Reviews for The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series)

The average rating for The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-04-20 00:00:00 Scotty Helmut The subject of study is collective violence, and how to explain and categorize its various forms. The basic dimensions of comparison for these types of violent collective action are the level of coordination and level of salience of violence. The categories: • highest coordination, high salience of violence - "violent rituals" that operate within carefully circumscribed settings; • high-coordination, high violence - "coordinated destruction"; depending on the levels of force parity between combatants, this takes the form of war, terrorism, etc; • medium coordination, high violence - "opportunism"; looting and other forms of attacks principally characterized by the withdrawal of routine controls or surveillance; • low coordination, high violence - "brawls"; the rapid shift of a normally nonviolent interaction into violence, often spurred by high uncertainty and a spiral of signaling between participants; • low coordination, low violence - "scattered attacks" or sabotage; a resort to violence in what are otherwise generally nonviolent interactions, usually a "weapon of the weak" used by actors facing overwhelming force from their opponents; • low coordination, medium violence - "broken negotiations"; a (generally temporary) escalation of nonviolent political interactions such as demonstrations into violent confrontation Tilly goes through these chapter by chapter, discusses the situations in which shifts are observed between different types of collective violence, and situates each within political regimes (which are categorized along axes of democracy and capacity). The argument underscores the importance of collective action, organization, and the behavior of political brokers and violent entrepreneurs in shaping outcomes both in contentious politics generally and in collective violence specifically. With theoretically limitless social boundaries and grievances through which people can be divided and spurred to violence, it is these actors that actually determine when outcomes turn violent. Despite the high-theory content, there were rewards to reading; the book is sprinkled through with interesting little mini-histories and asides from Tilly, giving a sense of what I imagine his teaching style must have been like. Do you love political science typologies? If so, this is a book for you. Otherwise, this can probably be skipped safely.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-07-06 00:00:00 Rene Blanchette A few hot spots, but mostly doesn't go anywhere. I published a detailed review in Mobilization 10(3).