Why revolution

However, such methods have not been very successful in predicting revolutions. Eric Selbin, a political science professor and University Scholar at Southwestern University who studies revolutions, believes social scientists have been overlooking a key indicator: the power of cultural factors such as storytelling and the use of symbolism.

The book is based on more than 20 years of research in countries such as Nicaragua, Grenada, Mexico, Spain and France. In doing his research, Selbin says he was struck by how many times people told him stories. Selbin says stories allow us to imagine the transformation of our lives and our world. Selbin says this helps explain why revolutions have not occurred in places where the economy is bad, such as Haiti, Honduras and Somalia.

Selbin notes that stories also can help sustain people during the challenging times of a revolution. Since its publication in January , Selbin says the book has gained an audience much larger than he ever expected. The book has already been published in German, and translations into Arabic, Spanish and Turkish are in the works. Selbin says his theory is not meant to replace traditional social science methods, but rather to supplement them.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Europeans generally did what they could to prevent revolution and preserve the established order. The Church maintained the authority in medieval times, and it aimed to preserve stability in society at all costs.

Sometime during the Renaissance , however, the concept of revolution began to change. People began to believe change was necessary for society to progress. Between and , philosophical and political ideas were changing rapidly throughout the world. The Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Protestant Reformation all took place during this time period, and people expanded their worldviews as they gained knowledge of new concepts and accepted new ideas.

At this time in Europe, most countries had absolute monarchies, and people began to question the power of absolute governments. As their discontent grew, their questions turned to protests. A wave of revolutions took place in the s, an era commonly known as the Age Enlightenment—revolutions in France, in Latin America, and in the American colonies. In all these countries, the revolutions not only changed the political systems and replaced them with new ones, but they altered public belief and brought about sweeping changes in society as a whole.

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. But elsewhere, that progressive attitude was always met with resistance. It had to push through a curtain of some kind, to really make it progressive.

In San Francisco it was almost as if that curtain was drawn aside. That not only could you do more or wild things or unexpected things, but sometimes those things were almost even condoned.

People, if you knocked on doors, they shut them in your face, the minute you showed your credentials, I mean, "Don't want to talk to you, don't have to talk to you" -- and bam.

And out. And I mean that's just a manifestation of the hostility, really. Well, I helped start a lot of riots, shut down the college, 'cause I was a student then at U.

I was pretty militant. I burned a lot of flags I was in S. But I never did a bombing We did a lot I mean, blacks were armed. We were unfamiliar with that I was only 22 years old and I wasn't a violent person To give you an idea of how Berkeley was in those days, this radio station KSAN was a radical station. People would go by LeConte Avenue where this garage was, and all of a sudden they'd be followed by police because they had staked it out.

So people had actually called into KSAN, "I don't know what's going on, but stay away from that area, LeConte Avenue," and if any of us had heard that broadcast, we would never had been arrested. That's how crazy Berkeley was -- you actually got warnings on the radio California Radicals by the Mids. Tim Findley, investigative reporter, San Francisco Chronicle: In the mids the anti-war movement began to decline, simply because the [Vietnam] war was ending.

There was less and less of the mass movement going on in Berkeley, and more concentrated cells of people within Berkeley who were living out a lifestyle. That place and condition had existed since the Fifties and the Beat poets, [Jack] Kerouac and other people had really evolved around this whole area and were part of the non-conformity Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service.

Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter. Please, subscribe or login to access full text content. To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us. All Rights Reserved. OSO version 0. University Press Scholarship Online.