Description: This book offers a fascinating and historically important account of the little-known struggle of Iran's Turkmen peasant movement for collective control over land, democracy and cultural revival.
Brief description:
Peyman Vahabzadeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Victoria. He is the author of several books, including The Art of Defiance: Dissident Culture and Militant Resistance in 1970s Iran; Violence and Nonviolence: Conceptual Excursions into Phantom Opposites; and A Rebel's Journey: Mostafa Sho'aiyan and Revolutionary Theory in Iran. He is also editor of Iran's Struggles for Social Justice: Economics, Agency, Justice, Activism and co-editor, with Samir Gandesha, of Crossing Borders: Essays in Honour of Ian Angus. He has published nine books of poetry, fiction, literary criticism and memoir in Persian and his works have appeared in English, Persian, German, Kurdish, French and Spanish.
Review Quotes: "Revolutions are not just about the change of regimes and state institutions. They are also expressed at the base of society- in schools, farms, factories, and families. This original study highlights one of the most neglected aspects of the 1979 Iranian revolution--the peasant council movement of Turkmen Sahra. By underlining its struggles for land and cultural revival, Vahabzadeh brings the Iranian experience into a productive conversation with the current indigenous movements around the globe."--Asef Bayat, bastian professor of global and transnational studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign