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Anatomies of Revolution
Recent years have seen renewed interest in the study of revolution. Spurred by events like the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the rise of Islamic State, and the emergence of populism, a new age of revolution has generated considerable interest. Yet, even as empirical studies of revolutions are thriving, there has been a stall in theories of revolution. Anatomies of Revolution offers a novel account of how revolutions begin, unfold and end. By combining insights from international relations, sociology, and global history, it outlines the benefits of a 'global historical sociology' of revolutionary change, one in which international processes take centre stage. Featuring a wide range of cases from across modern world history, this is a comprehensive account of one of the world's most important processes. It will interest students and scholars studying revolutions, political conflict and contentious politics in sociology, politics and international relations.
- GenresPolitics
296 pages, Paperback
Published July 25, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 24, 2020
Lawson argues that his book makes three important contributions to the study of revolution:
i. He advises for a thoroughly internationalist (he prefers the term inter-social) account of the revolutions from their beginning to the end. He thinks that the previous accounts of revolution considered the international dimension as yet another ingredient among others, while the revolutions are inter-social all the way down.
ii. He advocates a historicist account of revolutions, meaning that the scholar should care less about what may be called as the fundamental ingredients of revolutions than the historical unfolding of events. Since every revolution is unique, only a historicist account can make the repeating patterns of the revolutions visible.
iii. Very trendy in the last decades, Lawson argues that a relational approach, which conceptualizes the revolution as the emergent product of various dynamics, processes, actors that are subject to a continuous change themselves.
The other parts of the book tries to analyze some historical cases through this theoretical frame. Although the theory looks fine, I do not think that Lawson could fulfil its promises. His account barely goes beyond providing the short summaries of some revolutions and revolutionary attempts based on secondary sources. I do not think, for instance, that his idea of inter-sociality of revolutions is sufficiently demonstrated in any of his summaries. It's probably because a. when you try to cover this much ground in a book you have to skip a lot of details so much so that you start to become uninformative, b. It is always difficult to merge elaborate social theory with history. There is something in historical narrative that resists theoretical frameworks.
Second problem is that Lawson tends to classify the post-1989 reaction (actually everthing, from Occupy Wall Street to Syriza) as a revolution. Using the concept of "negotiated revolution" as a master term, he quickly crams all the reactionary social and political transformations of the last decades into the big bag of revolution, which I strongly disagree. From a global and "long-duree" perspective, if there is an ongoing struggle between a pro-revolutionary, egalitarian global network and a reactionary imperialist one, how can you classify a series of reactionary counter-revolutions against that revolutionary network as revolutions? Lawson's other work (The Global Transformation) too has those strange reactionary undertones typical of the non-marxist intellectuals.
Anyway. The book is good if you want to see a detailed review of previous academic studies of revolution.
i. He advises for a thoroughly internationalist (he prefers the term inter-social) account of the revolutions from their beginning to the end. He thinks that the previous accounts of revolution considered the international dimension as yet another ingredient among others, while the revolutions are inter-social all the way down.
ii. He advocates a historicist account of revolutions, meaning that the scholar should care less about what may be called as the fundamental ingredients of revolutions than the historical unfolding of events. Since every revolution is unique, only a historicist account can make the repeating patterns of the revolutions visible.
iii. Very trendy in the last decades, Lawson argues that a relational approach, which conceptualizes the revolution as the emergent product of various dynamics, processes, actors that are subject to a continuous change themselves.
The other parts of the book tries to analyze some historical cases through this theoretical frame. Although the theory looks fine, I do not think that Lawson could fulfil its promises. His account barely goes beyond providing the short summaries of some revolutions and revolutionary attempts based on secondary sources. I do not think, for instance, that his idea of inter-sociality of revolutions is sufficiently demonstrated in any of his summaries. It's probably because a. when you try to cover this much ground in a book you have to skip a lot of details so much so that you start to become uninformative, b. It is always difficult to merge elaborate social theory with history. There is something in historical narrative that resists theoretical frameworks.
Second problem is that Lawson tends to classify the post-1989 reaction (actually everthing, from Occupy Wall Street to Syriza) as a revolution. Using the concept of "negotiated revolution" as a master term, he quickly crams all the reactionary social and political transformations of the last decades into the big bag of revolution, which I strongly disagree. From a global and "long-duree" perspective, if there is an ongoing struggle between a pro-revolutionary, egalitarian global network and a reactionary imperialist one, how can you classify a series of reactionary counter-revolutions against that revolutionary network as revolutions? Lawson's other work (The Global Transformation) too has those strange reactionary undertones typical of the non-marxist intellectuals.
Anyway. The book is good if you want to see a detailed review of previous academic studies of revolution.
October 27, 2019
Lawson brings revolutionary theory to the Arab Spring in a well-thought out book stressing the historicist, intersocial and relational aspects of revolutions.
July 23, 2021
Not for beginners, unless for some reason you're really into theory.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews