Sidney Tarrow


Sidney George Tarrow is an emeritus professor of political science, known for his research in the areas of comparative politics, social movements, political parties, collective action and political sociology.

Biography

B.A. Syracuse University, 1960, American Studies; M.A. Columbia University, 1961, Public Law and Government; Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1965, Political Science.
He is currently Emeritus Maxwell Upson Professor of Government and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell University.

Thought

Tarrow's first area of interest was the study of communism in the 1960s. In the 1970s he moved to the study of comparative local politics and in the 1980s to the study of social movements and protest cycles. A specialist in European politics and society, Sidney Tarrow has written widely on Italian and French politics, centre-periphery relations, new social movements, and contentious politics. Tarrow is a leading expert on new social movements and, more broadly, the phenomena of contentious behaviour.
His 1994 book Power in Movement analyses the cultural, organizational and personal sources of social movements' power, stressing that the :wikt:life cycle|life cycle of social movements is a part of political struggle influenced by the existence increasing access, 2) shifting alignments, 3) divided elites, 4) influential allies and 5) repression and facilitation. Tarrow writes that unlike political or economic social institutions, social movements' power is less obvious, but just as real. In the book, Tarrow tries to explain the cyclical history of social movements political opportunities, 2) diffuse social networks, 3) familiar forms of collective action cultural frames that can resonate throughout a population.
In 2001, Tarrow, with Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly, published Dynamics of Contention, in which the authors broadened the social movement framework to cover a broader spectrum of forms of contention. This was followed by Tarrow's New Transnational Activism, in which he applied the framework to the new transnational cycle of contention, and by a textbook with Tilly called Contentious Politics. He is currently working on international human rights.
He was formerly on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA , a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.

Publications

Selected Publications: