Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 99

As all students of sociology and history are taught, the French Revolution of 1789 transformed France for ever. But why did it happen at that time? Was it just a historical accident or was it inevitable? The early twentieth-century revolutions in China and Russia not only turned those countries into communist societies, they also significantly shaped the direction of the modern world itself. Again, why then? The American sociologist Theda Skocpol (1947–) set out to uncover the similarities and differences across these revolutionary periods. Her ambitious task was to produce a general theory of the origins and nature of revolution grounded in detailed empirical studies. The result was States and Social Revolutions (1979), one of the classic studies of long-term social transformation.