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

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.

Copub: Berg Publishers