Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers Charles Tilly's most seminal work on six areas: Revolutions and Social Change; State Making; Democratization; Durable Inequality; Collective Violence; Migration, Race, and Ethnicity; and Narratives and Explanations. It also considers key snippets of Tilly's work to highlight some of the major themes, theories, and methods that he contributed to social science, but clearly this tome is not exhaustive. The book shows Tilly's conception of democracy as a process not as a "tradition", an "institution", nor the result of a constitutional convention. It discusses the processes fostering or reducing exclusion and categorical inequality. In his later work on political violence, Tilly built on the theoretical work he pioneered in Durable Inequality. Tilly analyses the importance of rhetorical and narrative devices of social reality, in the attribution of credit or blame, and their implications for politics.