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Synopsis
"In this book Charles Tilly brilliantly continues his mission of demonstrating how relational sociology can reveal the elemental principles underlying the complexity of human social life. This book demonstrates why Tilly will be known as the founding father of twenty-first century sociology. With his trademark clarity of exposition and synthesis, he lays bare the simple central mechanisms of social interaction."—Adam Ashforth, author of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa
"An utterly charming and systematically insightful book about pervasive processes in everyday life, and an amazing romp from Raskolnikov to Sacré Coeur—by way of Jack Welch, witchcraft, the Ford Explorer, Bolivian festivals, the Academy Awards, the Nobel Prize, Philip Roth's Everyman, sex discrimination at Wal-Mart, The Mikado, and more. I had not thought about credit and blame in the least bit systematic way before reading this book."—Lynn Eden, author of Whole World on Fire
The New York Times - Alexander Star
As a sociologist, Tilly was more interested in how we assign credit and blame than when it's right to do so. Should we care that when a chief executive attributes his company's success to his own intelligence or decisiveness, he's probably wrong? Why do we put more blame on someone who drives through a stop sign at night and kills a child than on the countless others who drive through stop signs and kill no one? Tilly does not answer such questions, but his analysis suggests that for all the bad judgments we may make about the supposed malfeasance of terrorism-neglecting bureaucrats or the homeless, our habits are not easily reformed. Blaming, he argues, is not a vice or an aberration but an essential habit that allows us to maintain and repair our relationships with others. Our justice detectors are not fundamentally defective. They are suited to the task of setting things right—approximately.