Chuck Tilly

Charles Tilly at the C. Wright Mills conference at Columbia April 14th, 2006.

Social science lost one of its living giants Charles Tilly. May he rest in peace. He was always a great example as a great thinker and also as a superb human being, we students, colleagues, and friends were fortunate to know him. It is sad that he has materially left this world, after many years of courageously fighting lymphoma and never stop working, but fortunately his ideas and work stay with us and I am sure they will pass the test of time, and his books, articles, advice, and stories will stay with us.

Charles H. Tilly (May 20, 1929 – April 29, 2008), known simply as Chuck was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of social Sciences at Columbia University for the last years of his life. He obtained his Ph.D. Harvard (1958). After serving in the Korean War. He taught at Delaware, Harvard, Toronto, Michigan, and the New School for Social Research among other places.

His work focuses on large-scale social change and its relationship to contentious politics, especially in Europe since 1500 but also make important contributions to the study of democracy, methodology, social science history, historical sociology, immigration, story telling, etc. Here full CV.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, he has received multiple international prizes and honorary degrees. He has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 50 published books and monographs and published between 600 and 700 scholarly articles, reviews, review-essays, comments, chapters in edited collections, and prefaces not counting reprints, translations, and working papers.

His most recently published books are Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Social Movements, 1768-2004 (Paradigm Publishers, 2004), Economic and Political Contention in Comparative Perspective (Paradigm Publishers, co-authored and co-edited with Maria Kousis, 2005), Trust and Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 (Paradigm Publishers, 2005, revised paperback edition of 1995 book), Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties (once again Paradigm Publishers, 2005),Why? (Princeton University Press, 2006), the Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (co-edited and co-authored with Robert Goodin, Oxford University Press, 2006), Contentious Politics (co-authored with Sidney Tarrow, Paradigm Publishers, 2006), and Regimes and Repertoires (University of Chicago Press, 2006). He has recently completed his chapters of Politics, Exchange, and Social Life in World History (with John Coatsworth, Juan Cole, Michael Hanagan, Peter Perdue, and Louise A. Tilly, forthcoming from Wadsworth/Thomson), plus the books Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Credit and Blame (Princeton University Press 2008), Contentious Performances (2008), Explaining Social Processes (2008), and many more yet to appear by him and in his honor.

An early list of published books can be found here:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/bildnercenter/courses/tillybooks.shtml

He advised dozens of students, and ran the workshop on Contentious Politics from more than 40 years, from whose discussions and meetings generations of scholars have benefited.

Great testimonials at:
http://www.ssrc.org/essays/tilly/

A recent biographical interview (audio) can be found here:
http://www.changingsociety.org/ChangingSociety/Podcast/Entries/2007/12/27_tilly_interview_edited.html

Video abstract versions of this interview are available in YouTube:

Full video at:
http://gallery.mac.com/delittle1#100103

Articles on methodology:
http://professor-murmann.info/index.php/weblog/tilly

We'll miss you Chuck but it will take of us years to understand and comprehend your impressively large and fruitful legacy and thus you stay with us.

The late Chuck with colleagues at the ASA NY 2008 panels on historical sociology and social boundaries. With Craig Calhoun at the conference honoring Robert K. Merton at Columbia University August 2008. (Photos by Sun-Chul Kim and Ernesto Castaneda).

I hope others add more pictures of the many lives of Charles Tilly, he knew us all but it is hard for the different generations of his students to know each other. May his peaceful rest allow his younger students to get familiarized with his earlier work, and his older students and colleagues to catch up with his recent work, nothing would make Chuck happier.