to
block the enactment of the decree.14
In the face of violent opposition, the government appealed to local
authorities to make the people see the errors of their ways and clarify the
“good intentions” of the government. These efforts proved useless; resis-
tance to the decree spread throughout the northeast. While claiming to
the press that everything was under control, the provincial president of
Pernambuco, Victor d’Oliveira, ordered the ninth infantry battalion dis-
patched to the epicenter of the uprising, the hardscrabble farming town
of Pau d’Alho. The lieutenant colonel in command of the battalion fol-
lowed his orders dutifully, marching his 90-some men across the backlands

14
See, e.g., the report of a local religious authority to the provincial president of
Pernambuco on January 7, 1852 (Archivo Público Estadual Pernambucano, “Autori-
dades Eclesiásticas” [hereinafter APEP-AE] 1852, p. 16).

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American Journal of Sociology

and promising to use force if necessary to pacify the populace. As they

marched, the battalion was ambushed; two soldiers were killed and five
others were wounded. The battalion commander reported that the entire
area was in turmoil and that “given the circumstances of things” he
doubted pacification could be achieved without the use of force (Arquivo
Estadual Pernambucano, “Oficiaes do Exército” 1852, n. 16).15
Not wanting to rely solely on the sword (or in this case, the musket),
the provincial president had also sent the cross to pacify the tumultuous
backlanders. Fortunately for the populace, the Capuchin missionary, Frei
Caetano de Messina, arrived first on the scene. Winning the trust of the
populace, he managed to transform the violent uprising into an occasion
of mass religious fervor. Explaining his success to the provincial president,
Frei Caetano noted that “it was not fear of military force, which only
irritated them further, that obliged them to put down their weapons, it
was only the reign that Sacred Religion still has over them” (APEP-AE
1852, p. 45).16
An imperial decree on January 29, 1852, announced the indefinite sus-
pension of the decrees calling for civil registration and the census of the
empire (Coleção das Leis 1852, decree 907). This was clearly a direct result
of popular opposition.17 The next attempt to conduct a national census—
this time divorced from the implementation of civil registration—would
come only 20 years later, in 1872. Brazil would reintroduce civil regis-
tration in 1874, but it was not until after 1889, when Brazil transitioned
to a republic, that obligatory civil registration would meet with any degree
of success (Meira 1994).

Why Did the Revolt Succeed?

How did a relatively small, popular uprising in a remote region of the
Brazilian interior manage to force the suspension, and, ultimately, the
cancellation of a decree that sought to establish civil registration through-
out all of Brazil? Put another way, why did the Brazilian state fail to
implement civil registration despite this popular opposition?
The seemingly most obvious answer is that the Brazilian state lacked
a reliable, well-equipped, and professionally trained army to enforce its

15
Report from Hygino José Coelho, lieutenant colonel in command of the ninth infantry
battalion, to Victor d’Oliveira, president of the Province of Pernambuco, sent from
the Engenho Cajueiro, January 6, 1852.
16
Letter from Frei Caetano de Messina to Victor d’Oliveira, provincial president, dated
February 21, 1852.
17
The minister of empire cites the “grave occurrences” engendered by the decrees as
justification for delaying civil registration and the census in his annual report to the
legislative assembly in 1852 (Relatorio apresentado [1852] 1853, p. 33).

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

will. Had the Brazilian state been backed by a dependable, professional

army instead of scattered contingents of more or less competent, more or
less reliable “battalions” of forced recruits, criminals, and unfortunate
“desprotegidos,” the war of the wasps might well have unfolded differ-
ently.18 As it was, the 90 men sent in to pacify the town of Pau d’Alho
proved to be a catalyst for intensified protest rather than an effective
guarantor of public order. The bands of men forcibly assembled to stand
in for a professional army belied the limitations of the Brazilian state’s
concentration of the legitimate means of physical coercion.
But the lack of a professional army also underscores the limitations of
the state’s infrastructural power—its power to rule through society rather
than over society (Mann 1993). From this perspective, the Brazilian state’s
rather pitiful show of an organized threat of physical coercion can be read
as a symptom of the state’s failure to extend its administrative reach,
rather than its primary cause. The creation of a modern, professional
Brazilian army depended on the very sort of administrative infrastructure
that decree 798 sought to establish. Indeed, as several generations of
reform-minded officers within the Brazilian army would subsequently
insist, civil registration was the crucial precondition for universal con-
scription, which stood at the heart of a modern, professional army
(McCann 1984, 2004; Beattie 1994, 2001).
Even if it were possible for a mass standing army to be created in the
absence of a rationalized system of individual registration, and even if
the Brazilian state in 1850 had had such an army, it is unlikely that the
threat of physical coercion alone would have sufficed to guarantee the
successful implementation of civil registration. To enforce a law of civil
registration through the threat of physical coercion alone would demand
a monitoring and enforcement capacity that is beyond the reach of even
most 21st-century states. A modern and formidable standing army might
very well have quickened the suppression of the revolt or attenuated its
spread in the first place. But it is unlikely that the threat of physical
coercion would have been sufficient to guarantee the compliance of the
population with decree 798, day in and day out, across the vast expanse
of Brazil (cf. Weber 1978).
The war of the wasps forced the suspension of decree 798 by making
it plainly evident that the state could not count on the population to
comply voluntarily with the new system of civil registration. Without the
cooperation of those who would be registered, the massive administrative
undertaking of identifying all individuals born and deceased in Brazil

18
Literally, “desprotegidos” means “unprotected ones.” Beattie (1994, 2001) and Meznar
(1992) both document the importance of patronage ties to local authorities or land-
owner/employers for guaranteeing protection from forced recruitment into the army.

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American Journal of Sociology

was simply an impossible task. Cooperation from the population, in turn,

hinged on establishing the legitimacy of the state to engage in the practice
of individual identification. As it was, registration of individuals was not
recognized as something that the state could and should legitimately do.
The war of the wasps disputed the boundaries of what was considered
legitimate state activity. It challenged the state’s attempt to extend the
boundaries of the state itself by broadening the domain of legitimate state
practices.
The Brazilian state’s failure, then, was a failure to elicit the population’s
voluntary compliance with the new procedures for civil registration.
Viewed through the analytical framework outlined above, this failure can
be seen as primarily a result of the particular way that the state attempted
to extend its administrative reach into the domain of individual identi-
fication. Of the various modes of administrative extension (innovation,
imitation, co-optation, usurpation), the Brazilian state opted for a strategy
that combined considerable imitation—of religious forms of registration
as well as foreign models of civil registration—with some minor inno-
vation. This strategy appeared to maximize state autonomy, deliberately
avoiding the co-optation of religious record-keeping practices and prac-
titioners. The strategy also sought to avoid “jurisdictional struggles” (Ab-
bott 1988) by steering clear of procedures that might be construed as
attempts to usurp directly the competencies of religious authorities.
Intended to guarantee the measure’s success, this go-it-alone strategy
instead undermined the state’s objective. The formal stipulations of au-
tonomy from agents of the church could not hide the fact that the state’s
parallel system of individual registration depended entirely upon the con-
tinued demand for baptism and religious burial to secure the cooperation
of the population. Lacking sufficient legitimacy to elicit voluntary com-
pliance with the decree, the state attempted to free ride on the legitimacy
of the church. Without formal co-optation of local religious authorities,
it relied on the “reign of Sacred Religion” over the populace to ensure
cooperation with its secular demands. The creation of a secular system
of identification that was essentially parallel to church registries may have
preempted some forms of opposition from religious authorities, but it also
exposed the state to direct opposition from the population it intended to
register.
The creation of a separate register of births and deaths in the hands
of local secular authorities fomented popular resistance for two primary
reasons. First, it fueled a rumor that the government intended to use the
lists to enslave free people of color: decree 798 was dubbed the “law of
enslavement” (lei do captiveiro). The importation of African slaves had
been banned only a year earlier, in 1850, creating new pressures on the

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

domestic slave market.19 For the impoverished inhabitants of the north-

eastern backlands, the idea that the government would collude with land-
owners to develop an alternative means to ensure a fixed labor supply
took little stretch of the imagination. After all, why would the state go
to the enormous trouble of keeping its own records of every single birth
throughout the territory without some tangible purpose in mind?20 More-
over, collusion between land owners and local agents of the state to enslave
the free poor was not without precedent (Freitas 1994). The practice of
outright enslavement of the free poor appears to have been uncommon,
but even one known instance would be sufficient to lend credence to the
rumor that decree 798 was, in fact, a “law of enslavement.”
The idea that the state sought to strip the rural poor of their freedom
was no doubt also supported by prevailing practices of forced recruitment
into the army. Involuntary conscription was quite common, with the army
barracks serving as a quasi-penal institution for vagrants, petty criminals,
derelicts, dishonorable lovers, and other unfortunates (Beattie 2001).
Though conscripts were not legally reduced to slavery, conscription was
often experienced as a form of “abduction” by the state. And while there
is no direct evidence that the populace feared civil registration’s use to
rationalize conscription, the pervasive threat of involuntary recruitment
no doubt contributed to the general distrust of the state that made the
rumor that decree 798 was a “law of enslavement” seem plausible. In the
eyes of the rural population, decree 798 would facilitate the state’s ability
to identify, control, and coerce, and there was no reason to think anything
good could come of that. In part, violent opposition to civil registration
was a product of this quite rational fear of physical coercion at the hands
of government authorities.
Second, the state’s strategy for implementing civil registration engen-
dered its own opposition by interposing agents of the state between in-
dividuals and their hopes for eternal salvation. In requiring priests to
withhold baptism or burial rites in the absence of a notary’s certificate,

19
The 1850 ban on the import of African slaves was a direct consequence of diplomatic
and military pressure from the British government, including the authorization of
British cruisers “to enter Brazilian harbors . . . and to seize and destroy all vessels
suspected of slaving.” The Brazilian government sought to preserve the pretense of
sovereignty by passing a law to end the illegal importation of slaves (Barman 1988,
p. 233; also Bethell 1970). Slavery remained legal in Brazil until 1888.
20
Notably, decree 798 did not call for the color of free persons to be recorded in birth
or death registries, although it did require this information in the registration of slaves.
The tangible motivations attributed to the government for implementation of decree
798 were not correct. (In fact, the Brazilian government’s motivations for taking a
census and conducting civil registration were more symbolic than material at this
particular conjuncture [Loveman 2001; Ventresca 1995]). But the inaccuracy of the
rumors did not temper their resonance among the northeastern Brazilian populace.

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American Journal of Sociology

the state appeared to be erecting capricious obstacles to people’s access

to the promised land. Indeed, from one day to the next, entrance to “God’s
Kingdom” became contingent on possession of a piece of paper from an
agent of the state. While in principle such papers would be readily avail-
able, in the reality of the Brazilian interior of the time, securing such
papers would often be a major hurdle, requiring lengthy and hazardous
journeys across rough, arid terrain to the house of the nearest notary.
Decrying the severity of the consequences to the rural poor who failed to
comply with the decree, a vicar wrote to his superior that withholding
baptism to those who failed to register with notaries would “drive the
povo to complete despair” (APEP-AE 1852, p. 2). Against a backdrop of
general distrust of the state’s material aims, the backhanded interposition
of secular authority between people and their priests sabotaged whatever
chance decree 798 had of success.

The Path Not Taken

Before the disturbances began, the archbishop of Bahia wrote a letter to
Pedro II criticizing the decree. Through a veil of conciliatory language,
the archbishop reprimanded the government for placing parish priests in
the position of having to choose between “submission to the powerful
veto of the notary of the peace and obedience owed to the orders of
Heaven” (O Argos Maranhense 1852, n. 52). The aims of the state would
be better served, he suggested, if parish priests were put in charge of the
registries. In the archbishop’s view, priests could effectively serve the
interests of the state if the government would only enforce three condi-
tions: “(1) employ all prudent means to enforce execution of the law of
the Church on the reception of baptism; (2) impose severe penalties on
parish priests who show themselves to be negligent in certifying baptisms,
marriages and deaths; (3) in order to remove all pretexts and excuses,
make sure [priests] are supplied with the official books required for the
registrations” (O Argos Maranhense 1852, n. 52).
Clearly, in proposing that priests take over the role of local notaries
and that the power of the state be employed to ensure compliance with
“the law of the Church,” the archbishop sought to bolster the power of
the church through an alliance with the state. But whatever his own
motivations, the archbishop was probably correct to suggest that such an
alliance would have also bolstered the power of the state. If the Brazilian
government had accepted the archbishop’s proposal—or even a modified
version that charged parish priests with the maintenance of two registries,
one religious, one civil—it is likely that the popular distrust of the reg-
istry’s aims would have been attenuated, along with most of the opposition
to civil registration.

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

In principle, there was no reason why the parish priests could not be
charged with this secular task. In contrast to the situation in Spanish
Latin America, the peaceful transition from Portuguese colony to inde-
pendent constitutional monarchy had not interrupted the pope’s recog-
nition of the Brazilian state’s royal patronage over the church, or padroado
real (Meecham 1947; see also Boxer 1978). In practice, this meant that
church officials were already, technically, functionaries of the state.21
Moreover, the legitimacy of priestly authority in the northeastern back-
lands, and the unquestioned acceptance of their practice of recording
baptism and burial, made parish priests ideal allies in the state’s quest
to establish the legitimacy of its registration of births and deaths. In the
hands of parish priests the registries would not have taken on the men-
acing aspect that they acquired precisely because they were in the charge
of secular authorities.
However, to rely explicitly on agents of the church to do what “ought”
to be the work of the state went against prevailing ideas of what made
a modern state a modern state. Inspired by the French example, state
modernization was equated with secularization. Hence, the archbishop’s
call for parish priests to take over the role of maintaining the registries
was dismissed by the Council of State, the constitutionally enshrined
advisory body to Pedro II, when it met in January of 1852 to address
complaints lodged by various public authorities in response to decree 798.
The council’s report included a curt response to the archbishop’s plea:
“Since the registers pertain to the civil status of Citizens, it is only ap-
propriate that it be done by civil functionaries.” Moreover, putting the
priests in charge of the registers would be a hindrance to individuals who
do not practice “the State’s Religion.” And finally, the Council blithely
noted, “Our country’s experience has shown that the parish priests are
not the most apt for this type of work.”22 The idea that the state could
bolster its legitimacy, and hence, its administrative capacity, by height-
ening its dependence on the church, even for the short term, seemed
anathema. Such reliance on the church would blur the boundaries of
church and state precisely when the state was working to sharpen that

21
Pedro II did not have much confidence in parish priests, but civil registration in this
context was not an open attack on the church. In general, church-state conflict was
not a major issue in imperial Brazil, precisely because the pope recognized the mon-
archy’s royal patronage over the church, including “the right to nominate Church
officials and supervise Church administration” (Burkholder and Johnson 1998, p. 353).
22
Quotations are from the report of the Council of State’s session of January 22, 1852,
concerning “doubts raised by some Provincial Presidents and the Reverend Archbishop
of Bahia with respect to the execution of Articles 2, 9, 23 and 24 of Decree 798 of
June 18, 1851” (Arquivo Nacional [hereinafter AN-CE] 1852, pac. 2, doc. 38).

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American Journal of Sociology

divide, in the belief that such differentiation was in itself a benchmark

of state strength.
Notably, a lone member of the Council of State dissented with the
majority’s decision to modify some of the administrative technicalities of
decree 798 without any fundamental changes to its basic design. In a
minority opinion at the end of the council’s report, the Visconde de Olinda
made a case for transferring responsibility for civil registration to religious
authorities. He rejected the presumption that parish priests would prove
unreliable functionaries and argued that they were in fact “the only au-
thorities capable of carrying out this function.” Given the actual conditions
in Brazil’s interior, he argued, the desire to enforce a strict separation of
civil and ecclesiastic functionaries was “nothing but a lovely ideal, with
no base in reality” (AN-CE 1852, pac. 2, doc. 38). His call fell on deaf
ears, however. In the end, the Council of State would choose to cancel
the decree altogether before it would consider relying on religious au-
thorities to undertake the quintessentially “civic” task of registration of
births and deaths.
Thus, the French-inspired, liberal assumption that state modernization
meant secularization may have had the unintended consequence, in 19th-
century Brazil, of undermining the very sorts of administrative advances
that would have greatly bolstered the infrastructural power of the state.23
Co-optation would likely have enabled the Brazilian state to “harness”
(Gorski 2003) the legitimacy and local administrative resources of the
church, transforming them, at least partially, into instruments of the state.
Explicit reliance on parish priests as employees of the state would have
meant an apparent sacrifice of state autonomy in the short run. But by

23
The influence of France on 19th-century Latin American elites is well established
(on Brazil, see, e.g., Needell [1987]). With respect to this particular episode, the arch-
bishop’s letter to Pedro II makes clear that the French model for civil registration
was, in fact, a contemporary reference point: “I know that in many other countries
there are similar laws, and that in France they went so far . . . as to require that
newborns be presented to the civil authority to be entered into the birth register before
going to Church to receive the sign of salvation. But, Sir, Your Imperial Majesty knows
better than I, that the population of France is all clustered together in its respective
parishes or districts, with the convenience of easy communication, while in our country
the population is all dispersed across an extensive surface and lacks comparable fa-
cilities for prompt communication with local authorities. Additionally, the French leg-
islation in ecclesiastical matters is biased by old religious controversies, and more than
anything else, by the influence of the great revolution, which abolished the Catholic
religion and made everything profane. . . . It is evident that in Brazil, where thanks
to divine mercy the purity of our religious doctrine and customs was never even slightly
altered, we are not in that offensive situation. And if I am permitted to comment on
the goals that the government of Your Imperial Majesty has in proposing this measure,
I will observe that they can be equally, if not better, fulfilled—without vexing the
populace—by using parochial registers instead” (letter from the archbishop of Bahia
to Pedro II, reprinted in O Argos Maranhense, February 20, 1852, n. 52).

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

ensuring the compliance of the population with registration of births and

deaths, the reliance on the local religious authorities would have yielded
greater state capacity—both material and symbolic—in the end. Instead,
the state attempted to go it alone, exacerbating popular suspicions and
cultivating violent protest. Rather than enabling the extension of the
state’s legitimate authority to a new domain, the particular way the state
attempted to implement decree 798 undermined whatever hope it might
have had for success. The Brazilian state failed to accumulate symbolic
power because central state actors were unable (or unwilling) to see ec-
clesiastical authorities as resources to be “harnessed” instead of obstacles
to be avoided or overcome.

BROADER IMPLICATIONS
Analysis of the war of the wasps has several broad implications for our
understanding of modern state formation. First, it suggests the need for
a broadened conceptualization of what theories of modern state formation
need to explain (cf. Gorski 2003). Increasingly, modern states are sustained
and empowered—to the extent that they are sustained and empowered—
by their routine exercise of symbolic power. The capacity of modern states
to wield effectively ideological, economic, political, and even military
power hinges largely, and perhaps ultimately, on the capacity to constitute
the “givens” of social life. Theories of modern state formation, therefore,
must account for how states came to be the preeminent wielders of sym-
bolic power in the modern world.
To theorize the historical dynamics of the primitive accumulation of
symbolic power demands a shift in analytical focus from the dynamics
of extraction and coercion toward the mechanisms of early administrative
extension. From a primary focus on the concentration of military power,
the analytical lens hones in on the historical foundations of naturalized
administrative power. This shift in focus does not eclipse the traditional
bellicist concerns from view; rather, it reframes the picture, bringing the
intimate relationship between the accumulation of symbolic power and
the concentration of military, economic, political, and cultural power into
clearer view.
Expanding and deepening our current understanding of modern state
formation requires greater attention to the incipient administrative de-
velopment of central state infrastructure. And, in particular, it requires
an analytical lens that sees the creation of “durable state structure” as
simultaneously a logistical and a cultural feat. The protoadministrative
development of states—the symbolic/material groundwork that was laid
before war or any other potential engine of state growth could exert its

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American Journal of Sociology

effects—appears to be a crucial determinant of subsequent state devel-

opment (Centeno 1997; Gorski 2003).
This points to a second implication of the foregoing analysis: the need
for closer scrutiny of causal sequence in accounts of modern state for-
mation. In particular, the case of the war of the wasps calls into question
the precise nature of the relationship between the concentration of military
power and administrative growth. In bellicist accounts, the primary en-
gine of administrative development was the creation of armed force in
preparation for war, as in Tilly’s oft-cited dictum: “War made the state,
and the state made war” (Tilly 1975, p. 42). The growth of administrative
structure is basically viewed as a by-product of preparation for war (Tilly
1992, p. 70). But Centeno (1997, p. 1569) has demonstrated that war only
fosters state growth where existing administrative mechanisms can “man-
age the explosion in both revenues and expenditures,” and where states
enjoy enough support from key sectors of the population “to make do-
mestic extraction profitable.” Similarly, Torpey (2000, pp. 14–15) argues
that conscription and taxation can only fuel state growth if states succeed
in “embracing” their populations through a variety of administrative tech-
niques. These studies indicate that some threshold of administrative de-
velopment and accompanying naturalization of state authority has to be
reached before war-driven “extraction-coercion cycles” (Finer 1975) can
drive subsequent state development.
The case of the war of the wasps lends support to this claim, albeit
indirectly. The weakness of the Brazilian army, and hence its failure to
put down the revolt, was clearly a symptom of the inadequacy of the
state’s administrative foundations. The shortcomings of the Brazilian state
on this front were thus compounded; the lack of a professional armed
force, stemming from inadequate administrative capacity, resulted in the
failure to enforce a measure that would have improved that capacity
considerably.
This suggests that early failures to accumulate symbolic power—that
is, to establish the state’s legitimacy to engage in basic administrative
practices—hindered the accumulation of other forms of power as well.
Conversely, initial success in accumulating symbolic power was apt to
breed additional success in state-building endeavors, as the naturalization
of state authority in one domain facilitated the extension of the state into
others. For example, once set in motion, the accumulation of symbolic
power via administrative extension and the concentration of military
power via rationalized conscription were mutually reinforcing. Once es-
tablished as legitimate state practice, systems of individual identification
facilitated the creation of standing armies. These armies increased the
state’s capacity to exercise coercion, whether in pursuit of additional mil-
itary might or in the name of other social, economic, or political aims. At

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

the same time, armed forces bolstered the symbolic power of states in
ways that facilitated the exercise of ideological power: ritualized shows
of military force appeared to signify the inevitability of state power, while
techniques of training soldiers inscribed the legitimacy of state authority
into individual bodies and minds.
Each success in accumulating symbolic power tilted the playing field
to the state’s advantage, as more and more state practices delimited the
“givens” of individual and social existence. Early victories in the natu-
ralization of seemingly inconsequential state practices could thus have
cascading effects for subsequent state development. If on the one hand,
the absence of underlying administrative capacity inhibited extraction-
coercion cycles from ever getting off the ground, on the other hand, early
successes in administrative development could be self-reinforcing and thus
very difficult to stop. This makes it all the more important to scrutinize
the dynamics that portend the success or failure of the primitive accu-
mulation of symbolic power by modernizing states.
A third implication of the case examined here is the suggestion that
the relative success or failure of the state’s administrative extension into
new domains was determined, at least in part, by the particular way the
state attempted to extend its administrative reach. The administrative
extension of the state could occur through innovation, emulation, co-
optation, usurpation, or some combination of these methods. The war of
the wasps suggests that co-optation of existing administrative and sym-
bolic resources of nonstate, and especially religious, actors could yield
better results for the state than either constructing wholly autonomous
administrative structures through innovation or imitation, or attempting
to usurp existing practices and risking clashes over jurisdiction.
Though additional research is necessary to fully specify this claim, it
is supported by Gorski’s research on the role of Calvinism in state for-
mation in early modern Europe. As part of a larger, more nuanced ar-
gument about the influence of Calvinist “disciplinary revolutions” on the
development of early modern European polities, Gorski suggests that
whether administrative structures were generated from the top down
(through innovation and emulation) or the bottom up (through co-
optation) had significant repercussions for the extent and profundity of
bureaucratization and thus the strength and capacity of modernizing
states. Gorski argues that the “unusual capacity” of states such as the
Netherlands and Prussia is at least partly a product of the way they
managed to harness the “new ethics and practices of self-discipline” un-
leashed by Calvinist disciplinary revolutions (Gorski 2003, pp. 20, 38).
To the extent that state actors could harness the existing organizational
and symbolic resources of local and religious authorities, gradually in-
corporating them into the state, the administrative capacity and symbolic

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American Journal of Sociology

power of the state would be enhanced. The war of the wasps supports
this hypothesis, though as a negative case. The state’s failure to take
advantage of the existing administrative and symbolic resources of the
church frustrated its attempts to establish a foothold of legitimate au-
thority in the domain of individual identification. The war of the wasps
thus suggests that in the phase of early administrative development, less
state autonomy—and thus, perhaps, the appearance of a weaker state (at
least according to the conventional equation of state autonomy with state
strength)—might actually be a source of strength, leading to much greater
state capacity down the road.
Finally and more generally, the case of the war of the wasps suggests
that the interconnections of state and society during the state’s early
development may be much more consequential for subsequent trajectories
of state formation than has generally been recognized. Drawing inspiration
from Foucault’s vision of state power emanating upward and inward
from diffuse sites and sources of social discipline (cf. Foucault 1981, pp.
71–72), Gorski argues that “top-down” accounts of state formation “must
be complemented by an ascending analysis of state-formation as a bottom-
up process in which the capillaries and synapses of power within the
social body are gradually plugged into and connected with the central
circulatory and nervous systems of the state” (Gorski 2003, pp. 23–24).
From this perspective, the strength of the state is infrastructural. And
infrastructural power is a two-way street (Mann 1993, p. 59). In other
words, the state’s power is not derived from autonomy from society, but
rather from the webs of interconnections to actors and institutions outside
the state.
The nature and extent of “organizational entwining” (Gorski 2003, p.
167) in the early phases of state formation thus becomes a crucial part of
the picture if we want to understand subsequent variations in state ca-
pacity, and possibly even state form. A focus on organizational entwining
as an impetus to the early development of the state also raises a host of
questions for future research. For example, what sorts of nonstate ad-
ministrative and symbolic resources were actually available to be har-
nessed by states in their early development? What made state actors able
and willing to see nonstate actors as potential allies in their quest to
concentrate power as opposed to obstacles to overcome or competitors to
vanquish? More generally, what determined the chosen route of admin-
istrative extension, its likelihood of success, and its consequences for the
subsequent development of the state’s infrastructural power? And under
what conditions was a particular mode of administrative extension more
likely to succeed than others?
The analytical framework presented here provides a starting point for
comparative-historical analyses of how distinct types of state-society in-

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 Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power

terconnection affected administrative extension and accumulation of sym-

bolic power by modernizing states. Future research on the primitive ac-
cumulation of symbolic power by modernizing states will not only improve
our understanding of how modern states qua repositories of symbolic
power came to be, but it will also open up new directions for comparative
research on the tremendous variation in the actualized “stateness” of mod-
ern states.24

CONCLUSION: HISTORICIZING THE STATE’S SYMBOLIC POWER

By way of conclusion, it is worth noting that episodes such as the war
of the wasps underline the fact that the modern state’s capacity to wield
symbolic power through mundane instruments such as “censuses, maps,
and museums” (Anderson 1991) was a hard-won privilege. For any given
state, and in any given domain of social life, the primitive accumulation
of symbolic power resulted from a series of struggles over the state’s
infrastructural penetration and administrative “ordering” of everyday life.
These struggles were not always openly conflictive. As is made clear in
Weber’s (1976) account of the modernization of rural France, the state’s
attempts at administrative extension could provoke a range of responses—
or none at all. But it is in the moments of contestation that we can glean
the historical contingency of the state’s concentration of symbolic power
(cf. Bourdieu 1999).
Once state practices become self-evident as such, they tend to appear
as natural features of the social landscape. Thus, for example, as Gérard
Noiriel (2001, p. 48) has observed: “Today, the formalities of civil status—
the basis for the entire logic of modern identification practices—are part
of the administrative routine. We all conform to them automatically, as
if they are self-evident, and to such an extent that we find it hard to
imagine that they might once have been contested.” In crucial respects,
the institution of civil registration and related forms of state identification
of individuals are at the core of modern states’ capacity to exercise sym-
bolic power. Through the monopolization of the issuance of identity pa-
pers, modern states both shape the terms in which “identity” is understood
and exercise a fundamental power over the rights, privileges, and op-
portunities of those within their territory.25 In consequential ways, indi-

24
On “stateness” as a matter of degree, see Nettl (1968); Tilly (1975, p. 70).
25
As with the state’s monopolization of the legitimate exercise of physical coercion,
the state’s monopolization of the legitimate power of identification is never effectively
absolute. Counterfeit documents obviously undermine the state’s identification mo-
nopoly. In doing so, however, they simultaneously reinforce the idea that only the state
can issue legitimate, officially recognized (and recognizable) proofs of “identity.”

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American Journal of Sociology

vidual identity in modern society hinges on official recognition of birth

by the state. Yet the modern state’s hold on the meaning of individual
existence tends to go unnoticed by most people, most of the time.
Analysis of the popular rebellion against civil registration in mid-19th-
century Brazil helps bring to light the historical contingency of the state’s
power to confer legitimate “identity.” Of course, as Noiriel (2001, p. 48)
notes, “to put into relief . . . the misunderstandings, refusals, and suf-
ferings entailed by the construction of the civil bond, is not the same as
denouncing or questioning the need for it.” Today, civil identification is
the basis for many of our most fundamental rights and privileges as well
as specific burdens and constraints. Still, at a time when many state actors
are attempting to make self-evident the state’s need for means to “em-
brace” their populations more tightly than ever before, it is worth reflecting
on the historically contingent foundations of much of state-structured
social life that we now experience as natural.

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