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Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt

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First Published in 1978. This is a book about why people so often put up with being the victims of their societies and why at other times they become very angry and try with passion and forcefulness to do something about their situation. I his most ambition book to date, Barrington Moore, Jr explores a large part of the world's experience with injustice and its understanding of it. In search of general elements behind the acceptance of injustice he discusses the Untouchables of India, Nazi concentration camps, and the Milgram experiments on obedience to authority.

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

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About the author

Barrington Moore Jr.

13 books44 followers
Barrington Moore Jr. (12 May 1913 – 16 October 2005) was an American political sociologist, and the son of forester Barrington Moore. He is famous for his ''Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World'' (1966), a comparative study of [[modernization]] in Britain, France, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and India. His many other works include ''Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery'' (1972) and an analysis of rebellion, ''Injustice: the Social Basis of Obedience and Revolt'' (1978).

He graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts, where he received a thorough education in Latin and Greek and in history. He also became interested in political science, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1941, Moore obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Υale University. He worked as a policy analyst for the government, in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and at the Department of Justice. He met Herbert Marcuse, a lifelong friend, and also his future wife, Elizabeth Ito, at the OSS. His wife died in 1992. They had no children.

His academic career began in 1945 at the University of Chicago, in 1948 he went to Harvard University, joining the ''Russian Research Center'' in 1951. He was emerited in 1979. Moore published his first book, ''Soviet Politics'' in 1950 and ''Terror and Progress, USSR'' in 1954. In 1958 his book of six essays on methodology and theory, ''Political Power and Social Theory'', attacked the methodological outlook of 1950s social science. His students at Harvard included comparative social scientists Theda Skocpol, and Charles Tilly.

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18 reviews8 followers
June 8, 2020
A classic, breath-taking overview of the social foundations of revolt. It's increasingly difficult to find a historical sociologist who dares to undertake such a massive project to answer a simple yet profound question: when and why do people revolt against injustice?
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