Charles Tilly (May 27, 1929 – April 29, 2008) was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1984 before becoming the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.
He has been described as "the founding father of 21st-century sociology" and "one of the world's preeminent sociologists and historians." He published widely across topics such as urban sociology, state formation, democracy, social movements, labor, and inequality. He was an influential proponent of large-scale historical social science research. The title of Tilly's 1984 book, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, is characteristic of his approach to social science research.
Early life and education Tilly was born in Lombard, Illinois (near Chicago). His parents were Naneth and Otto Tilly, Welsh-German immigrants. He graduated from York Community High School in 1946. He graduated from Harvard University in 1950 with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude. He served in the U.S. Navy as a paymaster of an amphibious squadron during the Korean War. Tilly completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Harvard in 1958.
While at Harvard, he was a student in the Department of Social Relations during the "Harvard revolution" in social network analysis. Tilly was a teaching assistant to Pitirim Sorokin, who, along with Talcott Parsons and George C. Homans, was considered by many in the profession to be among the world's leading sociologists.Castañeda, Ernesto, and Cathy Lisa Schneider. “Introduction,” pp. 1-22, in Ernesto Castañeda and Cathy Lisa Schneider (eds.), Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change: A Charles Tilly Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, p. 2. Tilly later recalled Sorokin's characteristically gruff manner, often retorting to Tilly's ideas with "A very good idea, Mr. Tilly, but Plato said it better."Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984, p 28.
Tilly eventually turned to Barrington Moore Jr. and George C. Homans to supervise his dissertation. But Tilly never failed to say that Sorokin was a great person (even though Tilly eschewed any great person theory of history).
Academic career
Charles Tilly taught at the University of Delaware (1956–1962), Harvard University (1963–1966), the University of Toronto (1965–1969), the University of Michigan (1969–1984), The New School (1984–1996), and Columbia University (1996–2008). At Michigan, Tilly was professor of history 1969–1984, professor of sociology 1969–1981, and the Theodore M. Newcomb Professor of Social Science 1981–1984. At the New School from 1984 to 1996, he was Distinguished Professor of sociology and history, 1984–1990, and University Distinguished Professor, 1990–1996. In 1996, he was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science.
Over the course of his career, Tilly wrote more than 600 articles and 51 books and monographs.Castañeda, Ernesto, and Cathy Lisa Schneider. “Introduction,” pp. 1-22, in Ernesto Castañeda and Cathy Lisa Schneider (eds.), Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change: A Charles Tilly Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 2-3; Mack, Arien. "Charles Tilly, 1929–2008." Social Research: An International Quarterly 75, 2 (2008): v-vi. His most highly cited books are: the edited volume The Formation of National States in Western Europe (1975), From Mobilization to Revolution (1978), Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 (1990), Durable Inequality (1998), and Dynamics of Contention (2001).Based on Google Scholar (July 16, 2022); Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1978; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990; Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998; McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Academic work
Tilly's academic work covered multiple topics in the social sciences and influenced scholarship in disciplines outside of sociology, including history and political science. He is considered a major figure in the development of historical sociology, the early use of quantitative methods in historical analysis, the methodology of event cataloging, the turn towards relational and social-network modes of inquiry, the development of process- and mechanism-based analysis, as well as the study of: contentious politics, social movements, the history of labor, state formation, revolutions, democratization, inequality, and urban sociology.
At Columbia, along with Harrison White, Tilly played a key role in the emergence of the New York School of relational sociology.
Urban sociology
In the 1960s and 1970s, Tilly studied migration to cities, and was an influential theorist about urban phenomena and treating communities as social networks. In 1968, Tilly presented his report on European collective violence to the Eisenhower Commission, a body formed under the Johnson administration to assess urban unrest amidst the Civil Rights Movement. The report was included in Vol. 1 of Violence in America, a collection edited by scholars on the staff of the commission.Tilly, Charles. 1969. "Collective Violence in European Perspective." Pp. 4–45 in Violence in America, edited by Hugh Graham and Tedd Gurr. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office As informed by his studies of contentious politics in 19th-century Europe, and the present violence in the U.S., his interest in cities and communities became closely linked with his passion for the study of both social movements and collective violence.Tilly, Charles. 1988. "Misreading, then Rereading, Nineteenth-Century Social Change." Pp. 332–58 in Social Structures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman and SD Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
An approach to the study of societies
Tilly outlined the distinctive approach he would use in his research on the state and capitalism in Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (1984).Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984.
In this work, he argued against eight common ideas in social theory:Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984, pp. 11-12, Chs. 2 and 3.
The view that societies are not connected with each other The view that collective behavior can be explained in terms of the mental state of individuals The view that societies can be understood as blocs, lacking parts or components The view that societies evolve through fixed stages (an assumption common in modernization theory) The view that differentiation is a master process, common to all societies as they modernize The view that quick differentiation generates disorder The view that rapid social change causes behaviors that are not considered normal, such as crime The view that "illegitimate" and "legitimate" kinds of conflict originate in different processes
On the positive side, he argued in favor of "historically grounded huge comparisons of big structures and large processes", while being careful to consider the temporal and spatial context of explanations.Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984, p. 145. The approach Tilly laid out has sometimes been called historical sociology or comparative historical analysis.Philip Abrams, Historical Sociology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 303; Lynn Hunt, “Charles Tilly’s Collective Action,” pp. 244-75, in Theda Skocpol (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984; J. Goldstone, "Comparative historical analysis and knowledge accumulation in the study of revolutions," pp. 41-90, n J. Mahoney & D. Rueschemeyer (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. More substantively, Tilly sketched a research program focused on two broad macro processes, capitalism development and the formation of modern states.Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984, p. 15.
Social movements and contentious politics
One of the themes that runs through a large number of Tilly's work is the collective actions of groups that challenge the status quo. Tilly dedicated two books, on France and Great Britain, to the topics: The Contentious French. Four Centuries of Popular Struggle (1986) and Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (1995).Tilly, Charles, The Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986; Tilly, Charles, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Later on, he co-authored two influential books on social movements: Dynamics of Contention (2001), with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow; and Contentious Politics (2006) with Sidney Tarrow.McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Tilly, Charles and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics. Boulder, Col.: Paradigm Publisher, 2006. Tilly also provided an overview of social movement, from their origins in the eighteen century to the early twenty-first century, in Social Movements, 1768-2004 (2004).Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004. Boulder, Col.: Paradigm Publishers, 2004.
Tilly argues that social movements were a novel phenomenon that emerged in the West in the mid-nineteenth century and that social movements are characterized by three features: (1) a campaign - a "sustained, organized public effort" aimed at making collective demands from public authorities; (2) a repertoire of contention - the use of various forms of action, such as public meetings, demonstrations, and so on; and (3) a public display of certain qualities, specifically worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment (WUNC).Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004. Boulder, Col.: Paradigm Publishers, 2004, pp. 3-4.
In his work with McAdam and Tarrow, Tilly seeks to advance a new agenda for the study of social movements. First, he and his co-authors claim that various of forms of contention politics, including revolutions, ethnic mobilization, democratization should be connected to each other. Second, he argued for an analysis that puts the focus squarely on causal mechanisms and that the goal of research should be the identification of "recurrent mechanisms and processes." Specifically, in Dynamics of Contention Tilly and his co-authors focus on mechanism such as brokerage, category formation, and elite defection.McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
State formation