Contentious gathering counts omit smaller and scattered actions plus their preparation and aftermath

Evidence

By no means do these sorts of CGs exhaust contentious politics, even in Great Britain between 1758 and 1834. For one thing, the threshold of ten persons gathered in a single place eliminates both smaller contentious gatherings and individual actions coordinated among spatially scattered actors. For another, our observations capture the time of coordinated public claim-making but neither the preparation nor the follow-up that also belong to contentious politics. Without those two restrictions, the study would have collapsed of its own weight. But we must recognize the parallel with a surveillance camera: it may do a fine job of registering who enters and leaves a bank, but it does not follow them off the scene. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 311

Categorization

• DEFINE: The CG operationalization’s boundary conditions are crucial for the reader testing whether this framework captures politicization asymmetries at all; small-group or dispersed-subject mobilization falls outside what Tilly can measure.
• QUESTION: Does the CG threshold of ten-plus people in one place structurally blind the method to exactly the diffuse, small-scale politicization through which subordinated groups might operate?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 311