The Politics of Collective Violence

Are there any commonalities between such phenomena as soccer hooliganism, sabotage by peasants of landlords' property, road rage, and even the events of September 11? With striking historical scope and command of the literature of many disciplines, this book seeks the common causes of these events in collective violence. In collective violence, social interaction immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and results in part from coordination among the persons who perform the damaging acts. Charles Tilly argues that collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some regards, yet also results from similar causes variously combined in different times and places. Pinpointing the causes, combinations, and settings helps to explain collective violence and also helps to identify the best ways to mitigate violence and create democracies with a minimum of damage to persons and property. Charles Tilly is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. He has published more than twenty scholarly books, including twenty specialized monographs and edited volumes on political processes, inequality, population change and European history.

1. Varieties of violence; 2. Violence as politics; 3. Trends, variations, and explanations; 4. Violent rituals; 5. Coordinated destruction; 6. Opportunism; 7. Brawls; 8. Scattered attacks; 9. Broken negotiations; 10. Conclusions.