book project

Action and Inheritance: Mobilizational Paths to Revolutionary Transformation

Book project, in progress

“Mobilization is modernization”

What did the rural revolutionary conflicts of the twentieth century do to the societies they swept through? This book offers a new understanding of revolutionary transformation, arguing that mobilization—the mass recruitment of ordinary people into revolutionary political organizations—was a fundamental and overlooked source of social change in revolutionary conflicts, whether the revolutionaries ultimately won or lost. Mobilization was at the heart of the “communist route to modernity:” pulling previously isolated rural people into new organizations, identities, and networks that permanently altered their relationship to the state and to the broader world. This created loyalty—intrinsic motivations—and altered principal-agent relationships.

Drawing on original genealogical data collected through community partnerships in Laos and Thailand, the book traces how mobilization during violent conflicts durably reshaped inequalities, social networks, and relationships between states and societies across generations. Mobilization pulled previously marginalized people into new political organizations, conferring skills, opportunities, and networks that persisted long after the conflicts ended. These were transmitted through families and communities to descendants who never experienced the revolution directly.

The book develops this argument through a paired comparison of revolutionary victory and defeat: Laos, where the communist Pathet Lao prevailed, and Thailand, where the Communist Party of Thailand was defeated. By examining both winners and losers, and both successful and failed revolutions, the book reconceptualizes the politics of mobilization in rural revolutionary conflict as a transformative force in its own right — independent of whether the revolutionaries achieved state power.