The Situationism of the Late Charles Tilly Posted by The
Situationist Staff on May 4, 2008 Wikipedia on Charles Tilly:
Examining political, social, and technological change in Europe
from the Middle Ages to the present, Tilly attempted to explain
the the unprecedented success of the nation-state as the
dominant polity on Earth. According to his theory, military
innovation in pre-modern Europe (especially gunpowder and mass
armies) made war extremely expensive. As a result, only states
with a sufficient amount of capital and a large population could
afford paying for their security and ultimately survive in the
hostile environment. Institutions of the modern state (such as
taxes) were created to allow war-making. Another focus of
Tilly’s work is the area of contentious politics. In opposition
to individualistic, dispositional analyses of contentious
politics, his work emphasizes how social groups organize and
contest with each other. In his early years, Tilly also studied
migration to cities and American urban