An "eminently readable and interesting" analysis of the four basic reasons people give to explain events or behaviors ( Library Journal)."In the tradition of the legendary sociologist Erving Goffman, Tilly seeks to decode the structure of everyday social interaction, and the result is a book that forces readers to reexamine everything from the way they talk to their children to the way they argue about politics." —Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker

Revolutions, social movements, religious and ethnic conflict, nationalism and civil rights, and transnational movements: these forms of contentious politics combine in Charles Tilly's and Sidney Tarrow's Contentious Politics. The authors present a set of analytical tools and procedures for study, comparison, and explanation of these very different sorts of contention. Drawing on many historical and contemporary cases, the book shows that similar principles describe and explain a w...

Are there any commonalities between such phenomena as soccer hooliganism, sabotage by peasants of landlords' property, incidents of road rage, and even the events of September 11? With striking historical scope and command of the literature of many disciplines, this book, first published in 2003, seeks the common causes of these events in collective violence. In collective violence, social interaction immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and r...

The modern state, however we conceive of it today, is based on a pattern that emerged in Europe in the period from 1100 to 1600. Inspired by a lifetime of teaching and research, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State is a classic work on what is known about the early history of the European state. This short, clear book book explores the European state in its infancy, especially in institutional developments in the administration of justice and finance. Forewords from Charles...

From Contention to Democracy addresses a crucial aspect of contemporary societies: the role of social movements for political and social change. The volume gathers together essays written by prominent social theorists who have been asked to reflect on the relationship between movements and processes of social, political and cultural change.Three broad types of movement-change nexus are distinguished and discussed: incorporation, transformation, and democratization. The cha...

Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centres as crucial processes. Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War II, this book makes the case for recasting cu...

Charles Tilly, in this eloquent manifesto, presents a powerful new approach to the study of persistent social inequality. How, he asks, do long-lasting, systematic inequalities in life chances arise, and how do they come to distinguish members of different socially defined categories of persons? Exploring representative paired and unequal categories, such as male/female, black/white, and citizen/noncitizen, Tilly argues that the basic causes of these and similar inequalities greatly resemb...

Coalitions across Borders shows how social movements have cooperated and conflicted as they work to develop a transnational civil society in response to perceived threats of neoliberalism-free trade, privatization, structural adjustment, and unbridled corporate power. The authors explore the processes of transnational mobilization, discussing the motivations and methods of cross-border cooperation as well as the conflicts that have affected movement abilities to promote social cha...

An award-winning sociologist, Charles Tilly has been equally influential in explaining politics, history, and how societies change. TillyOs newest book tackles fundamental questions about the nature of personal, political, and national identities and their linkage to big events_revolutions, social movements, democratization, and other processes of political and social change. Tilly focuses in this book on the role of stories, as means of creating personal identity, but also as explanations...

Social Movements 1768-2018 provides the most comprehensive historical account of the birth and spread of social movements. Renowned social scientist Charles Tilly applies his synthetic theoretical skills to explain the evolution of social movements across time and space in an accessible manner full of historical vignettes and examples. Tilly explains why social movements are but a type of contentious politics to decrease categorical inequalities. Questions addressed include what a...

The first textbook to present world history via social history, drawing on social science methods and research. This interdisciplinary, comprehensive, and comparative textbook is authored by distinguished scholars and experienced teachers, and offers expert scholarship on global history that is ideal for undergraduate students. Volume 2 takes us from the early modern period to speculation about the world in 2050, visiting diverse civilizations, nation-states, ecologies, and people along th...

The first textbook to present world history via social history, drawing on social science methods and research. This interdisciplinary, comprehensive and comparative textbook is authored by distinguished scholars and experienced teachers, and offers expert scholarship on global history that is ideal for undergraduate students. Volume 1 takes us from the origin of hominids to ancient civilizations, the rise of empires, and the Middle Ages. The book pays particular attention to the ways in w...