Full size book cover of The Sources of Social Power: Volume 2, The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914}

The Sources of Social Power: Volume 2, The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914

Michael Mann

4.2(55 readers)
Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies – ideological, economic, military, and political – The Sources of Social Power traces their interrelations throughout human history. This second volume of Michael Mann's analytical history of social power deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War, focusing on France, Great Britain, Hapsburg Austria, Prussia/Germany and the United States. Based on considerable empirical research, it provides original theories of the rise of nations and nationalism, of class conflict, of the modern state and of modern militarism. While not afraid to generalize, it also stresses social and historical complexity. Michael Mann sees human society as “a patterned mess” and attempts to provide a sociological theory appropriate to this. This theory culminates in the final chapter, an original explanation of the causes of the First World War. First published in 1993, this new edition of volume 2 includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of the work.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Publication Date

9/24/2012

ISBN

9781107031180

Pages

839

Categories

About the Author

Portrait of author Michael Mann
Michael Mann
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Michael Mann is a British-born professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Visiting Research Professor at Queen's University Belfast. Mann holds dual British and United States citizenships. He received his B.A. in Modern History from the University of Oxford in 1963 and his D.Phil. in Sociology from the same institution in 1971. Mann is currently visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge.

Mann has been a professor of Sociology at UCLA since 1987; he was reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1977 to 1987. Mann was also a member of the Advisory Editors Council of the Social Evolution & History Journal.

In 1984, Mann published The Autonomous Power of the State: its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results in the European Journal of Sociology. This work is the foundation for the study of the despotic and infrastructural power of the modern state.

Mann's most famous works include the monumental The Sources of Social Power and The Dark Side of Democracy, spanning the entire 20th century. He also published Incoherent Empire, where he attacks the United States' 'War on Terror' as a clumsy experiment of neo-imperialism.

Mann is currently working on The Sources of Social Power: Globalizations, the third volume in the series. [wikipedia]

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

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