Street Politics: Poor People's Movements in Iran / Edition 1

by Asef Bayat

Overview

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, an active political movement emerged on the streets of Iran's largest cities. Poor people began to construct their own communities on unused urban lands, creating an infrastructure––roads, electricity, running water, garbage collection, and shelters––all their own. As the Iranian government attempted to evict these illegal settlers, they resisted––fiercely and ultimately successfully. This is the story of their economic and political strategies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231108591
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/25/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.97(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Asef Bayat is associate professor of sociology at The American University in Cairo.

What People are Saying About This

Richard Bulliet

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, Columbia University

Editorial Reviews

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

Focusing on the immediate prerevolutionary period and the first decade of the Islamic Republic, Bayat discusses the economic and political strategies of 'ordinary´ [Iranian] people, mainly in Tehran. . . . He demonstrates that, for these people at least, the populist revolution did not bring about the changes that they needed or wanted.

Choice