How do Relations Store Histories? Author(s): Charles Tilly Source: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26 (2000), pp.

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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2000. 26:721-23 Copyright( 2000 by AnnualReviews. All rightsreserved

How Do

RELATIONSSTOREHISTORIES?

NY 10027-7001 Departmentof Sociology, ColumbiaUniversity,New York,

CharlesTilly

For most of us, alas, crucial moments in a lifetime of inquiryinvolve discoveries thatwe have been askingthe wrongquestions.Any effortto lay the burdenof our ignoranceon the next generationof researchers-which is, afterall, the point of the presentexercise-will thereforeserve chiefly to make membersof thatgenlet me erationfeel superior.Visibly violating the interestof my futurereputation, ask out loud a deeply bothersomequestion:how do relationsstorehistories?How and does interaction interactions amongsocial locationsbothconstrainsubsequent alterthe relationsinvolved? My question concerns relations among social locations-not just persons but also jobs, organizations,communities,networks,and othersuch sites, just so long as they include some distinguishingpropertiesand coordinatingstructure. It rests on the assumptionthatindividualsas such do not constitutethe bedrockof social life, but emerge from interactionas other social locations do. The question has two parts. First, how does the history of a social relation impinge on subsequentactivationsof thatrelation?Second, how does interaction within a given relationtransform thatrelation?Examplesof relevantprocesses include changesin contentiousrepertoires, shiftsin the contentandformof conversaof rightsor obligations,andmoves of a pairbetweenwarandpeace: tion, alterations * In the case of contentiousrepertoires, relationsbetween claimantsand objects of claims (e.g. peasantsand landlords,workersand bosses) mostly but as they do so claim-makingstrategies,mutual change incrementally, definitions,voiced grievances,and stories told aboutpast relationsall change as well. How and why does that happen?Exactly how, for example, did the political demonstration whose routinesare now so familiarto militantsand television viewers evolve from WesternEuropeanpetition marchesand militarydisplays of the late eighteenthcentury? * In the case of conversation,people drawon previousinterchangeswith the same interlocutors,improvisewithin limits set by sharedunderstandings, the convey the characterof theirrelationshipthroughtalk, yet transform relationshipas they do so. How and why does thathappen?Precisely what processes, for example, go on as one friendsolicits and gets effective advice on a risky choice from anotherfriend, or as two competing groupsof to engineerswithin a firmwork out a compromiseproposalfor presentation
0360-0572/00/0815-0721$14.00 721

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722

TILLY

In what ways do those processes dependon histories management? of the relationshipsin question? * Rights and obligationsconsist of enforceableclaims connecting social sites-individual or otherwise.Althoughparticipants in rightsand sometimes write contracts or most of the time constitutions, obligations create redefinitions of the enforceable in question. claims they bit-by-bit How and why does thathappen?Throughwhat interactionsand appealsto memory,for example, do companiesof soldiers and theirofficers work out the limits on what each can demandof the other? * Warand peace name extremepositions on a continuumof relations between political units runningfrom 1) outrightmutualdestructionby means of organizedarmedforce to 2) coexistence withoutcollective strife. No war between two powers precisely mimics its predecessor,yet the historyof relationsbetween the partiesstronglyconstrainsthe current roundof conflict. How and why does thathappen?To what extent and how, for example, does accumulatedknowledge of theirrelationshipaffect how leadersof Israeland Syria shift among open warfare,mutualharassment, proxy battles,and uneasy peace? Bad answersbeckon. The first bad answer,quite popularthese days, declares that experienceof interactionaltersindividualconsciousness, eitherby changing means-endcalculationsor by adjustingthe link between feeling andmemory.The answer is bad because it begs the question:How do pairs or largersets of actors in the form of recognizable actually create and change shared understandings bodies of dialects, law, and diplomacy? claim-makingperformances, A second bad answer used to be much more popular,but has lost much of its appeal in recent decades. The answer:Society does it. The answer is doubly bad because it invokes a dubious agent and fails to state how or why that agent work. accomplishesits transformative A thirdbad answerdeclares that culture,as the repositoryof collective experience, embeds histories in relations.The answeris even worse than the firsttwo because it combines their defects. It begs the question of how culture-that is, sharedunderstandings and theirrepresentations-changes as it invokes a dubious and fails to agent specify how thatagent createseffects in social life. Astonishedby my ignorance,studentsof conversation, stronginteraction,symbolic interaction,collective memory,and culturalevolution will no doubt claim thatthey have alreadyprovidedsuperioraccountsof how relationsstorehistories. To them I reply in advance:show us. My own attemptsto adaptaccountsin those fields to contentious repertoires,rights, and war have so far yielded tantalizing one version or suggestions,but no persuasiveanswers.Most of them incorporate anotherof the threebad answers. Good answers?If I really knew, I wouldn'tbe writingthis essay. For the sake of stimulatingargument,let me neverthelessidentify two paths that seem worth
exploring. We might call them creative interaction and cultural ecology.

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HOW DORELATIONS STORE HISTORIES

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Creative interactionappearsmost visibly in such activities as jazz and soccer. In these cases, participants work within rough agreementson proceduresand arbiters set on limits outcomes, performances,individual dexterity,knowledge, and disciplined preparation generallyyield superiorplay, yet the rigid equivalent of military drill destroys the enterprise.Both jazz and soccer, when well executed, proceedthroughimprovisedinteraction,surprise,incessanterrorand errorbetween solo and ensemble action, and repeatedresponses correction,alternation to understandings sharedby at least pairs of players. After the fact, participants and spectatorscreate shared stories of what happened,and striking improvisations shape futureperformances. If we could explainhow humanbeings bringoff such improvisatoryadventures,we could be well on our way to accountingfor how relations store histories in contentiousrepertoires,conversation,rights and obligations,war and peace, and similarphenomena. Culturalecology? Social life consists of transactions among social sites, some of them occupied by individualpersons, but most of them occupied by shifting aspects or clusters of persons. None of the sites, goes the reasoning,contains all the culture-all the sharedunderstandings-on which transactions in its vicinity draw.But transactionsamong sites produceinterdependence among extensively connected sites, deposit relatedculturalmaterialin those sites, transformshared in the process, and thus make large stores of cultureavailableto understandings site anyparticular throughits connectionswith othersites. Relationsstorehistories in this dispersedway. Neither the creative interactionnor the cultural ecology path is necessarily inconsistent with the genetic, evolutionary,and neurophysiologicalaccounts of humansocial life thatwill surelyloom muchlargerin sociologists' thinkingduring the next few decadesthanthey haveduringthe twentiethcentury.In fact, if genetic, evolutionary,or neurophysiologicaltheorists would take the storage of histories that has so far eluded by relations seriously,they might supply the breakthrough workadaysociologists. Visit the Annual Reviewshome page at www.AnnualReviews.org

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