Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change ─ A Charles Tilly Reader

Charles Tilly is among the most influential American sociologists of the last century. For the first time his path breaking 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, revolution, and social change; 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 culture and racial and gender discrimination. It includes Tilly’s most well known and sometimes out of print or otherwise unavailable work, including selections from The Vendee, Coercion, Capital and European States, and the classic "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," and his least well known work, including that on durable inequality, poverty, migration and economic development. Together these selections reveal a compelling, complex and consistent vision underlying Tilly’s myriad work. The editors highlight within each of these works the key and most important passages. The book also includes an original introduction to the book that locate these selections within Tilly’s opus and the larger literature on the topic. The selections 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.

Ernesto Castaneda is Assistant Professor of Sociology at American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Belonging and Exclusion in New York, Paris, and Barcelona; editor of Immigration and Categorical Inequality: Migration to the City and the Birth of Race and Ethnicity and co-author with Charles Tilly and Lesley Wood of Social Movements 1768-2018, as well as author of articles on social movements, immigration, borders, and homelessness. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University.

Cathy Lisa Schneider is Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. She is the author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York, and Shantytown Protest in Pinochet s Chile, and numerous articles on military and police repression, social movements, and ethnic and racial discrimination. She holds a PhD in Government from Cornell University.