Credit and Blame

by Charles Tilly

Overview

In his eye-opening book Why?, world-renowned social scientist Charles Tilly exposed some startling truths about the excuses people make and the reasons they give. Now he's back with further explorations into the complexities of human relationships, this time examining what's really going on when we assign credit or cast blame.


Everybody does it, but few understand the hidden motivations behind it. With his customary wit and dazzling insight, Tilly takes a lively and thought-provoking look at the ways people fault and applaud each other and themselves. The stories he gathers in Credit and Blame range from the everyday to the altogether unexpected, from the revealingly personal to the insightfully humorous--whether it's the gushing acceptance speech of an Academy Award winner or testimony before a congressional panel, accusations hurled in a lover's quarrel or those traded by nations in a post-9/11 crisis, or a job promotion or the Nobel Prize. Drawing examples from literature, history, pop culture, and much more, Tilly argues that people seek not only understanding through credit and blame, but also justice. The punishment must fit the crime, accomplishments should be rewarded, and the guilty parties must always get their just deserts.


Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Credit and Blame is a book that revolutionizes our understanding of the compliments we pay and the accusations we make.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400829644
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/11/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Charles Tilly (1929-2008) was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. His books include Why? (Princeton) and Democracy.

Table of Contents

Preface vii
Chapter 1: Credit, Blame, and Social Life 1
Chapter 2: Justice 31
Chapter 3: Credit 61
Chapter 4: Blame 91
Chapter 5: Memories of Victory, Loss, and Blame 120 Notes 153
References 161
Index 173

What People are Saying About This

Adam Ashforth

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"

From the Publisher

"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

Lynn Eden

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"

Editorial Reviews

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.
—The New York Times

Alexander Star

If you've ever observed how an actress accepting an award thanks everyone around her, whereas a little boy who has spilled milk on the floor tries to pin it specifically on his sister, you have already witnessed the fine processes of credit and blame in action. Drawing upon sources as disparate as Dostoyevski, Darwin, water-cooler conversations and truth commissions, Tilly (Why?) illustrates how assigning credit and blame stems from and redefines "relations between the creditor and the credited, the blamer and the blamed." Society is saturated in credit/blame "social shows"-from high school honor societies to job promotions to the Nobel prizes-and in case studies of the Academy Awards and the 9/11 commission, Tilly astutely analyzes how people accept credit and society assesses blame, and the commonalities between the two ("blame is not simply credit upside down... blame resembles credit as an image in a funhouse mirror resembles the person standing before it"). With its most vivid examples drawn from the author's own life, this book is simultaneously highbrow and humble and a close analysis of social interaction. (June)

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Publishers Weekly

"Throughout his 50-book career, Tilly liked to squint hard at social life and find simple patterns. [In Credit and Blame] his undogmatic schematizing could reshape our judgments about what might have been obvious to begin with."—-Alexander Star, New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

Throughout his 50-book career, Tilly liked to squint hard at social life and find simple patterns. [In Credit and Blame] his undogmatic schematizing could reshape our judgments about what might have been obvious to begin with.

New York Times Book Review - Alexander Star

Throughout his 50-book career, Tilly liked to squint hard at social life and find simple patterns. [In Credit and Blame] his undogmatic schematizing could reshape our judgments about what might have been obvious to begin with.
— Alexander Star

New York Times Book Review