Tag Archive for: social change

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The Culture Code | Daniel Coyle

 

Let’s end with something practical. I read a bunch of books on deliberative democracy and citizens’ assemblies. Most of them were — let’s be honest — painfully dull. All stuck in the narrow worldview of academic political science: humans as little utility-maximising machines.

What actually matters — like how people come to love and trust each other through deliberation — is shoved into the footnotes. Seriously.

But then I found The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. What a joy. Straight-up insights into how teams work: people respond to encouragement and vulnerability; teams beat solo geniuses; leaders do best by being open and human. It’s all there — the culture we need to build revolutionary movements.

 

– Roger Hallam
Read Roger’s top ten list of books from prison here.

Hospicing Modernity | Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

 

This one packs a punch. Machado de Oliveira comes from an indigenous Brazilian background, had a brutal early life, and went on to become a top academic in Canada. Hospicing Modernity is a raw, original fusion of two worlds — and a brutal indictment of our dying culture.

The book challenges the entire structure of Western thought, including its radical wings. It forces us to reckon with grief, death, and the end of the world as we know it — not as a metaphor, but as lived reality. A painful but essential read.

 

– Roger Hallam
Read Roger’s top ten list of books from prison here.

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The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran | Charles Kurzman

 

If Skocpol gives us the structural take, Kurzman gives us the chaos. His study of the 1979 Iranian Revolution shows how everything can change overnight.

Everyone thought the Shah’s regime was unshakable. But it fell like a house of cards. Mobilisation happened because mobilisation happened — a cascade, a feedback loop, with religious students kicking it off. They weren’t trying to win or avoid death — they acted from transcendental belief. And once the tipping point hit, the whole country joined in.

It’s a reminder: just because a regime looks stable doesn’t mean it is.

 

– Roger Hallam
Read Roger’s top ten list of books from prison here.

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States and Social Revolutions | Theda Skocpol

 

This is the go-to academic take on how revolutions happen. Skocpol isn’t messing around. Her point: elites always screw things up eventually, and revolutions become inevitable. They’re not made, they come.

It’s eerily prescient. Just like before the French Revolution, today’s ruling class is gutting the state — refusing to pay for it, grinding down its capacity. Sound familiar? Hello, Mr Trump.

 

– Roger Hallam
Read Roger’s top ten list of books from prison here.