Description
A cutting-edge appraisal of revolution and its future.On Revolutions, co-authored by six prominent scholars of revolutions, reinvigorates revolutionary studies for the twenty-first century. Integrating insights from diverse fields--including civil resistance studies, international relations, social movements, and terrorism--they offer new ways of thinking about persistent problems in the study of revolution. This book outlines an approach that reaches beyond the common categorical distinctions. As the authors argue, revolutions are not just political or social, but they feature many types of change. Structure and agency are not mutually distinct; they are mutually reinforcing processes. Contention is not just violent or nonviolent, but it is usually a mix of both. Revolutions do not just succeed or fail, but they achieve and simultaneously fall short. And causal conditions are not just domestic or international, but instead, they are dependent on the interplay of each. Demonstrating the merits of this approach through a wide range of cases, the authors explore new opportunities for conceptual thinking about revolution, provide methodological advice, and engage with the ethical issues that exist at the nexus of scholarship and activism.
Table of Contents
List of Figures and TablesAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Challenging the Way We Think About RevolutionsChapter 1: The Social-Political DichotomyChapter 2: The Structure-Agency DichotomyChapter 3: The Violence-Nonviolence DichotomyChapter 4: The Success-Failure DichotomyChapter 5: The Domestic-International DichotomyPart II: Challenging the Way We Theorize, Research, and Advise on RevolutionsChapter 6: Political Theory and the Dichotomies of Revolution: Hannah Arendt and Her CriticsChapter 7: Methodological Approaches to Studying RevolutionChapter 8: Ethics in Revolution(ary) ResearchConclusion: The Future of RevolutionNotesReferencesIndex
