Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France - Tapa dura

"Recommended."--Choice

In "Cultural Revolutions", Leora Auslander takes a highly original approach to the significance of the political changes wrought by the English Civil War (1642-1651), the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), and the French Revolution (1789-1799). This broadly conceived yet succinct essay advances a new argument: that these three revolutions were not bourgeois in character but were revolutions of culture that led to a transformation of the ways societies could be politicized. Auslander argues that these revolutions conferred new importance upon the symbols of state and upon the cultural components of our everyday lives - the clothes that cover our bodies, the food we eat, and the songs and plays to which we turn for distraction and insight.