Chapter 8 - Cultural Carriers and the Failure of Revolutionaries to Reshape Behavior

Summary

The main goal of this chapter is to examine the role of cultural carriers (means through which culture is propagated) and other mechanisms that serve to sustain continuity of behavior across revolutions. These mechanisms result in deep-level similarity in behavior before and after regime change. Revolutions bring enormous varieties of surface changes, such as the titles of leaders, the names of places, clothing, and all varieties of speech. But these surface-level changes can hide deeper continuities, such as continuity in style of leader–follower relations. Most obviously, an anti-dictator revolution results in regime change, but a new dictator with a new title comes to power and the dictatorship continues with a new face – as happened after revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and a number of other important cases (the American Revolution is excluded, because it is interpreted as rebellion against a foreign power). The power of cultural carriers arises from them being woven into the fabric of everyday life, seemingly beyond politics.