ABSTRACT
Every decade or so events occur of sufficient magnitude to shake up conventional ways of thinking about social life and politics. Previous concerns, no matter how central, and theories about them, no matter how cerebral, become dated. The life goes out of them. Their assumptions seem misplaced; the research done in their name faulty. Such shifts, usually quite sudden, are surprising when they occur and less a result of a theoretical accomplishment (realized in cumulative knowledge) than a ‘natural’ displacement. Each major upheaval serves as a turning point for a new generation of thought. At such moments events pass through the intellectual boundaries of conventional theories designed to contain them. They spill over the assumptions implicit within such theories, to retire them, sometimes prematurely, as relevant models — the latter now appearing too simplistic and overkill, or worse, hegemonic and reactionary.
