Description
Book SynopsisCharles Tilly is among the most influential American sociologists of the last century. For the first time, his pathbreaking work on a wide array of topics is available in one comprehensive reader. This manageable and readable volume brings together many highlights of Tilly’s large and important oeuvre, covering his contribution to the following areas: revolutions and social change; war, state making, and organized crime; democratization; durable inequality; political violence; migration, race, and ethnicity; narratives and explanations.
The book connects Tilly’s work on large-scale social processes such as nation-building and war to his work on micro processes such as racial and gender discrimination. It includes selections from some of Tilly’s earliest, influential, and out of print writings, including The Vendée; Coercion, Capital and European States; the classic "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime;" and his more recent and lesser-known work, including that on durable inequality, democracy, poverty, economic development, and migration. Together, the collection reveals Tilly’s complex, compelling, and distinctive vision and helps place the contentious politics approach Tilly pioneered with Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam into broader context. The editors abridge key texts and, in their introductory essay, situate them within Tilly’s larger opus and contemporary intellectual debates. The chapters serve as guideposts for those who wish to study his work in greater depth or use his methodology to examine the pressing issues of our time. Read together, they provide a road map of Tilly’s work and his contribution to the fields of sociology, political science, history, and international studies. This book belongs in the classroom and in the library of social scientists, political analysts, cultural critics, and activists.
Trade ReviewCharles Tilly was one of the great sociologists of the last fifty years. He was the most important analyst of social movements and contentious politics, but also shaped inquiry into cities, inequality, and the understanding of social processes. Social change today makes his work all the more important. Castañeda and Schneider clearly present the scope of Tilly’s contributions and make his work accessible to a new generation of social scientists. -- Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Berggruen Institute
Over the course of several decades, Charles (Chuck) Tilly sent a great many ships (ideas/pieces of scholarship) into a great many seas. Some of us would follow a ship or three. Others would sit in the middle of an ocean or at a port to see what Chuck would send by. "Collective Violence, Contentious Politics and Social Change" serves as an amazing guide/companion/navigation device/travel log as one attempts to fathom all of the journeys taken by our dear friend. From revolutions to narratives, from theories to methods - it is all there. Like the guidebook to "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance," now we can revisit work that we thought we knew, visit works that we have heard about but never fully engaged with as well as see work that we didn’t even know that Chuck was doing. -- Christian Davenport, University of Michigan
No scholar in the past half century has more deeply shaped historical and political sociology, and no volume more effectively brings together a better sampling of his prodigious opus. This collection not only demonstrates how Tilly has shaped the agenda in many of sociology’s liveliest themes, but also captures his uncanny ability to seamlessly weave together theory, method, and substance. For the novice or the senior scholar, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand collective violence, contentious politics, and social change. -- William Roy, UCLA
Castañeda and Schneider have brought together some of Tilly's most influential and compelling pieces. By reading his analyses of cities, protest, wars, states, democracy and inequality - one sees the way that empirical research can be critical for understanding patterns in historical and contemporary contexts. In this moment of great change, Tilly offers us tools to understand the present and shape the future. This collection will satisfy both new readers and current followers of Tilly's work. -- Lesley J. Wood, York University
Charles Tilly shaped the thinking of several generations of scholars and activists. He was both prolific in his writing and generous in his engagement with the work of colleagues and students. He reached across disciplines, subfields and regions, diving deeply into empirical cases while working towards a more dynamic and relational conceptualization of political process. Precisely because his work is so far-reaching, it can be a challenge for emerging scholars to get a handle on the scope and evolution of his work. This collection by Ernesto Castañeda and Cathy Schneider provides the ideal entryway into Tilly's work. As Tilly would have hoped, it will help young scholars generate more questions, new research, and better explanations. -- Ann Mische, University of Notre Dame
Table of ContentsI. Revolutions and Social Change
1. The Vendeé
2. Strikes in France 1830–1968
3. Does Modernization Breed Revolution?
4. From Mobilization to Revolution
5. Contentious Performances
6. Eight Pernicious Postulates
II. State Making
7. War Making and State Making as Organized Crime
8. Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1990
III. Democratization
9. Democracy Is a Lake
10. Where Do Rights Come from?
11. Democratization and De-democratization
12. Trust and Democratic Rule
IV. Durable Inequality
13. Durable Inequality
14. Poverty and the Politics of Exclusion
V. Political Violence
15. Contentious Conversation
16. The Politics of Collective Violence
17. Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists
VI. Migration and Race and Ethnicity
18. Transplanted Networks
19. Social Boundary Mechanisms
20. From Segregation to Integration
VII. Narratives and Explanations
21. Why Give Reasons?
22. Credit, Blame and Social Life
