Charles Tilly interview: big questions

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Charles Tilly is a sociologist who is best known for his work on social change and revolution.  He has written much on the mechanisms by which society changes.  His interest is mostly what is called “bottom up”, this means that he starts by looking at the way day to day interactions as people go about their business are changed by and at the same time change the world they live in.

The questions that sociologists who study change ask have to do with the circumstances that pose problems for people, essentially and especially those circumstances in which some people make changes in order to go on with their lives and take advantage of opportunities and outcome of those same circumstances disadvantage others.   Very typically the changes are technological, but they are seldom only technological.  Other variables must be in place: changes in population size; changes in ideology; changes in the physical or social environment; changes in the distribution of wealth, opportunity, justice and/or individual choices.  Sometimes it can be as simple as the availabilty of someplace else to go, so that people who do things differently can go far away from those who don’t like what they do.

There are so many possibilities to consider that anything I write here will underestimate what can happen.  But doing sociology from the “bottom up” yields a very different view of the social world than doing “top down” sociology does.  The traditional top down view is much like the functionalist view, there is a group in charge by right of tradition or law who lays out the social norms that are best for everyone to follow and when change is needed that group sets it in motion. 

Actually neither top down or bottom up approaches suffice, for ultimately some agreement must be reached or there is either perpetual struggle or perpetual oppression or a bipolar society which swings between the oppression and open strife, as Marx and Engels describe in The Communist Manifesto.

In this clip, Charles Tilly talks about Sociology, social history, policy and the big questions of studying society.