Tributes to Charles Tilly

Last updated 08/26/08

Note: This site does not provide a complete overview of Charles Tilly’s life and work, but annotated links to web resources about it. With few exceptions, we only link to content with free access. It is indicated in brackets if links do not lead to external sites, but to uploaded documents. Copyrighted uploads (posted here with the permission of the copyright owner) are highlighted in bold.

Biography

• Autobiographical Interview: “A Conversation with Charles Tilly” (1998), Journal of Urban History 24:184–225 (free access until after the conference in honor of Charles Tilly on October 3-5), conducted by Bruce M. Stave. The main part of the interview was conducted before 1996 when Chuck was still at the New School, the Addendum after his move to Columbia University.
• Retrieved English version of the Portuguese interview “Entrevista com Charles Tilly” (2004), published in the Brazilian journal Tempo Social (Vol.16, No.2), conducted in English by Angela Alonso and Nadya Araujo Guimarães.
• “Charles Tilly - America’s Most Prolific and Interesting Sociologist” (2005), Interview about his work, Prospect magazine, Issue 114, September 2005, conducted by Geoff Mulgan.
• Audio of the interview session about the intellectual trajectory of Tilly’s work and about his career and its institutional settings, at the Annual Meeting 2005 of the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS) in Washington (DC), moderated by Javier Auyero and Ann Mische.
• Obituaries to his two dissertation advisers (sharing the responsibilities): Barrington Moore Jr. (1913-2005) in the Canadian Journal of Sociology (February 2006) and George C. Homans (1910-1989) in Theory and Society (No. 2, 1990; JSTOR access link).
• Interview conducted for the Blau Exchange Series, September 2007.
• Charles Tilly video interview on December 15, 2007, at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, on the occasion of receiving an honorary degree from the University of Michigan, as the first installment of Interviews with Innovative Thinkers, conducted by Dan Little, broken down into eight segments:
  
  “Origins, Vendee 1″ (07:13)
  “Vendee 2″ (06:08)
  “Causal Mechanisms” (08:53)
  “Concepts and State Formation” (10:36)
  “New Issues in Historical Sociology” (09:37)
  “Social Science ‘Paradigm’” (09:25)
  “Individualism and Cognitive Science” (05:10)
  “Big Questions” (10:26)
• Biographical information provided by Charles Tilly in his March 2008 CV (PDF: 178KB, 5 pages).

Bibliography

• Representative publications as listed by Charles Tilly in his March 2008 CV. (PDF: 445KB, 27 pages).

Writings Available Online (Free Access)

• Miscellaneous Interviews (on various topics): “A Sociologist’s Perspective on the New Trends in Philanthropy” (2008), Global Vision Magazine (Jan/Feb 2008); more to follow.
• Tilly’s writings on methodology, available as (pre-publication) PDF files. Some of these methodological articles are collected in Tilly’s new book Explaining Social Processes (Paradigm, 2008), with a new introduction entitled “Method and Explanation” (PDF: 244KB, 23 pages). After finishing the manuscript for that collection, Tilly wrote a few more methodological articles, among them: “Describing, Measuring, and Explaining Struggle”, revised paper of the Otis Dudley Duncan Lecture at ASA in New York City on 14 August 2007, published in Qualitative Sociology (Vol. 31, No. 1, 2008).
• Contentious Politics Working Paper Series and Social Dynamics and Political Change Working Paper Series (Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University): restricted access to selected papers from 1996-1999 through Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO). Free CIAO access via Google’s cache: “Towards an Integrated Perspective on Social Movements and Revolution” (1996) with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow; “Social Movements as Political Struggle” (1997); “Regimes and Contention” (1998); “Spaces of Contention” (1998); “Westphalia and China” (1998); “Stories of Social Construction” (1998); “Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization” (1999).
• CSSC Working Paper Series (Center for Studies of Social Change, New School of Social Research): restricted access to selected papers from 1995-1997 through Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO). Free CIAO access via Google’s cache: “To Map Contentious Politics” (1995) with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow (1996 published in Mobilization 1:17–34); “Durable Inequality” (1995) which led to Tilly’s book Durable Inequality (University of California Press 1998); “Method in the Madness of History” (1995); “Social Movements And (All Sorts Of) Other Political Interactions” (1995); “Political Identities” (1995); “Macrosociology, Past And Future” (1995) as part of “The Relational Turn In Macrosociology: A Symposium”.
• CRSO Working Papers (Center for Research on Social Organization, University of Michigan), with about 100 items by Tilly from 1971-1984, including the manuscripts for two of Tilly’s influential books, From Mobilization to Revolution (1978) and Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (1984), and for his influential chapter, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, published in the SSRC-sponsored volume Bringing the State Back In (see SSRC Projects, below).
• Small selection of Charles Tilly’s famous Annotated Bibliographies (from those created between 2003-2007).
  

Popular Writings

• Why? What happens when people give reasons… and why (Princeton, 2006). See also the LSE and The Young Foundation Public Lecture on “Why (and How) Things Happen”, London School of Economics, 8 September 2005, the Guardian interview (3 October 2005) with Tilly, which preceded the book’s publication and Malcolm Gladwell’s book review in The New Yorker (10 April 2006). For the scholarly debate see Charles Tilly, “Let Me Give You Reasons Why: Reply to Critics in Review Symposium” (2006), Qualitative Sociology 29:565–570.
• Credit & Blame (Princeton 2008) (Chapter 1). The essay “Memorials to Credit & Blame” (PDF: 18 pages, 108 KB), previously published in The American Interest (May-June, 2008), draws on this book. See also the New York Times Book Review.
• Soon at ssrc.org: “Grudging Consent”, an essay that synthesizes the core of Democracy (Cambridge 2007), previously published in The American Interest (Sept.-Oct., 2007).

Reflections on Current Affairs

• Video of the University Lecture on “Violence, Terror and Politics as Usual”, Columbia University, 12 March 2002, printed in the Summer 2002 issue of the Boston Review. These reflections are related to his book The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge, 2003).
• “What happened, and what may follow,” 21 September 2001, in openDemocracy, as a short version of “Predictions,” a series of three e-mails written between September 12 and 17, 2001, published in the “New War” section of the SSRC online essay forum After September 11.

How to Do Research

• “Practical Procedures”, last section of the manuscript “Lullaby, Chorale, or Hurdy-Gurdy Tune?” (2000), written for the unpublished volume The Rational-Choice Controversy in Historical Sociology, edited by Roger Gould.
• “Selecting a Dissertation Topic: Range and Scope” (PPT: 84KB), Power Point Presentation (2006).
• List of fundamental assumptions of the DOC tradition, preface (pp. viii-ix) to Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago University Press 2006).
• “Appendix A: Concepts and Methods” (PDF: 144KB, 10 pages) and “Appendix B: Streams, Episodes, Mechanisms, and Processes” (PDF: 148KB, 7 pages) from Contentious Politics (Paradigm, 2006), co-authored with Sidney Tarrow.
• “Tilly’s Rules of (Seminar) Engagement, 1.0″ (PDF: 40KB, 2 pages), by Roy Licklider, June 2008.

DOC Tradition (Dynamics of Contention): Collaborative Publications

• “To Map Contentious Politics” (1996), by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, in: Mobilization 1:17–34 (1995 working paper: CIAO access via Google’s cache).
• “Toward an Integrated Perspective on Social Movements and Revolution” (1997), by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (access via Google books), in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure (Cambridge).
• “Europeanists Abroad” (2001), by Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly.
• Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge 2001), by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (partial access via Google books).
• Companion volume to Dynamics of Contention: Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge 2001), by Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth J. Perry, William H. Sewell Jr., Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (partial access via Google books).
• Cambridge Studies of Contentious Politics series (since 2001), edited by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, et al.
• Contentious Politics (Paradigm 2006), by Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly.
• “Contentious Politics and Social Movements” (2007), by Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (Oxford).
• “Comparative Perspectives on Contentious Politics,” forthcoming 2008 (pre-publication pdf), by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, 2nd edition (Cambridge).
• “Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention,” forthcoming 2008 in Qualitative Sociology, by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly.
• List of fundamental assumptions of the DOC tradition, preface (pp. viii-ix) to Charles Tilly’s Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago University Press 2006).

SSRC Projects

• Speaker and participant in the Robert K. Merton Conference at Columbia University, 9-10 August 2007, hosted by the SSRC, presenting the paper “Mechanisms of the Middle Range” (PDF: 332KB, 11 pages).
• “Predictions,” a series of three e-mails written between September 12 and 17, 2001, published in the “New War” section of the SSRC online essay forum After September 11.
• Member of the Committee on States and Social Structures (1985-90). Tilly contributed the chapter “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” to Bringing the State Back In (1985), the well-received collection that originated in the SSRC conference on “Research Implications of Current Theories of the State,” held in Mt. Kisco in 1982, and subsequently became the project of the SSRC’s Committee on States and Social Structures. (Tilly, along with the book’s three editors, Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, was among the scholars who proposed the creation of this committee to the SSRC, in 1983.)
• Chair of the Committee on Mathematics in the Social Sciences (1978-79).
• Recruiting and leading a group of historians, working for the SSRC’s Committee on Comparative Politics, for an historical assessment of political development theories (see Tilly’s own recollection of the emergence of this project). Tilly’s group worked for about four years, gathering for the summer of 1970 at the CASBS in Stanford, reconvening in Bellagio, Italy in 1971 and co-producing the path-breaking The Formation of National States in Western Europe, edited by Charles Tilly (Princeton University Press, 1975). Notably, Tilly revisits that work for the SSRC in his chapter, “Why and How History Matters” (PDF:155KB, 28 pages) in the Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (2006).
• Co-chair of the History Panel of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Survey Committee, under the auspices of the SSRC’s Committee on Problems and Policy and of the NAS’s Committee on Science and Public Policy, resulting in the report The Behavioral and Social Sciences. Outlook and Needs (1969).
• Mentor to recipients of a SSRC research training fellowship to encourage interdisciplinary training. See also Joan Scott’s essay tribute
• Recipient of a SSRC Dissertation Fellowship for his archival research in France in 1955-56 which led to his first book The Vendée (Harvard, 1964).
• See also Craig Calhoun’s essay tribute

Obituaries and Tributes in Academic Journals

• Michelson, Bill, and Barry Wellman. 2008. “Tribute to Chuck Tilly: Always - and Uniquely - Chuck Tilly.” American Behavioral Scientist 51:1653-1655. (PDF: 700KB, 3 pages).
• Tarrow, Sid, “Charles Tilly,” PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2008.
• Alonso, Angela, “Homenagem a Charles Tilly (1929-2008),” Tempo Social, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2008 (English translation).

Review Essays of Charles Tilly’s Work

• Tarrow, Sidney. 1996. “The People’s Two Rhythms: Charles Tilly and the Study of Contentious Politics: A Review Article.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38:586-600 (JSTOR access link).
• Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1997. “Tilly on the Past as a Sequence of Futures.” Pp. 387-410 in Tilly, Charles, Roads from Past to Future. Rowman & Littlefield (partial access via Google books).
• Diani, Mario. 2007. “Review Essay: The Relational Element in Charles Tilly’s Recent (and not so Recent) Work.” Social Networks 29:316–323.

Conferences, Edited Volumes and Special Issues about Charles Tilly’s Work

• “Structure, Identity, and Power: The Past and Future of Collective Action”, Conference in Amsterdam, June 2-4, 1995. Edited Volume: Hanagan, Michael P., Leslie Page Moch, and Wayne te Brake, eds. 1998. Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press (partial access via Google books). See also “Europeanists Abroad” (2001), by Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, noting that it was a side-product of that 1995 Amsterdam conference that significantly shaped the DOC tradition (see the links to the collaborative publications above).
• Tillyfest, International Conference in honour of Charles Tilly, University of Toronto, October 6-8 1995. Publication of Charles Tilly’s address: Tilly, Charles. 1996. “Invisible Elbow.” Sociological Forum 11:589-601 (JSTOR access link).
• “Contentious Politics and the Economic Opportunity Structure”, University of Crete, Rethimno, October 2002. Follow-up conference on Mediterranean Contention in October 2003 at the University of Crete. Special Issue of Theory and Society (Vol. 33, No. 3/4, 2004): “Current Routes to the Study of Contentious Politics and Social Change” (JSTOR access link). Edited Volume: Kousis, Maria, and Charles Tilly, eds. 2005. Economic and Political Contention in Comparative Perspective. Boulder (CO): Paradigm Publishers.
• “Contention, Change, and Explanation: A Conference in Honor of Charles Tilly,” Columbia University, New York, October 3-5, 2008.