The Sociology of Revolutions – Types of Revolutions

The Sociology of Revolutions, written by Pitirim Sorokin, is a fascinating study of the history of revolutions. The concept was first developed by Thomas Hobbes, who lived during the English Revolution. Throughout his writing, he demonstrates how societal change can result in positive change. But how do revolutions actually take place? What causes them, and how can we prevent them? In this article, I will examine three major types of revolutions.

Social revolutions

A recent book, “The Sociology of Revolutions,” explains what it means to be a revolutionary. Pitirim Sorokin argues that revolutions are natural and inevitable, and that their roots lie in the work of Thomas Hobbes, who wrote a book entitled Leviathan and lived during the English Revolution. Today, sociologists are resurrecting the field of revolutions. Here are some examples of how revolutionary forces have changed societies and their values.

Unlike previous revolution theories, sociologists today focus on the inter-connected nature of revolutionary dynamics. They argue that revolutions are inter-social from the top to the bottom of the social structure, and that a single cause may be insufficient to trigger a widespread movement. However, in the 21st century, there will probably be fewer revolutions and more movements for global justice. For this reason, fewer attempts are made to develop a general theory of revolution. Instead, they study different revolutionary types and case studies. As a result, a synergistic structural-cultural methodology has been developed.

Guerrilla-based revolutions

While big data and social media have made workplaces more responsive, they have also given us nightmares like election meddling, fake news, and the exploitation of the gig economy. Guerrilla-based revolutionaries have a different view, creating hope for future revolutions through digital technologies. Currently, platform-based radical movements include Deliveroo and Uber strikes. But these forms of revolutions are still in their early stages.

The Foco theory was developed by Regis Debray and draws inspiration from the experience of Che Guevara’s group during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Guevara’s group of eighty-two members landed in Cuba in December 1956 and launched a guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Although they were poorly armed, they won victories against Batista’s army, estimated at thirty-five thousand men. Ultimately, the small group took over Havana in December 1958.

Planned revolutions

The underlying assumptions in sociology of planned revolutions are as follows: revolutionary events have a distinctive ideological foundation. Such revolutionary situations are dynamic in nature, and ideology is a distinguishing characteristic of revolutionary situations. After the event, a common understanding settles down. Afterwards, the primary ideological basis of the challengers is coded into seven categories. Typically, social movements with military backing are more successful, and these forces are defeated.

While the history of revolutions is long and varied, recent cases are highly comparable to each other. In Latin America, the Salvadoran Civil War is almost as well known as the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Mid-20th-century revolutionary situations also tend to outpace the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century. As a result, popular revolutions are typically Latin American, although there are classic examples as well.

Synthetic theory of revolution

In sociology of revolution, the goal is theoretical richness, and this is achieved in the best cases through laterality between the different generations. Although revolution is generally understood as a process of distal causation of underlying conditions, there are also recurrent debates between generations. In the last decade, the sociology of revolution has been lacking a touchstone text that would help researchers establish the nature of the revolutionary process.

The Arab Revolutions of 2011 created a huge awareness of the phenomenon, spawning several new works and voluminous notice of case studies. Ketchley (2017) focuses on Egypt’s 2011 uprising, expanding the case universe by applying known tools of analysis to explain why the protestors were able to oust Mubarak but not be able to consolidate their gains. Other works seek to understand a new phenomenon, rather than explaining what is already known.