Revolutions and world order: still the 'Sixth Great Power'?
Department of International Relations Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture 2024/25
Revolutions appear to be everywhere – on the streets of Yangon, Tbilisi and Damascus, in the potential of technologies to reshape people’s lives, and in everyday cultural practices: films, art, music and more. But can revolution really be street mobilisation, technological breakthrough and cultural form at the same time? If revolution is everywhere, perhaps it is nowhere.
Writing 25 years ago, Fred Halliday argued that revolutions were the “sixth great power” of the modern world, a force that sat alongside the five great powers that sought to regulate 19th century world politics. This lecture examines whether Halliday’s assessment of the impact of revolutions remains true today, particularly given the fracturing of revolution as both concept and practice.
Meet our speakers and chair
George Lawson is a professor in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. His work is oriented around the relationship between history and theory, with a particular interest in global historical sociology. He applied this interest to the study of revolutions in three books: Anatomies of Revolution, Negotiated Revolutions: The Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile, and On Revolutions: Unruly Politics in the Contemporary World, co-authored with Colin Beck, Mlada Bukavansky, Erica Chenoweth, Sharon Nepstad and Daniel Ritter.
Jasmine Gani is Assistant Professor in International Relations Theory at LSE. She specialises in anti-colonial theory and history, and the politics of empire, race and knowledge production. Her research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, Security Dialogue, International Affairs, Postcolonial Studies, and Millennium, among others. She is writing a book on ‘Racial Militarism’, using a postcolonial framework to analyse the relationship between race, militarism, and the state in both imperial metropoles and post-colonies.
Rohan Mukherjee is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Deputy Director of LSE IDEAS. His research focuses on rising powers and how they navigate the power and status hierarchies of international order. His book, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions received several awards. His regional focus is on the Asia-Pacific, particularly how major powers such as India, China, the United States, and Japan, and smaller states in South and Southeast Asia, manage the regional effects of global transitions.
This public event is free and open to all. This event will be a hybrid event, with an in-person audience and an online audience.
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