Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers' Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880-1890

"Michael Schwartz's book is really three books in one—an analysis of the structural changes that produced one of the most oppressive social systems the world has known (the one-crop cotton tenancy economy and the system of institutionalized racism and authoritarian one-party politics that was required to preserve the fragile economic arrangement); a theoretical analysis of the origins, mobilization, and outcome of insurgent challenges; and a meticulous application of that theory to the rise and collapse of the Populist movement."—Craig Jenkins, Theory and Society

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is the coauthor of The Business Elite as a Ruling Class and The Power Structure of American Business, the latter of which is also published by the University of Chicago Press.