Challenging Authority

by Hanagan, Michael P.; Moch, Leslie Page; Brake, Wayne Ph. Te; Te Brake, Wayne Ph

• ISBN13: 9780816631094
• ISBN10: 0816631093
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

As long as there have been formal governments, there has been political contention, an interaction between ruler and subjects involving claims and counterclaims, compliance or resistance, cooperation, resignation, condescension, and resentment. Where political studies tend to focus on either those who rule or those who are ruled, the essays in this volume call our attention to the interaction between these forces at the very heart of contentious politics.

Written by prominent scholars of political and social history, these essays introduce us to a variety of political actors: peasants and workers, tax resisters and religious visionaries, bandits and revolutionaries. From Brazil to Beijing, from the late Middle Ages to the present, all were or are challenging authority.

The authors take a distinctly historical approach to their subject, writing both of specific circumstances and of larger processes. While tracing their origins to the social history and structural sociology approaches of the sixties and seventies, the contributors have also profited from subs

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics
Networks, Identities, and Claim Making
Political Identities	p. 3
The Riding of the Black Lad and Other Working-Class Ritualistic Actions: Toward a Spatialized and Gendered Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Repertoires	p. 17
Political Networks and the Local/National Boundary in the Whiskey Rebellion	p. 36
Collective Protest and the Waning of the Communist State in China	p. 54
Artisans and Revolution in a Finnish Country Town	p. 73
Repertoires of Political Contention
Bandits and Boundaries: Robber Bands and Secret Societies on the Dutch Frontier (1730-1778)	p. 91
Six Hundred Years of Visionaries in Spain: Those Believed and Those Ignored	p. 107
Beyond the Parish Pump: The Politicization of the Peasantry in Burgundy, 1750-1850	p. 120
Claim Making and the Framing of Defeats: The Interpretation of Losses by American and British Labor Activists, 1886-1895	p. 136
The Changing Horizons of Tax Resistance in Chinese History	p. 149
Constellations of Political Opportunity
Reflections on Historical Possibility: Cuba, 1956-1961	p. 167
Gender Inequality and Women's Empowerment in Latin America	p. 182
Rules and Repertoires: The Revolt of a Farmers' Republic in the Early-Modern Netherlands	p. 197
Capitalists, Immigrants, and Populists: The Impact of Social Conflict and the State on the Origins of World War I	p. 213
Fishnets, Internets, and Catnets: Globalization and Transnational Collective Action	p. 228
Bibliography	p. 245
Contributors	p. 273
Index	p. 277
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