Samuel Huntington defines revolution as:Ī rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activity and policies. But the events in North Africa remind us that revolutionary political action is always a possibility, not just a rare political occurrence. Revolutions are often presented as monumental, foundational political events that happen only rarely and historically: the American revolution (1776), the French revolution (1789), the Russian revolution (1917), the Chinese revolution (1949), the Cuban revolution (1959), the Iranian revolution (1979), etc. What do we learn about the place of politics in social life from these examples? Through the collective action of ordinary citizens, the long-lasting authoritarian regimes of Ben Ali, Gadhafi, and Mubarak were brought to an end through what some called “revolution.” Not only did the political institutions all of a sudden not function as they had for decades, they were also shown not to be at the centre of political action at all. However, in recent years, among many other examples we could cite, we have seen how the events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt (2010–2011) put seemingly stable political institutions and processes into question. Until recently we might have been satisfied with an answer that examined how various political institutions and processes function in society: the state, the government, the civil service, the courts, the democratic process, etc. He asked, what is political about political action and what is the place of “the political” in the ongoing conduct of social life? In one of Max Weber’s last public lectures-“Politics as a Vocation” (1919)-he asked, what is the meaning of political action in the context of a whole way of life? (More accurately, he used the term Lebensführung: what is the meaning of political action in the context of a whole conduct of life, a theme we will return to in the next section).