The Revolutionary City

How and why cities have become the predominant sites for revolutionary upheavals in the contemporary world Examining the changing character of revolution around the world, The Revolutionary City focuses on the impact that the concentration of people, power, and wealth in cities exercises on revolutionary processes and outcomes. Once predominantly an urban and armed affair, revolutions in the twentieth century migrated to the countryside, as revolutionaries searched for safety from government repression and discovered the peasantry as a revolutionary force. But at the end of the twentieth century, as urban centers grew, revolution returned to the city—accompanied by a new urban civic repertoire espousing the containment of predatory government and relying on visibility and the power of numbers rather than arms. Using original data on revolutionary episodes since 1900, public opinion surveys, and engaging examples from around the world, Mark Beissinger explores the causes and consequences of the urbanization of revolution in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beissinger examines the compact nature of urban revolutions, as well as their rampant information problems and heightened uncertainty. He investigates the struggle for control over public space, why revolutionary contention has grown more pacified over time, and how revolutions involving the rapid assembly of hundreds of thousands in central urban spaces lead to diverse, ad hoc coalitions that have difficulty producing substantive change. The Revolutionary City provides a new understanding of how revolutions happen and what they might look like in the future.

Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City engages in alternative ways of reading foreign visual representations of Havana through analysis of advertising images, documentary films, and photographic texts. It explores key narratives relating to the projection of different Havana imaginaries and focuses on a range of themes including: pre-revolutionary Cuba; the dream of revolution; and the metaphor of the city “frozen-in-time.” The book also synthesizes contemporary debates regarding the notion of Havana as a real and imagined city space and fleshes out its theoretical insights with a series of stand-alone, important case studies linked to the representation of the Cuban capital in the Western imaginary. The interpretations in the book bring into focus a range of critical historical moments in Cuban history (including the Cuban Revolution and the “Special Period”) and consider the ways in which they have been projected in advertising, documentary film and photography outside the island.

Revolution in Mexico sought to subordinate church to state and push the church out of public life. Nevertheless, state and church shared a concern for the nation's social problems. Until the breakdown of church-state cooperation in 1926, they ignored the political chasm separating them to address those problems through education in order to instill in citizens a new sense of patriotism, a strong work ethic, and adherence to traditional gender roles. This book examines primary, vocational, private, and parochial education in Mexico City from 1917 to 1926 and shows how it was affected by the relations between the revolutionary state and the Roman Catholic Church. One of the first books to look at revolutionary programs in the capital immediately after the Revolution, it shows how government social reform and Catholic social action overlapped and identifies clear points of convergence while also offering vivid descriptions of everyday life in revolutionary Mexico City. Comparing curricula and practice in Catholic and public schools, Patience Schell describes scandals and successes in classrooms throughout Mexico City. Her re-creation of day-to-day schooling shows how teachers, inspectors, volunteers, and priests, even while facing material shortages, struggled to educate Mexico City's residents out of a conviction that they were transforming society. She also reviews broader federal and Catholic social action programs such as films, unionization projects, and libraries that sought to instill a new morality in the working class. Finally, she situates education among larger issues that eventually divided church and state and examines the impact of the restrictions placed on Catholic education in 1926. Schell sheds new light on the common cause between revolutionary state education and Catholic tradition and provides new insight into the wider issue of the relationship between the revolutionary state and civil society. As the presidency of Vicente Fox revives questions of church involvement in Mexican public life, her study provides a solid foundation for understanding the tenor and tenure of that age-old relationship.

Manifesto on the urban commons from the acclaimed theorist.

"An unusually compelling work of scholarly synthesis: a history of a city of revolution in a revolutionary century. Garrioch claims that until 1750 Paris remained a city characterized by a powerful sense of hierarchy. From the mid-century on, however, and with gathering speed, economic, demographic, political, and social change swept the city. Having produced an extremely engaging account of the old corporate society, Garrioch turns to the forces that relentlessly undermined it."—John E. Talbott, author of The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King's Navy, 1778-1813 "A truly wonderful synthesis of the many historical strands that compose the history of eighteenth-century Paris. In rewriting the history of the French Revolution as a more than century-long urban metamorphosis, Garrioch makes a brilliant case for the centrality of Paris in the history of France."—Bonnie Smith, author of The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, completely upending the energy grid of the small island. The nearly year-long power outage that followed vividly shows how the new climate reality intersects with race and access to energy. The island is home to brown and black US citizens who lack the political power of those living in the continental US. As the world continues to warm and storms like Maria become more commonplace, it is critical that we rethink our current energy system to enable reliable, locally produced, and locally controlled energy without replicating the current structures of power and control. In Revolutionary Power, Shalanda Baker arms those made most vulnerable by our current energy system with the tools they need to remake the system in the service of their humanity. She argues that people of color, poor people, and indigenous people must engage in the creation of the new energy system in order to upend the unequal power dynamics of the current system. Revolutionary Power is a playbook for the energy transformation complete with a step-by-step analysis of the key energy policy areas that are ripe for intervention. Baker tells the stories of those who have been left behind in our current system and those who are working to be architects of a more just system. She draws from her experience as an energy-justice advocate, a lawyer, and a queer woman of color to inspire activists working to build our new energy system. Climate change will force us to rethink the way we generate and distribute energy and regulate the system. But how much are we willing to change the system? This unique moment in history provides an unprecedented opening for a deeper transformation of the energy system, and thus, an opportunity to transform society. Revolutionary Power shows us how.

An immersive radical walking guide to one of Europe's most popular cities