Charles Tilly: Contentious Performances, Campaigns and Social Movements

In: Swiss political science review: SPSR = Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 341-349

Abstract

As part of a special journal forum entitled "Swiss Political Sciences Review." In this brief contribution, the author focuses on Charles Tilly's last book, Contentious Performances (2008b). The author first sketch the main outline of this approach as he understood them. Then the author would like to discuss two of its limits, which he found particularly striking. Every approach has to make some choices, which come with certain costs attached, and Charles Tilly's approach to contentious politics has made some key choices, too. In discussing these limits, the author feel reassured by the encouragement with which the great master of the analysis of contentious politics ended his last book: "If the weaknesses of that approach inspire my reader to invent different and superior methods for investigating contentious performance, he will cheer them on. Kenneth Ngo