Polarization and convergence in academic controversies

Not many years ago both anthropology and political science experienced internal disputes—in the first case over the publication of a book accusing a noted anthropologist of endangering indigenous subjects and in the second over the nature of the field. While the first led to polarization, the second produced a partial convergence and modest reforms. This article examines the two processes and seeks the key mechanisms that produced those differences, closing with a call for broadening the study of contentious politics to cover non-public controversies like the ones examined in this article.

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Sidney TarrowEmail:

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Sidney Tarrow   teaches Political Science and Sociology at Cornell University, where he specializes in social movements and contentious politics. Tarrow’s first book was Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (Yale, 1967). His next project on contentious politics was a reconstruction of Italian protest cycle of the late 1960s, Democracy and Disorder (Oxford, 1989). With Cambridge Press, he published Power in Movement (1998), Dynamics of Contention (2001, along with Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly), and The New Transnational Activism (2005). His latest book (with Charles Tilly) is Contentious Politics (Paradigm, 2007). Tarrow is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently working on a project on “human rights at war.”