Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted. (Marx 1974(Marx [1852:146) If we stop history at a given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition.
AbstractThis paper reviews recent sociological and historical work on the relationship between historical change and collective action. This type of work has enjoyed a renaissance within sociology since the publication of E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, Barrington Moore's The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, and Charles Tilly's The Vendee, which are summarized here. The epistemological roots of these and related works are treated in discussions of "history from the bottom up," the nature of historical contingency (vs determinacy), and the role of evidence and empirical verifica tion. Several substantive issues are reviewed: (a) the rise of capitalism in the West, including proletarianization, the formation of classes and class seg ments, (b) the social roots of collective action, and (c) recent historical treatments of ideology, especially the relationship between popular and domi nant ideologies.
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