Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics) - Hardcover

McAdam, Doug; Tarrow, Sidney; Tilly, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521805880 ISBN 13: 9780521805889

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Dissatisfied with the compartmentalization of studies concerning strikes, wars, revolutions, social movements, and other forms of political struggle, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly identify causal mechanisms and processes that recur across a wide range of contentious politics. Critical of the static, single-actor models (including their own) that have prevailed in the field, they shift the focus of analysis to dynamic interaction. Doubtful that large, complex series of events such as revolutions and social movements conform to general laws, they break events into smaller episodes, then identify recurrent mechanisms and proceses within them. Dynamics of Contention examines and compares eighteen contentious episodes drawn from many different parts of the world since the French Revolution, probing them for consequential and widely applicable mechanisms, for example, brokerage, category formation, and elite defection. The episodes range from nineteenth-century nationalist movements to contemporary Muslim-Hindu conflict to the Tiananmen crisis of 1989 to disintegration of the Soviet Union. The authors spell out the implications of their approach for explanation of revolutions, nationalism, and democratization, then lay out a more general program for study of contentious episodes wherever and whenever they occur.

About this title

Book Description

Over the past two decades the study of social movements, revolution, democratization and other forms of nonroutine, or "contentious politics," has flourished as never before. And yet theory and research on the topic remain highly fragmented. The first of these divisions reflects the long-standing view that various forms of contention are indeed distinct and should be studied independent of others. A second traditional approach to the study of political contention denies the possibility of general theory, in deference to a thorough grounding in the temporal and spatial particulars of any given episode of contention. Finally, overlaid on these two divisions are stylized theoretical traditions--structuralist, culturalist, and rationalist--that have developed largely in isolation from one another.

About the Author

Doug McAdam is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and the former Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS). He is the author or co-author of 13 books and some 75 articles in the area of political sociology, with a special emphasis on the study of social movements and revolutions. Among his best known works are Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930 1970, a new edition of which was published in 1999; Freedom Summer (1988), which was awarded the 1990 C. Wright Mills Award as well as being a finalist for the American Sociological Association's best book prize for 1991; and Dynamics of Contention (2001) with Sid Tarrow and Charles Tilly. He is also the author of the forthcoming book, A Theory of Fields (with Neil Fligstein). He is a two-time former Fellow of CASBS, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521805880
• ISBN 13: 9780521805889
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 410