Revolution and Resistance Flashcards
According to Skocpol, what are social revolutions?
Rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below.
What is unique to social revolution is that basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion.
How did Marx explain revolution?
- Not as isolated episodes of violence or conflict but as class-based movements growing out of objective structural contradictions within society e.g. the unequal control of productive property and the appropriation of economic surpluses from direct producers by nonproducers
- Revolution sparked by the emergence of a disjuncture within a mode of production between the social (material) forces and social relations of production
- This disjuncture expresses itself in intensifying class conflicts which foster a class consciousness and precipitate unified revolution
What is an aggregate-psychological theory of revolution?
A theory which attempts to explain revolutions in terms of the psychological motivations for engaging in violence or opposition
e.g. Ted Gurr’s ‘Why Men Rebel’
What is a systems/value consensus theory of revolution?
A theory which explains revolutions as violent responses of ideological movements to severe disequilibrium in social systems
e.g. Chalmers Johnson’s ‘Revolutionary Change’
What is a political conflict theory of revolution?
A theory which argues that conflict among governments and organized groups contending for power must central to explaining collective violence and revolutions
e.g. Charles Tilly’s ‘From Mobilisation to Revolution’
How does Ted Gurr explain the causes of political violence in ‘Why Men Rebel’? Which ‘form’ is revolution?
- Political violence occurs when many
people in society become angry, especially if existing cultural and practical conditions provide encouragement for aggression against political targets. - People become angry when there occurs ‘relative deprivation’ - a gap between the opportunities they feel entitled to and those they get
- Distinguishes ‘turmoil’, ‘conspiracy’, and ‘internal war’ as the major forms of violence
Revolution is an ‘internal war’
How does Charles Tilly explain the causes of political action in ‘From Mobilisation to Revolution’?
How is revolution differentiated from other forms of political action?
- No matter how discontented people become, they cannot engage in political action unless they are part of at least minimally organized groups with access to some resources
- Revolutions and collective violence tend to flow directly out of a
population’s central political processes - The claims being made on the existing government by mobilized groups are more important than the general satisfaction of those groups
- Claims for established places within the structure of power are crucial
- Collective violence only a by-product of normal processes of group competition over power and conflicting goals
Revolution is specifically when there is a challenge to ultimate political sovereignty, and in which challengers succeed at least to some degree in
displacing existing power-holders
How does Charmers Johnson explain the causes of revolution in ‘Revolutionary Change’?
What are the distinctive features of revolution?
- A normal society should be functionally adapted to the demands of its environment with an internally consistent set of institutions that express core societal values in norms and roles
- Revolution is the purposeful implementation of a strategy of violence in order to effect a change in social structure
- They emerge when the existing ‘normal’ social structure comes into crisis e.g. political structure loses its legitimacy
- Successful revolution resynchronises the social system’s values and environment
Violence and change are the distinctive features of revolution
