Categories
Slow Knowledge

soft revolution

A soft or passive revolution is a non-violent transformation of political and social fabric, a process that often spans years, or many decades. Soft revolutions that transform entire social systems often take the form of cultural, literary, artistic, or social paradigm shifts.

The term passive revolution was coined by the 20th-century Italian theoretician, Antonio Gramsci, who referred to the Italian social and political changes between the two world wars.

Individual, community, institutional, or even corporate strategies that respond to climate crisis and gradually gain ground can also be interpreted as gentle revolutions. Such strategies include, for example, the pursuit of zero waste, the pursuit of self-sufficiency, or recycling at the individual level, and the transition to renewable energy sources or sustainable economic systems at the community and corporate level.