The Palgrave Handbook of Social Movements, Revolution, and Social Transformation

Book excerpt: This handbook on social movements, revolution, and social transformation analyzes people’s struggles to bring about social change in the age of globalization. It examines the origins, nature, dynamics, and challenges of such movements as they aim to change dominant social, economic, and political institutions and structures across the globe. Departing from a theoretical introduction that explores major classical and contemporary theories of social movements and transformation, the contributions collected here use a class-based approach to examine key cases of social movements, rebellions, and revolutions worldwide from the turn of the twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries. Against this wide-ranging background, the handbook concludes by charting the varied and competing future developments and trajectories of social movements, revolutions, and social transformations.