658 International Sociology Review of Books 27(5) the unidirectional protest path of modern Europe cannot be applied blindly across any spatio-temporal context, rather that path has to be ‘provincialized’ (Chakrabarty, 2000). In Chapter 6 and the epilogue, the author compares the Chinese case with that of rebellions in Tokugawa Japan and the French Revolution to render deeper insights. In France, the end of revolution gave birth to the idea of modern citizenship and the notion of popular sovereignty, whereas in China, the traditional cultural repertoires reinforced reverence for pseudo-familial hierarchy, filial authority of the ruler and Confucian ortho- doxy. On the other hand, in Tokugawa Japan, unlike China, the sundry rebellions never culminated into a full-fledged revolution because of Japan’s decentralized and feudal state structure. Whereas in China, the centralized administration of empire brought about its own demise by attracting and solidifying the myriad of protests that eventually pre- cipitated into revolutions. Though not explicitly stated, epistemologically and methodologically the work belongs to the critical realist school of thought. This book has been written with utmost candour and clarity, which makes it immensely readable. The high theoretical rigour of this work is strengthened by its empirical grounding and extensive historical research. Reference Chakrabarty D (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Arnab Roy Chowdhury is currently pursuing his doctoral research at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore (NUS). In his doctoral research, he is working on subalternity and comparative social history of dam and water-related movements in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in India. His broad areas of interest includes political sociology, histori- cal and comparative sociology and postcolonialism. Address: Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, AS1 #03-06, 11 Arts Link, Singapore 117570. Email: g0900599@nus.edu.sg Geoffrey Pleyers, Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age, Polity Press: Cambridge, 2010; 316 pp.: ISBN 9780745646763, US$24.95 Reviewed by Breno Bringel, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Keywords Alter-globalization, experience, social change, social movements Over the last two decades, the map of collective action theory and social movements has transformed rapidly. What was a relatively limited field since the 1960s (with the institution- alizing of the debate in academic, geographic and epistemic terms) became a much more dynamic field, open to new disciplines, places, areas of study, types of research, methodolo- gies and worldviews, although much more fragmented (Klandermans and Roggeband, 2010; McAdam et al., 2001). Although there has been no radical rupture with the previous debate, recent elements take into account some of the classic theoretical formulations and