Psychology of Radical Social Change

Since 2011 the world has experienced an explosion of popular uprisings that began in the Middle East and quickly spread to other regions. What are the different social-psychological conditions for these events to emerge, what different trajectories do they take, and how are they are represented to the public? To answer these questions, this book applies the latest social psychological theories to contextualized cases of revolutions and uprisings from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century in countries around the world. In so doing, it explores continuities and discontinuities between past and present uprisings, and foregrounds such issues as the crowds, collective action, identity changes, globalization, radicalization, the plasticity of political behaviour, and public communication.

'How do societies change? And how do they succeed in changing for the better? This volume addresses these critical concerns by analyzing the merits, achievements and failures of revolutions and the role these have played in altering human history. This volume makes required reading for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of the forces that alter our societies in radical ways.' Gordon Sammut, University of Malta

Brady Wagoner is Professor of Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark, and an associate editor for the journals Culture & Psychology and Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Fathalo M. Moghaddam is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He is the editor-in-chief of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Jaan Valsiner is Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the founding editor (1995) of Culture & Psychology and editor-in-chief (from 2007) of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences.