164 books match the query 'Revolution' and 33 start with r

cover of Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar: The Memoirs of Ali Sultan Issa and Seif Sharif Hamad

Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar

The Memoirs of Ali Sultan Issa and Seif Sharif Hamad

G. Thomas Burgess

Ohio University Press, 2009

Zanzibar has had the most turbulent postcolonial history of any part of the United Republic of Tanzania, yet few sources explain the reasons why. The current political impasse in the islands is a contest over the question of whether to revere and sustain the Zanzibari Revolution of 1964, in which thousands of islanders, mostly Arab, lost their lives. It is also about whether Zanzibar’s union with the Tanzanian mainland—cemented only a few months after the revolution—should be strengthened, reformed, or dissolved. Defenders of the revolution claim it was necessary to right a century of wrongs. They speak the language of African nationalism and aspire to unify the majority of Zanzibaris through the politics of race. Their opponents instead deplore the violence of the revolution, espouse the language of human rights, and claim the revolution reversed a century of social and economic development. They reject the politics of race, regarding Islam as a more worthy basis for cultural and political unity.

From a series of personal interviews conducted over several years, Thomas Burgess has produced two highly readable first-person narratives in which two nationalists in Africa describe their conflicts, achievements, failures, and tragedies. Their life stories represent two opposing arguments, for and against the revolution. Ali Sultan Issa traveled widely in the 1950s and helped introduce socialism into the islands. As a minister in the first revolutionary government he became one of Zanzibar’s most controversial figures, responsible for some of the government’s most radical policies. After years of imprisonment, he reemerged in the 1990s as one of Zanzibar’s most successful hotel entrepreneurs. Seif Sharif Hamad came of age during the revolution and became disenchanted with its broken promises and excesses. In the 1980s he emerged as a reformist minister, seeking to roll back socialism and authoritarian rule. After his imprisonment he has ever since served as a leading figure in what has become Tanzania’s largest opposition party

As Burgess demonstrates in his introduction, both memoirs trace Zanzibar’s postindependence trajectory and reveal how Zanzibaris continue to dispute their revolutionary heritage and remain divided over issues of memory, identity, and whether to remain a part of Tanzania. The memoirs explain how conflicts in the islands have become issues of national importance in Tanzania, testing that state’s commitment to democratic pluralism. They engage our most basic assumptions about social justice and human rights and shed light on a host of themes key to understanding Zanzibari history that are also of universal relevance, including the legacies of slavery and colonialism and the origins of racial violence, poverty, and underdevelopment. They also show how a cosmopolitan island society negotiates cultural influences from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

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cover of Radiation and Revolution

Radiation and Revolution

Sabu Kohso

Duke University Press, 2020

In Radiation and Revolution political theorist and anticapitalist activist Sabu Kohso uses the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to illuminate the relationship between nuclear power, capitalism, and the nation-state. Combining an activist's commitment to changing the world with a theorist's determination to grasp the world in its complexity, Kohso outlines how the disaster is not just a pivotal event in postwar Japan; it represents the epitome of the capitalist-state mode of development that continues to devastate the planet's environment. Throughout, he captures the lived experiences of the disaster's victims, shows how the Japanese government's insistence on nuclear power embodies the constitution of its regime under the influence of US global strategy, and considers the future of a radioactive planet driven by nuclearized capitalism. As Kohso demonstrates, nuclear power is not a mere source of energy—it has become the organizing principle of the global order and the most effective way to simultaneously accumulate profit and govern the populace. For those who aspire to a world free from domination by capitalist nation-states, Kohso argues, the abolition of nuclear energy and weaponry is imperative.
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cover of Reaction and Revolution: Rhetorics of the Radical Right

Reaction and Revolution

Rhetorics of the Radical Right

Kevin Musgrave

Michigan State University Press, 2027

Reaction and Revolution situates the resurgence of far-right movements and thinkers within a longer intellectual history that emerged primarily in interwar Germany—a philosophical conversation centered on political theology. Arguing that the more radically democratic modes of political theology offer better ways to understand and to counter the far right’s rhetorical appeal, this book offers a rhetorical-intellectual critique of three key thinkers and their allied movements: Paul Gottfried and the American paleoconservatives, Guillaume Faye and the French Identitarians, and Nick Land and the Dark Enlightenment. Kevin Musgrave argues that a radical political theology of race offers meaningful ways of challenging the right’s efforts to build a global imperium of whiteness and of reclaiming the promise of human dignity.

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cover of Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas

Reading, Writing, and Revolution

Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas

By Philis M. Barragán Goetz

University of Texas Press, 2020

2022 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award
Tejas Foco Non-fiction Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies
2021 Tejano Book Prize, Tejano Genealogy Society of Austin
2021 Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation
2021 Runner-up, Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book

The first book on the history of escuelitas, Reading, Writing, and Revolution examines the integral role these grassroots community schools played in shaping Mexican American identity.

Language has long functioned as a signifier of power in the United States. In Texas, as elsewhere in the Southwest, ethnic Mexicans’ relationship to education—including their enrollment in the Spanish-language community schools called escuelitas—served as a vehicle to negotiate that power. Situating the history of escuelitas within the contexts of modernization, progressivism, public education, the Mexican Revolution, and immigration, Reading, Writing, and Revolution traces how the proliferation and decline of these community schools helped shape Mexican American identity.

Philis M. Barragán Goetz argues that the history of escuelitas is not only a story of resistance in the face of Anglo hegemony but also a complex and nuanced chronicle of ethnic Mexican cultural negotiation. She shows how escuelitas emerged and thrived to meet a diverse set of unfulfilled needs, then dwindled as later generations of Mexican Americans campaigned for educational integration. Drawing on extensive archival, genealogical, and oral history research, Barragán Goetz unravels a forgotten narrative at the crossroads of language and education as well as race and identity.

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cover of Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance from Post-World War II to the Black Arts Movement

Readying the Revolution

African American Theater and Performance from Post-World War II to the Black Arts Movement

Jonathan Shandell

University of Michigan Press, 2025

2026 American Theatre and Drama Society John W. Frick Book Award Winner

Starting in 1966, African American activist Stokely Carmichael and other political leaders adopted the phrase "Black Power!" The slogan captured a militant, revolutionary spirit that was already emerging in the work of playwrights, poets, musicians, and visual artists throughout the Black Arts movement of the mid-1960s. But the story of those theater artists and performers whose work helped bring about the Black Arts revolution has not fully been told. Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance from Post-World War II to the Black Arts Movement explores the dynamic era of Black culture between the end of World War II and the start of the Black Arts Movement (1946-1964) by illuminating how artists and innovators such as Jackie Robinson, Lorraine Hansberry, Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, and others helped radicalize Black culture and Black political thought. In doing so, these artists defied white cultural hegemony in the United States, and built the foundation for the revolutionary movement in Black theater that followed in the mid 1960s. Through archival research, close textual reading, and an analysis of performance artifacts, Shandell demonstrates how these artists negotiated a space on the public stage for cultivating radical Black aesthetics and built the foundation for the revolutionary movement in Black theater that followed in the mid-1960s.

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cover of Rebellion or Revolution?

Rebellion or Revolution?

Harold Cruse

University of Minnesota Press, 2009

A classic work of African American cultural, social, and political thought by a forerunner of the Black Power movement

One of the leading writers of African American intellectual life in the second half of the twentieth century, Harold Cruse first came to international attention in 1967 with the publication of his influential and inflammatory book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. This fiercely opinionated and deeply informed critique of both integrationism and black nationalism established Cruse as a bold new voice on race and resistance in America.

First published in the wake of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual’s success, Rebellion or Revolution? collects reviews and essays Cruse wrote between 1950 and 1966, examining the relevance of such figures as James Baldwin, Booker T. Washington, Albert Camus, and Josephine Baker, as well as such subjects as Marxism and the African American community, the economics of black nationalism, and the emerging Black Power movement. Rebellion or Revolution? contains a number of significant writings not available elsewhere.Now, with a new foreword by Cedric Johnson, this work finally emerges as both an essential document from a crucial moment in African American history and a road map to the origins and evolution of Cruse’s critical thought, asserting its importance in today’s debates on race in America.
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cover of Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War

Remembering the Revolution

Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War

Michael A. McDonnell

University of Massachusetts Press, 2013

In today's United States, the legacy of the American Revolution looms large. From presidential speeches to bestselling biographies, from conservative politics to school pageants, everybody knows something about the Revolution. Yet what was a messy, protracted, divisive, and destructive war has calcified into a glorified founding moment of the American nation. Disparate events with equally diverse participants have been reduced to a few key scenes and characters, presided over by well-meaning and wise old men.

Recollections of the Revolution did not always take today's form. In this lively collection of essays, historians and literary scholars consider how the first three generations of American citizens interpreted their nation's origins. The volume introduces readers to a host of individuals and groups both well known and obscure, from Molly Pitcher and “forgotten father” John Dickinson to African American Baptists in Georgia and antebellum pacifists. They show how the memory of the Revolution became politicized early in the nation's history, as different interests sought to harness its meaning for their own ends. No single faction succeeded, and at the outbreak of the Civil War the American people remained divided over how to remember the Revolution.

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cover of Rereading the Revolution: The Turn-of-the-Century American Revolutionary War Novel

Rereading the Revolution

The Turn-of-the-Century American Revolutionary War Novel

Anita Lawson

University of Wisconsin Press, 2000

Approximately fifty historical novels dealing with the American Revolution were published in the United States from 1896 to 1906. Benjamin S. Lawson critically examines the narrative strategies employed in these works and the ways in which fiction is made to serve the purpose of vivifying national history.
    Writing within the conventions of the historical romance, these authors created plots that  reflect the enveloping concerns of the War for Independence, such as the young American woman who often must choose between suitors on opposite sides in the wider conflict.
    Lawson concludes that these works reassured readers of the worth of an Anglo-American heritage. They were escapist fantasies to the degree that they failed to confront contemporary realities of crisis and change: the New Immigration, urbanization and industrialization, labor strife, the plight of the poor, and agitation on behalf of women and ethnic minorities.

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cover of Revolution From Without: Yucatan, Mexico, and the United States, 1880–1924

Revolution From Without

Yucatan, Mexico, and the United States, 1880–1924

Gilbert M. Joseph

Duke University Press, 1988

"In addition to the relevance provided by contemporary events, the republication of Revolution from Without comes at a particularly effervescent moment in Latin American revolutionary studies. An ongoing discourse among political sociologists, anthropologists and historians has greatly enriched our understanding of the political economy and social history of revolutions and popular insurgencies."—from the preface to the paperback edition
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cover of Revolution and Continuity

Revolution and Continuity

Peter Barker

Catholic University of America Press, 2018

This volume presents new work in history and historiography to the increasingly broad audience for studies of the history and philosophy of science. These essays are linked by a concern to understand the context of early modern science in its own context.
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cover of Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation

Revolution and Disenchantment

Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation

Fadi A. Bardawil

Duke University Press, 2020

The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.
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cover of Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust

Revolution and Genocide

On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust

Robert Melson

University of Chicago Press, 1992

In a study that compares the major attempts at genocide in world history, Robert Melson creates a sophisticated framework that links genocide to revolution and war. He focuses on the plights of Jews after the fall of Imperial Germany and of Armenians after the fall of the Ottoman as well as attempted genocides in the Soviet Union and Cambodia. He argues that genocide often is the end result of a complex process that starts when revolutionaries smash an old regime and, in its wake, try to construct a society that is pure according to ideological standards.
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cover of Revolution and Its Narratives: China's Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949-1966

Revolution and Its Narratives

China's Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949-1966

Cai Xiang

Duke University Press, 2016

Published in China in 2010, Revolution and Its Narratives is a historical, literary, and critical account of the cultural production of the narratives of China's socialist revolution. Through theoretical, empirical, and textual analysis of major and minor novels, dramas, short stories, and cinema, Cai Xiang offers a complex study that exceeds the narrow confines of existing views of socialist aesthetics. By engaging with the relationship among culture, history, and politics in the context of the revolutionary transformation of Chinese society and arts, Cai illuminates the utopian promise as well as the ultimate impossibility of socialist cultural production. Translated, annotated, and edited by Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong, this translation presents Cai's influential work to English-language readers for the first time.
 
 
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cover of Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan

Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan

J. Victor Koschmann

University of Chicago Press, 1996

After World War II, Japanese intellectuals believed that world history was moving inexorably toward bourgeois democracy and then socialism. But who would be the agents—the active "subjects"—of that revolution in Japan? Intensely debated at the time, this question of active subjectivity influenced popular ideas about nationalism and social change that still affect Japanese political culture today.

In a major contribution to modern Japanese intellectual history, J. Victor Koschmann analyzes the debate over subjectivity. He traces the arguments of intellectuals from various disciplines and political viewpoints, and finds that despite their stress on individual autonomy, they all came to define subjectivity in terms of deterministic historical structures, thus ultimately deferring the possibility of radical change in Japan.

Establishing a basis for historical dialogue about democratic revolution, this book will interest anyone concerned with issues of nationalism, postcolonialism, and the formation of identities.
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cover of Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power

Revolution and World Politics

The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power

Fred Halliday

Duke University Press, 1999

Revolutions, as much as international war or nationalism, have shaped the development of world politics. In cause, ideology, and consequence they have merited description as a “sixth great power” alongside the dominant nations. In Revolution and World Politics Fred Halliday reassesses the role of revolution from the French Revolution to the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of communism.
Halliday begins by tracing the origins and evolution of the modern concept of “revolution” and placing it in historical context. Arguing that revolution is central to any understanding of international relations, he examines the internationalist ideology of revolutionaries who are committed to promoting change elsewhere by exposing revolution. In contrast with the claims of revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, he sees revolutions both as part of an internationalist social conflict and as a challenge to the system of states. Chapters on the distinct foreign policies of revolutionary states are followed by discussions of war, counterrevolution, and postrevolutionary transformation. The study concludes with a reassessment of the place of revolution within international relations theory and in modern history, drawing out implications for their incidence and character in the twenty-first century.
Students and scholars of international relations, political science, sociology, and history will value this major contribution to understanding worldwide developments in government and society.
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cover of Revolution as Reformation: Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832

Revolution as Reformation

Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832

Edited by Peter C. Messer and William Harrison Taylor

University of Alabama Press, 2021

Essays that explore how Protestants responded to the opportunities and perils of revolution in the transatlantic age

Revolution as Reformation: Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832 highlights the role that Protestantism played in shaping both individual and collective responses to revolution. These essays explore the various ways that the Protestant tradition, rooted in a perpetual process of recalibration and reformulation, provided the lens through which Protestants experienced and understood social and political change in the Age of Revolutions. In particular, they call attention to how Protestants used those changes to continue or accelerate the Protestant imperative of refining their faith toward an improved vision of reformed religion.

The editors and contributors define faith broadly: they incorporate individuals as well as specific sects and denominations, and as much of “life experience” as possible, not just life within a given church. In this way, the volume reveals how believers combined the practical demands of secular society with their personal faith and how, in turn, their attempts to reform religion shaped secular society.

The wide-ranging essays highlight the exchange of Protestant thinkers, traditions, and ideas across the Atlantic during this period. These perspectives reveal similarities between revolutionary movements across and around the Atlantic. The essays also emphasize the foundational role that religion played in people’s attempts to make sense of their world, and the importance they placed on harmonizing their ideas about religion and politics. These efforts produced novel theories of government, encouraged both revolution and counterrevolution, and refined both personal and collective understandings of faith and its relationship to society.

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cover of Revolution in Ireland: Popular Militancy, 1917 to 1923

Revolution in Ireland

Popular Militancy, 1917 to 1923

Conor Kostick

Pluto Press, 1996

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cover of Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation

Revolution in Psychology

Alienation to Emancipation

Ian Parker

Pluto Press, 2007

"A radical methodological approach to psychology that is open to social change - in an anti-capitalist, anti-racist and feminist politics." Antonio Negri

Psychology is meant to help people cope with the afflictions of modern society. But how useful is it? Ian Parker argues that current psychological practice has become part of the problem, rather than the solution.

Ideal for undergraduates, this book deconstructs the discipline to reveal the neoliberal sensitivities that underlie its theory and practice. Psychology focuses on the happiness of 'the individual'. Yet it neglects the fact that the happiness of the individual depends on their social and political surroundings.

Ian Parker argues that a new approach to psychology is needed. He offers an alternative vision, outlining how the discipline can be linked to political practice and how it can help people as part of a wider progressive agenda. This groundbreaking book is at the cutting edge of current thinking on the discipline and should be required reading on all psychology courses.
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cover of Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in the Syrian Kurdistan

Revolution in Rojava

Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in the Syrian Kurdistan

Michael Knapp, Ercan Ayboga, and Anja Flach

Pluto Press, 2016

“Their first-hand experiences and active participation in the anti-capitalist society being built in the region make this the first detailed account of the popular revolution….The definitive book so far on Rojava."― Morning Star                                         
 
Revolution in Rojava tells the story of Rojava's groundbreaking experiment in what they call democratic confederalism, a communally organized democracy that is fiercely anti-capitalist and committed to female equality, while rejecting reactionary nationalist ideologies.
 
Rooted in the ideas of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, the system is built on effective gender quotas, bottom-up democratic structures, far-sighted ecological policies, and a powerful militancy that has allowed the region to keep ISIS at bay.
 
Given the widespread violence and suffering in Syria, it's not unreasonable that outsiders look at the situation as unrelentingly awful. And while the reality of the devastation is undeniable, there is reason for hope in at least one small pocket of the nation: the cantons of Rojava in Syrian Kurdistan, where in the wake of war people are quietly building one of the most progressive societies in the world today. Chapters here include:
 
*Rojava's Diverse Cultures
*Democratic Confederalism 
*The Liberation
*A Women's Revolution
*Democratic Autonomy in Rojava
*Civil Society Associations
*The Theory of the Rose: Defense 
*The New Justice System
*Democratization of Education
*Health Care 
*The Social Economy
*Ecological Challenges 
 
This first full-length study of democratic developments in Rojava tells an extraordinary and powerfully hopeful story of a little-known battle for true freedom in dark times. With excellent first-hand background information about this important, but little understood struggle, Revolution in Rojava will educate and inspire the reader to learn more about Rojava, Syria, and the fight for change in one of the world’s most dangerous regions.
 
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cover of Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru

Revolution in the Andes

The Age of Túpac Amaru

Sergio Serulnikov

Duke University Press, 2013

Revolution in the Andes is an in-depth history of the Túpac Amaru insurrection, the largest and most threatening indigenous challenge to Spanish rule in the Andean world after the Conquest. Between 1780 and 1782, insurgent armies were organized throughout the Andean region. Some of the oldest and most populous cities in this region—including Cusco, La Paz, Puno, and Oruro—were besieged, assaulted, or occupied. Huge swaths of the countryside fell under control of the rebel forces. While essentially an indigenous movement, the rebellion sometimes attracted mestizo and Creole support for ousting the Spanish and restoring rule of the Andes to the land's ancestral owners. Sergio Serulnikov chronicles the uprisings and the ensuing war between rebel forces and royalist armies, emphasizing that the insurrection was comprised of several regional movements with varied ideological outlooks, social makeup, leadership structures, and expectations of change.
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cover of Revolution in the City of Heroes: A Memoir of the Battle that Sparked Indonesia's National Revolution

Revolution in the City of Heroes

A Memoir of the Battle that Sparked Indonesia's National Revolution

Suhario Padmodiwiryo

National University of Singapore Press, 2016

The diary of 24-year-old Indonesian medical student Suhario Padmodiwiryo,
alias ‘Hario Kecik,” Revolution in the City of Heroes is an evocative first-hand
account of the popular uprising in Surabaya. It vividly portrays the chaotic swirl
of events and the heady emotion of young people ready to sacrifice their lives
for independence.


Newly liberated from nearly four brutal years under Japanese control, the
people of Indonesia faced great uncertainty in October 1945. As the British
Army attempted to take control of the city of Surabaya, maintain order and
deal with surrendered Japanese personnel, their actions were interpreted by
the young residents of Surabaya as a plan to restore Dutch colonial rule. In
response, the youth of the city seized Japanese arms and repelled the force sent
to occupy the city. They then held off British reinforcements for two weeks,
battling tanks and heavy artillery with little more than light weapons and sheer
audacity. Though eventually defeated, Surabaya’s defenders had set the stage
for Indonesia’s national revolution.
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cover of Revolution in the Echo Chamber: Audio Drama's Past, Present and Future

Revolution in the Echo Chamber

Audio Drama's Past, Present and Future

Leslie McMurtry

Intellect Books, 2019

Revolution in the Echo Chamber is a sociohistorical analysis of British and American radio and audio drama from 1919 to present day. This volume examines the aesthetic, cultural, and technical elements of audio drama along with its context within the literary canon. In addition to the form and development of aural drama, Leslie Grace McMurtry provides an exploration of mental imagery generation in relation to its reception and production. Building on historical analysis, Revolution in the Echo Chamber provides contemporary perspective, drawing on trends from the current audio drama environment to analyze how people listen to audio drama, including podcast drama, today--and how they might listen in the future.
 
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cover of Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell

Revolution of the Ordinary

Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell

Toril Moi

University of Chicago Press, 2017

This radically original book argues for the power of ordinary language philosophy—a tradition inaugurated by Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and extended by Stanley Cavell—to transform literary studies. In engaging and lucid prose, Toril Moi demonstrates this philosophy’s unique ability to lay bare the connections between words and the world, dispel the notion of literature as a monolithic concept, and teach readers how to learn from a literary text.

Moi first introduces Wittgenstein’s vision of language and theory, which refuses to reduce language to a matter of naming or representation, considers theory’s desire for generality doomed to failure, and brings out the philosophical power of the particular case. Contrasting ordinary language philosophy with dominant strands of Saussurean and post-Saussurean thought, she highlights the former’s originality, critical power, and potential for creative use. Finally, she challenges the belief that good critics always read below the surface, proposing instead an innovative view of texts as expression and action, and of reading as an act of acknowledgment. Intervening in cutting-edge debates while bringing Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell to new readers, Revolution of the Ordinary will appeal beyond literary studies to anyone looking for a philosophically serious account of why words matter.
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cover of Revolution on the Pampas: A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860–1910

Revolution on the Pampas

A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860–1910

By James R. Scobie

University of Texas Press, 1964

On the Argentine pampas, between the years 1860 and 1910, a dramatic social and agricultural revolution took place. The haunts of wild cattle, native peoples, and gauchos were transformed into cultivated fields and rich pastures. A land that had produced only scrawny sheep and cattle became one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat, corn, beef, mutton, and wool. A country that had had only a sparse and scattered Spanish and mestizo population now boasted a metropolis of one and a half million, and a national population of eight million people, nearly a third of whom were born in Europe. These were significant changes, and wheat growing played a major role in all of them. This study traces the development of the Argentine wheat zone, focusing on the part wheat played in forming the Argentina of today.

James R. Scobie begins his account with the first settlers who colonized Santa Fe in the 1850s and shows how they and thousands of other European immigrants converted this vast grassland into a world breadbasket. He explains why these small farmer-owners soon gave way to tenant farmers, and how crop farming developed primarily as servant to the predominant sheep and cattle interests. He expands on several factors responsible for this evolvement: the elimination of indigenous threat, the coming of the railroad, the agricultural policy—or lack of policy—of the Argentine government, and the urban orientation of the Argentine people.

The railroads, by suppressing the building of other roads through the pampas, had the effect of isolating the wheatgrowers. By making the products of the pampas available to world markets, the railroads opened up new trade, which helped the growth of cities tremendously; but this very prosperity pushed the cost of land far beyond the wheatgrower’s ability to buy it. The result was a pampas without settlers, a frontier filled with migrant sharecroppers and tenant farmers, a land exploited but not possessed. Transiency as well as isolation became the common denominators of these families, who were forced to move every few years to make way for more valued tenants—sheep and cattle. They left behind them no schools, no churches, no roads, no villages. Immigrants came to labor but not to sink their roots in the pampas.

Without sentimentality but with understanding and compassion, Scobie explores every facet of the lives of these laborers who created Argentina’s agricultural greatness. His examination of Argentina’s broad policies toward land, immigration, and tariffs shows that the national government had little lasting or effective interest in the country’s agricultural development. In a social sense, the thousands of immigrants who toiled the pampas were looked upon as the wild cattle or fertile soil—blessings which neither needed nor warranted official attention. Scobie’s conclusion is that Argentina got better than it deserved.

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cover of Revolution!: Sayings of Vladimir Lenin

Revolution!

Sayings of Vladimir Lenin

Edited by the Bodleian Library

Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” So wrote Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the USSR. Lenin was profoundly aware of the power of words. As a prolific writer and orator, he used his words to launch a soaring critique of imperialist society and to theorize the development of the world’s first socialist state. Much of his writing was translated into English in order to further the socialist cause.

Revolution! Sayings of Vladimir Lenin is a compilation of Lenin’s most famous sayings, taken from speeches, lectures, letters, and recorded conversations. Together, they show his views on topics ranging from democracy to terrorism, from religion to Stalin’s untrustworthiness, and from education to music. Accompanied by a range of striking images, including contemporary propaganda posters, photographs, portraits, illustrations, and Soviet art, these aphoristic proclamations offer an insight into the atmosphere of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia and the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most defining political figures.
 
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cover of Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of V.I. Lenin

Revolution, Democracy, Socialism

Selected Writings of V.I. Lenin

V. I. Lenin

Pluto Press, 2008

This is an entirely new collection of Lenin's writing. For the first time it brings together crucial shorter works, to show that Lenin held a life-long commitment to freedom and democracy. Le Blanc has written a comprehensive introduction, which gives an accessible overview of Lenin's life and work, and explains his relevance to political thought today.

Lenin has been much maligned in the mainstream, accused of viewing 'man as modeling clay' and of 'social engineering of the most radical kind.' However, in contrast to today's world leaders, who happily turn to violence to achieve their objectives, Lenin believed it impossible to reach his goals 'by any other path than that of political democracy.'

This collection will be of immense value to students encountering Lenin for the first time, and those looking for a new interpretation of one of the 20th century's most inspiring figures.

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cover of Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation

Revolution

A Sociological Interpretation

Michael Kimmel

Temple University Press, 1990

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cover of Revolution: Modern Uprisings in Ancient Time

Revolution

Modern Uprisings in Ancient Time

Miriam Leonard

University of Chicago Press, 2025

A consideration of how modern revolutions have employed tropes of classical antiquity.
 
Despite its Latin etymology, “revolution” in its modern understanding arguably did not exist in antiquity, and revolution as we know it today is considered by many theorists to be a term born in modernity. While they certainly had times of momentous political upheaval, the Greeks and Romans tended to understand such events as part of a narrative of political continuity rather than novelty or rupture. Nevertheless, modern revolutions have repeatedly appropriated tropes of classical discourse, such as freedom, tyranny, tragedy, and fraternity.
 
With this book, Miriam Leonard offers a conceptual history of revolution, unraveling modernity’s yearning for the new and questioning why ancient concepts continue to play such an important role in political uprisings. Leonard looks at examples of appeals to antiquity during the French and Haitian Revolutions, in anticolonial struggles, and feminist and queer movements and considers works of theorists such as Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Sigmund Freud that foreground an engagement with antiquity.
 
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cover of Revolution: Structure and Meaning in World History

Revolution

Structure and Meaning in World History

Saïd Amir Arjomand

University of Chicago Press, 2019

A revolution is a discontinuity: one political order replaces another, typically through whatever violent means are available. Modern theories of revolutions tend neatly to bracket the French Revolution of 1789 with the fall of the Soviet Union two hundred years later, but contemporary global uprisings—with their truly multivalent causes and consequences—can overwhelm our ability to make sense of them.

In this authoritative new book, Saïd Amir Arjomand reaches back to antiquity to propose a unified theory of revolution. Revolution illuminates the stories of premodern rebellions from the ancient world, as well as medieval European revolts and more recent events, up to the Arab Spring of 2011. Arjomand categorizes revolutions in two groups: ones that expand the existing body politic and power structure, and ones that aim to erode—but paradoxically augment—their authority. The revolutions of the past, he tells us, can shed light on the causes of those of the present and future: as long as centralized states remain powerful, there will be room for greater, and perhaps forceful, integration of the politically disenfranchised.
 
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cover of Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria's Kurds

Rojava

Revolution, War and the Future of Syria's Kurds

Thomas Schmidinger

Pluto Press, 2018

The Kurdish territory of Rojava in Syria has in recent years become a watchword for radical democracy, communalism, and gender equality. This book, however, argues that much of how we see Rojava from the outside is a projection of the values of Western radicals whose understanding of the complexities of the situation are limited. Thomas Schmidinger has been working in Rojava for seventeen years, and here he gives us the clearest picture yet of the history, politics, and society of the region today. He sketches the historical background of the Kurds in Syria, then details the developments since the outbreak of war in 2011, including the establishment of the Kurdish para-state and ongoing conflicts between Kurdish parties about how it should be administered. Drawing on interviews with leaders from different parties, civil society activists, artists, fighters, and religious leaders, Schmidinger delivers an authentic, nuanced, unromanticized portrait of Rojava today.
 
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cover of Romance, Remedies, and Revolution: The Journal of Dr. Elihu Ashley of Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1773-1775

Romance, Remedies, and Revolution

The Journal of Dr. Elihu Ashley of Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1773-1775

Edited by Amelia F. Miller and A. R. Riggs

University of Massachusetts Press, 2007

Elihu Ashley (1750–1817) was a twenty-three-year-old medical apprentice in Deerfield, Massachusetts, when he began keeping a personal journal in March 1773. Over the next two-and-a-half years, he recorded, in clear and simple prose, just about everything he did and everyone he saw. Although carefully preserved, the journal was later suppressed by the town historian, presumably because he found some of the entries morally objectionable. Rediscovered by Amelia F. Miller, and coedited by Miller and A. R. Riggs, this document now appears in print for the first time, accompanied by related letters of Ashley's extended family as well as brief biographies of more than 750 people mentioned by the young doctor in his writings.

With flashes of humor and close attention to detail, Ashley describes a broad range of activities and experiences in the small village of Deerfield and the surrounding towns of the Connecticut River valley. Articulate as well as observant, this former schoolteacher conveys a sense of immediacy that brings even the most mundane daily events to life. He discusses medical theory and practice, revolutionary politics, farming, his family, his circle of friends, and amusements ranging from singing and dancing to sleigh riding and bouts of drunkenness. He also writes about his love life, including a dalliance with the older sister of his fiancee, Polly Williams, while the latter is away visiting relatives in the Berkshires.

For Ashley, personal relationships and politics were the prominent issues of 1773 and 1774, as events in Massachusetts drew the province toward rebellion. He discusses the gathering of angry mobs in response to the so-called Intolerable Acts, the stoppage of the courts in Hampshire County, the anarchy that ensued, and the persecution of loyalists, with or without the sanction of law. When the revolution breaks out in April 1775, he describes the departure of companies of minutemen as they set out for Boston to challenge the British Army.

Six months later, in November 1775, the journal abruptly ends. By then, however, Elihu Ashley had already bequeathed to posterity an extraordinary firsthand account of life in rural New England in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence.
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cover of Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution

Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution

Raya Dunayevskaya

University of Illinois Press, 1991

In this important and wide-ranging critique of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) Raya Dunayevskaya examines the life, political thought, and action of one of the most critical revolutionary figures of our time. Dunayevskaya sheds new light on the questions of socialist democracy after the revolution, disclosing both the unprobed feminist dimension of Rosa Luxemburg and the previously unrecognized new moments in Marx's last decade concerning the role of women and the peasantry. As the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the United States, Dunayevskaya (1910-87) was an internationally respected writer, philosopher, and revolutionary. This new and expanded edition includes two previously unpublished articles by Dunayevskaya, including her "Challenge to all Post-Marx Marxists."

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cover of Russia's Social Gospel: The Orthodox Pastoral Movement in Famine, War, and Revolution

Russia's Social Gospel

The Orthodox Pastoral Movement in Famine, War, and Revolution

Daniel Scarborough

University of Wisconsin Press, 2023

The late Russian Empire experienced rapid economic change, social dislocation, and multiple humanitarian crises, enduring two wars, two famines, and three revolutions. A “pastoral activism” took hold as parish clergymen led and organized the response of Russia’s Orthodox Christians to these traumatic events. In Russia’s Social Gospel, Daniel Scarborough considers the roles played by pastors in the closing decades of the failing tsarist empire and the explosive 1917 revolutions.
 
This volume draws upon extensive archival research to examine the effects of the pastoral movement on Russian society and the Orthodox Church. Scarborough argues that the social work of parish clergymen shifted the focus of Orthodox practice in Russia toward cooperative social activism as a devotional activity. He furthers our understanding of Russian Orthodoxy by illuminating the difficult position of parish priests, who were charged with both spiritual and secular responsibilities but were supported by neither church nor state. His nuanced look at the pastorate shows how social and historical traumas shifted perceptions of what being religious meant, in turn affecting how the Orthodox Church organized itself, and contributed to Russia’s modernization.
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