|
|
English edition
258 pp.
Paperback
15.50 x 23.00 cm
$24.50
LE 80.00
ISBN
978 977 424 471 1
For sale only in the Middle East
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Street Politics
Poor People’s Movements in Iran
|
E-mail to a friend
Print
|
Asef Bayat
From the middle 1970s to the early 1990s, an unlikely political movement took over the streets of Iran’s largest cities. Against a backdrop of the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s poorest families—fleeing the straitened circumstances of the countryside—began to construct communities in the backstreets of Tehran, Mashad, Tabriz, and Bakhtaran. Reclaiming unused land and abandoned buildings, they improvised shelters and shantytowns with their own rudimentary infrastructure of roads, electricity, running water, and garbage collection.
Street Politics tells the story of Iran’s underclass and its struggle against the government and urban elite to fashion a new life and community. Drawing on dozens of eyewitness accounts—interviews with squatters, activists, and reporters—Bayat demonstrates with the case of Iran that while poor people have real social power, their needs are rarely addressed by even the most populist revolutions. Written by a scholar with roots in an impoverished Iranian community, this book not only questions the leading theories of subaltern politics in the developing countries but also offers a new perspective on grassroots activism in third world cities, thereby illuminating the relationship between social movements and political change.
“Bayat uses sources no one else has ever brought together for the purpose of studying the revolution, and he adds to them both his personal observations and uncommon sensitivity born of his own family background among the ‘deprived.’ The result illuminates the Iranian revolution while raising questions as to our understanding of underclass movements around the world.” — Richard Bulliet, author of Islam: The View from the Edge.
Asef Bayat is associate professor of sociology at The American University in Cairo. He is the author of Workers and Revolution in Iran and Work, Politics, and Power.
|
|
|
Also available
|
-
Life as Politics
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
