Social Change Theories in Motion

This book is a valuable explanation and critique of explanations of social change in the last three centuries. The theme is how power influences, and is influenced by, theories of social change - a fascinating angle for examining the structural changes that have occurred in the modern world-system since the 18th century. ** Christopher Chase-Dunn, Institute for Research on World-Systems, University of California, Riverside For the past five decades, Tom Patterson has been one of the most stimulating and original thinkers in the field of anthropology. This excellent book reflects such exciting thinking, as it critically examines many of the explanations for global change that have been advanced in the last two centuries. Moreover, it can be profitably read not only by anthropologists but by all social scientists. Jeremy A. Sabloff, Santa Fe Institute Tom Patterson makes today's crises more intelligible by taking a long-term perspective, exploring how social theorists with different ideological orientations diagnosed the changes that capitalism produced in their own eras. Supremely lucid and richly contextualised accounts of ideas and debates provide readers with a truly worldwide vision of modern history, combined with the strongest intellectual incentives to continue thinking not only about how to understand our world but also about how to change it. John Gledhill, FBA, FAcSS, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester In this far-ranging and erudite work, Patterson carries out a dialogue among a wide array of theorists within the Marxian and social science traditions, from Rousseau and Smith to Marx, and from Weber and Luxemburg to Fanon and Foucault. Throughout, he considers not only Western Europe and North America, but also theories and theorists connected to the Global South and to agrarian societies. Far from a history of social thought for its own sake, Social Change Theories in Motion speaks to a twenty-first century world riven by economic, social, and cultural crisis. Kevin B. Anderson, University of California, Santa Barbara This book is a welcome, timely contribution to our collective understandings of what can be learned from by placing key theorists of social change in relationship to the historical conjunctures that they were observing and analyzing. As such the book is a reminder and guide for how to think about and speak to the contemporary crises and efforts to erase historical memories of critique. Nina Glick Schiller, Emeritus Professor, Social Anthropology, University of Manchester and the University of New Hampshire.