Contentious Performances

Charles Tilly is currently Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University. Tilly has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 50 published books and monographs. He has also published between 600 and 700 scholarly articles, reviews, review-essays, comments, chapters in edited collections, and prefaces not counting reprints, translations, and working papers. His most recently published books are Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 (2004), Social Movements, 1768–2004 (2004), Economic and Political Contention in Comparative Perspective (co-authored and co-edited with Maria Kousis, 2005), Trust and Rule (2005), Why? (2006), Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (co-authored and co-edited with Robert Goodin, 2006), Contentious Politics (co-authored with Sidney Tarrow, 2006), and Democracy (2007). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. He has received numerous international prizes and honorary degrees.

“Addressing the public performances through which crowds and other collectivities state grievances and make claims, Charles Tilly adds yet another dimension to his extraordinary explorations of the dynamics of contention. He deepens the approach to repertoires of contention which he made a staple of the field. In this book his cases come from late 18th and early 19th century Britain but his approach is important for all students of contentious politics everywhere. Tilly’s lively voice animates this book as his intelligence sharpens the analysis.” -Craig Calhoun, New York University

• 1. Claims as performances; 2. How to detect and describe performances and repertoires; 3. How performances form, change, and disappear; 4. From campaign to campaign; 5. Invention of the social movement; 6. Repertoires and regimes; 7. Contention in space and time; 8. Conclusions.