Commentary on Charles Tilly's “Social movements”

Abstract

In his article in this issue, Chuck Tilly has analyzed the public campaign for Catholic Emancipation in early nineteenth-century Great Britain and Ireland from two perspectives: as an early example of a modern social movement; and as a political process that illustrates similarities between social movements within states and nationalist movements within an international system of states. In both respects, he has emphasized cultural dimensions of collective action that have recently attracted considerable attention from social theorists. Leaders of social movements, like nationalist leaders, try to mobilize popular support through discursive practives and symbolic displays that foster group identities. According to Tilly, these identities necessarily involve some degree of "mystification" because they express contingent rather than essential relationships among movement participants, adversaries, spectators, and power-holders. Social movements are interactive processes of collective action, not solidary groups based on stable identities.