Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeff Goodwin is Professor of Sociology at New York University. James M. Jasper is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. They are coeditors of The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts (2009) and The Contexts Reader (2007).

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CONTENTION IN CONTEXT

Stanford University Press

Contents

Preface JAMES M. JASPER..............................................................................................................................xiList of Abbreviations.................................................................................................................................xvIntroduction: From Political Opportunity Structures to Strategic Interaction JAMES M. JASPER.........................................................11 Peasant Revolts in the French Revolution JACK A. GOLDSTONE.........................................................................................372 Rural Social Movements in Nicaragua Anthony W. Pereira..............................................................................................593 Human Rights in Argentina AMY RISLEY...............................................................................................................834 Rural Unions in Brazil JOHN L. HAMMOND.............................................................................................................1145 The Civil Rights Movement FRANCESCA POLLETTA.......................................................................................................1336 The Women's Movement JOHN D. SKRENTNY..............................................................................................................1537 Gay and Lesbian Liberation ADAM ISAIAH GREEN.......................................................................................................1838 The U.S. Movement for Peace in Central America JAMES M. JASPER.....................................................................................2039 Opportunity Knocks: The Trouble with Political Opportunity and What You Can Do about It EDWIN AMENTA AND DREW HALFMANN.............................22710 Sensing and Seizing Opportunities: How Contentious Actors and Strategies Emerge CHRISTIAN BRÖER AND JAN WILLEM DUYVENDAK.....................24011 Eventful Protest, Global Conflicts: Social Mechanisms in the Reproduction of Protest DONATELLA DELLA PORTA........................................256Conclusion: Are Protestors Opportunists? Fifty Tests JEFF GOODWIN....................................................................................277Contributors..........................................................................................................................................303References............................................................................................................................................307Index.................................................................................................................................................327

Chapter One

John Markoff's Abolition of Feudalism JACK A. GOLDSTONE

More than two hundred years later, the French Revolution of 1789 remains pivotal for the study of social protest and revolution. The complex intertwining of noble resistance to the Crown, nonnoble elites' resistance to the privileges of the nobility, urban and regional resistance to centralized rule, revolutionary resistance to the power and perquisites of the Catholic Church, popular resistance to the suppression of that Church's role in society, and peasant resistance against a host of seigneurial, economic, and political practices, still resists our efforts to unravel its secrets. Why particular groups acted in particular ways at particular times remains controversial.

John Markoff's remarkable volume offers a wealth of evidence about why French peasants acted in the manner they did during the prime revolutionary years, 1789–1793. As one might expect from the tangle of events involved, he has provided an extremely complex answer, attributing the events to at least eight different kinds of peasant actions, each with its own distribution over time and across French regional space. Moreover, the timing and frequency of peasant actions cannot be determined simply from looking at the long-term structural characteristics of particular regions and their peasantries—rather, the kind of actions peasants took, and when and where they acted, was the result of a dynamic interaction between peasant communities and various elites and institutions.

Markoff's main conclusion, somewhat surprising from either a Marxian or Tocquevillean viewpoint (his two primary foils), is that the destruction of seigneurial privileges was not strongly sought by the peasantry at the outset of the revolution in 1789; instead, anti-seigneurial actions grew in response to the proclamations and actions of the elites in their national assemblies in Paris. At the start, peasant communities seemed more concerned about traditional issues of contention: taxes and access to food. It was the representatives of the Third Estate who were most vocally concerned with the privileges of the nobility. Only after the Third Estate's attack on the nobility during the campaign for the Estates-General, and during the ensuing debates on feudal privileges that reached its dramatic peak in the National Assembly's sessions of August 4–11, did anti-seigneurial actions dominate the agenda of peasant protests.

Markoff's evidence comes from two distinct data sets. The first is an extensive computer-coded log of the contents of the cahiers de doléances (the lists of grievances written by the nobility, the Third Estate, and rural parishes for submission to the Estates-General in the spring of 1789). Although cahiers were also prepared by the clergy, these are not examined in this volume. Of course, the cahiers that were submitted by the Third Estate were supposed to incorporate the views of the rural parishes that sent their representatives to the urban centers where the Third Estate cahiers were composed. However, Markoff justifiably takes the Third Estate cahiers to represent mainly the views of the urban notables and professionals who dominated the national representation to the Third Estate, and relies on his sample of cahiers from rural parishes to assess the views of France's peasantry.

The second data set consists of a list of rural actions by peasant groups (minimum of 15 persons) in France from 1788 to 1793. This astonishing tabulation— whatever its flaws, no doubt the most complete survey we have of peasant actions during the first part of the French Revolution—is divided among various types of actions (panic, subsistence, anti-seigneurial, and so on), located by region, and dated by day, month, and year. The result is a panoramic tableau of what Markoff calls the "rhythms of contention" by the peasantry.

Combining his analysis of these two data sets with an examination of the debates and actions that occurred in the National Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, and the Convention, Markoff claims that the destruction of seigneurial dues, monopolies, and rights was neither the primary initial goal of the peasantry, nor the inevitable outcome of the Third Estate attack on noble privilege. Rather, the peasantry and the Third Estate forced or encouraged each other to go further in a give-and-take of insurrection and legislation from 1789 to 1793, until in the end the surviving feudal seigneurial rights were wholly abolished without any...