No abstract

In the light of his essay "Cities, States and Trust Networks," contributors to this collection were asked to consider ways of building on or departing from the late Charles Tilly's work. The authors in this collection addressed four major themes: (1) historicism and historical legacies, (2) trust networks and commitment, (3) citystate relations, and (4) democracy and inequality. Authors concentrating on historicism examined how, despite unanticipated consequences, social action nonetheless produced systematic, durable, social structures; they particularly focused on processes of identity formation and cultural reproduction. In regard to trust networks, contributors discovered a striking variety of forms and relationships and they investigated their origins and their relationship to institutions and culture. Looking at city-state relations, authors uncovered the richness and intricacy of the ties linking cities and states and showed that city-state relations were important not simply in terms of the autonomy or dependence of mutual ties, but also in the quality of these relationships. Besides the ties between cities and states other authors sought to focus on empires and wondered about the degree to which empire formation involved similar processes as state formation. Several authors developed this theme. Authors pursuing themes of democracy and inequality stressed how changes in citizenship and the expansion of parliamentary democratic forms might have complicated effects. The relationship between democracy and inequality was mediated by elites and institutions. Democracy constrained inequality but inequality also constrained democracy. Increased state capacity might enable states to remedy old inequities but it might also allow them to perpetrate new ones. The authors' varied responses suggest promising directions for research on cities, states, and trust networks.

With the “forward march of labor halted”, and labor movements everywhere in retreat, T.H. Marshall's state-based emphasis on social welfare as “social right” has reminded those interested in reform that appeals to membership in a national community, the essence of citizenship, have served to rally groups to successful struggles for reform. Those aspects of Marshall's ideas, best summarized in his classic 1949 address, “Citizenship and Social Class”, with the greatest resonance for modern social theorists revolve around the relationship between citizenship, rights and markets. For Marshall, “the universal status of citizenship” was a plane of equality such that “all who possess the status (of citizenship) are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed”. Rights were embodied in a common culture and enforced by state power. Marshall believed that, gradually, one particular kind of rights, “social rights”, would come to limit the power of the market. While markets would continue to exist and to generate social inequality, government redistribution would increasingly expand the plane of equality to include the most important aspects of material and cultural life. The distinctive feature of these social rights according to Marshall is that they were not exemptions, privileges or paternalistic solicitude for those excluded from what he labels the “national community”, but social rights were benefits given to members of the community to encourage and facilitate their continued participation.

According to scholars who study transnational social movements of "deterritorialized migrants," such movements are: (1) a new phenomena of the modern global age, (2) a response to a modern communications revolution, and (3) a result of the weakening of modern states that contributes to the further decline of the national state system. This article examines the history of Irish conspiratorial brotherhoods over the last one hundred and forty years. It indicates the continuity between contemporary and past transnational movements. Recent social movement globalization studies underestimate the importance of past advances in communications technology and of close personal networks, particularly for social movements subject to repression. Finally, this article argues that the transnational character of social movements poses no inherent challenge to the state system. If transnational political outcomes that transcend the nation-state are more possible today than in the past, it is more due to reconfigured state systems than to the character of transnational social movements.

Transnational labor history is attracting considerable interest today. Is it just another recondite buzzword or does transnational labor history offer a serious long-term program for discussion and research? This article defends the integrity of transnational labor history as a field, discusses the contributions it can make, and outlines some of the questions that it can most profitably address.