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Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, by Sidney Tarrow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 271 pp. $59.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-521-62072. $18.95 paper. ISBN: 0-521-62947-0.
The C.C.P. T-shirt shows the college emblem of an erupting volcano surrounded by the words: "(Invisible) College of Contentious Politics. E. Maximus Pompous." And here we have a comprehensive statement of the college creed at the turn of the century by one of its most genial dons. But pompous? Not at all. This is grounded theory, not excessive abstraction.
Collective action can take many forms and most of it occurs within institutions, carried on by groups "acting in the name of goals that would hardly raise an eyebrow." It becomes contentious "when it is used by people who lack regular access to institutions, who act in the name of new or unaccepted claims, and who behave in ways that fundamentally challenge others or authorities." Social movements, in this rendering, are one form of contentious politics that emerged at a particular historical moment in the eighteenth century, accompanying the rise of the modem state. Given a theory that...