Comparing politically different struggles requires studying shared causal mechanisms across forms

Evidence

Note that, in their inquiry, our social scientists would ‘not claim that these episodes are identical, nor that they conform to a single general model. They obviously differ in a host of consequential ways.’ But they might be grouped under the same heading for two reasons. ‘First, the study of political contention has grown too narrow, spawning a host of distinct topical literatures—revolutions, social movements, industrial conflict, war, interest group politics, nationalism, democratization—dealing … In order to search for ‘parallels across nominally different forms of contention’, it seems therefore necessary to attend to ‘similar causal mechanisms and processes in a wide variety of struggles’. The second reason the scholars might adduce has to do with their call to ‘challenge the boundary between institutionalized and noninstitutionalized politics’, the difference between ‘legally prescribed, officially recognized processes’ and other processes and procedures. They ‘recognize this difference’ and even propose a distinction between ‘two broad categories of contention—contained and transgressive’. Still, as they deploy the distinction, they ‘insist that the study of politics has too long reified the boundary between official, prescribed politics and politics by other means’. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1207

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the contained vs transgressive contention distinction and the methodological rationale for cross-domain comparison of political struggles.
• XREF: Connects to McAdam-Tarrow-Tilly’s ‘Dynamics of Contention’ framework used across social movement scholarship; check whether the author attributes these quotes to them. — connects to: Social movements show symbolic but not causal coherence distinct from general contention — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1152; Revolutionary situations and civil wars overlap but measure distinct phenomena — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 989; Contentious politics analysis must steer between abstraction and particularity — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 288 (+1 more)