Days of Revolution: Political Unrest in an Iranian Village

She became the only American researcher to witness the Islamic Revolution firsthand over her eighteen-month stay. Days of Revolution offers an insider's view of how regular people were drawn into, experienced, and influenced the Revolution and its aftermath.

About Gabrielle Hanley-Mott

Conventional wisdom assumes Shi'a religious ideology fueled the revolutionary movement. But Hegland counters that the Revolution spread through much more pragmatic concerns: Local expectations of leaders and the political process—expectations developed from their experience with traditional kinship-based factions—guided local villagers' attitudes and decision-making, and they often adopted the religious justifications for Revolution only after joining the uprising.

Sharing stories of conflict and revolution alongside in-depth interviews, the book sheds new light on this critical historical moment. Returning to Aliabad decades later, Days of Revolution closes with a view of the village and revolution thirty years on. Over the course of several visits between and , Mary Hegland investigates the lasting effects of the Revolution on the local political factions and in individual lives. As Iran remains front-page news, this intimate look at the country's recent history and its people has never been more timely or critical for understanding the critical interplay of local and global politics in Iran.

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

She was the only American scholar in Iran conducting field research during the Islamic Revolution, and one of very few to have access to the country in the 30 years since. No other text about modern Iran provides such clear insights into the relationships among political, economic and cultural factors, between the personal and political, rural and urban dynamics in rapid culture change in Iran. The personal details of a young American with a one-year-old child settling in to do research in Aliabad, near Shiraz, is captivating as well as instructive in the best reflexivist manner.

Being an American at the time of the Iranian revolution created problems beyond the usual settling-in tropes, but also provided an opportunity to witness the revolution from the group up. The primary value of Hegland's study is her narration of the Iranian revolution outside Tehran. She provides a detailed account of the local economic and political history in cultural context. Political unrest in an Iranian village. Rarely do anthropologists conduct fieldwork during revolutions or detail how ordinary villagers create localized versions of broader, national political-economic transformations.

Hegland begins with a refreshingly frank discussion of fieldwork limitations and challenges, as an American during this volatile period of Iranian-US relations.

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Days of Revolution is a fascinating, valuable addition to the ethnography of political processes. It illuminates how national and local politics become linked, in what circumstances and contexts, and how ordinary people come to support or not support revolutions.

Days of Revolution: Political Unrest in an Iranian Village | Mary Elaine Hegland

As feminist analysis, however, the book is less satisfying. During conflicts, women act as mediators because, unlike men, they remain on speaking terms with the other side. Yet, her data suggest a different reality, belying the importance, much less centrality, of women in village politics. With brief exceptions, men occupy center stage—explicitly or as the unmarked category—in the heart of the book, the chapters that describe village level political processes and activities, before, during and in the immediate post-revolutionary period.

Even when women act, it seems male-initiated or directed And on a structural level, this is clearly a male domain.

• The Middle East Journal.
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• Through The Eyes Of The Heart: A journey to feel what we can not always see.

Taifeh core members vs. Only male villagers [ii] apparently access village land through inheritance or in post-revolution land redistribution, sisters forgo their inherited land to brothers, and widows are entitled to virtually nothing.