Dynamics of Contention

Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly

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.

Genres: Political Science, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology, Theory, History, Social Science

412 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A welcome theoretical rebound from decades of ism-ism, but one which still suffers from some problems. Like any good, wanna-be iconoclastic works DoC can't quite break away from what it is mired in. The authors can hardly be faulted for that, historiographical and social science tropes and theoretical crap-shoots are such a part of academia today that it is difficult to not address them. Again, I insist that we start afresh with a Cartesian sort of sloughing off of everything and start fresh, but, yeah, sure, whatever.
Although insisting that they are moving away from static approaches to theorizing collective action and contention, the authors have a habit of pretending to be outfitting their approach with hitherto unexplored elements: brokerage is just alliance-forming, nothing new. Threat and opportunism can hardly be divorced from any study of collective action. Thus, much of what they are suggesting here is simple rehash.
Also, there is much noise made from the get-go about NOT formulating a broad agenda of theoretical patterning that is universally applicable, then the trio turn around and unabashedly do that. It's a given that this is an attractive venue to take when making comparative history, so it is eminently forgivable, but it is misleading to the reader when, seeking a theory away from theory, one simply runs into a reformulation of old social science tropes.
Nitpicking aside, there is much of value here, though perhaps not immediately clear. Another flaw, the book's length, repetitive nature, and what I found to be stultifying jargon, could be easily remedied by miniaturizing the thing down and heavily editing the introductory sections. The comparative case-study sections are fine, useful, but the authors tend to get happy with their revolutionary approach and get lost by the wayside as the book veers away from them.
So, a nice, fresh critical approach to how these sorts of things are studied but not without its problems.

[ia · Rating 4 out of 5]

my boygenius

[Utopian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kavramlaştırmalar genel olarak iyi ama bazı yerlerde çok karmaşık bir dil kullanmışlar. Örnek olaylar faydalıydı. Ayrıca bkz: Sosyal bilimlerde ABD ekolü ve her şeyi şemalara, şekillere dökme merakı. :) Yeni Toplumsal Hareketleri açıklamak için kurdukları şemayı nereye koysan iş görür. Her olaya uyarlarsın. Ama açıklayıcılığı ne derece güçlü olur bilemedim. Her şeyi açıklayan ama aslında hiçbir şeyi derinlemesine açıklayamayacak bir yöntem kurmuşlar. Çünkü siyaset ve siyasal alan tanımları fazlaca geniş. Ne toplumsal, ne ekonomik ilişki biçimlerine doğru düzgün yer kalmıyor. Devleti muhatap alan her türlü talep kendiliğinden siyasal bir talep midir gerçekten? Bir de öznesi, nicel ya da nitel kapasitesi fark etmeksizin her türlü "yeni" talep siyasal çekişme yaratmak için yeterli midir?

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Toplumsal hareketlerin nasıl bileşenlere sahip olduğuna dair 'resource mobilization' teorisinin sosyal bilimlerdeki son gelismelerle güncellenmiş bir versiyonu. Bazı tespitler ve kavramlaştırmalar iyi, ama yazarlar lafı çok uzatıyor. Çok basit anlatılabilecek mekanizma, süreç ve episod kavramları anlamsız biçimde karmaşıklaştırılmış, gereksiz akademizme gidilmiş. Zengin kaynakçası faydalı.

[Angelina]

this book is putting me to sleep - help! is there really anything in here that i need to know?