Building the State, Making the Nation: The Bases and Limits of State Centralization in “Modern” Peru

Abstract

Most contemporary discussions of the nature of the state, state‐building, and national consciousness formation are based on an oppositional model of state‐society relations. In such models, state‐building is depicted as a process in which the state must impose its central institutions and cultural/moral values on the recalcitrant local populations found within its territorial boundaries who, in resisting the state, cling to a myriad of local, oppositional identities. The present article critiques the oppositional model, proposes an alternative conceptualization that encompasses dimensions of cooperation and conflict in state‐society relations, and thus points toward the forces that underlie the fragmentation and consolidation of states and national cultures.