Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 3 - On the Streets and Beyond

  • Pouya Alimagham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Book:
    Contesting the Iranian Revolution
    Published online:
    20 February 2020
    Print publication:
    19 March 2020, pp 52-136

  • Summary

    This chapter underscores the utility of a “history from below” approach. Crowd action dispels historical marginalization and state propaganda, making women and men—not states or powerful people—the central agents of history making, and allowing a more nuanced understanding of events. Studying the crowd enables the reader to understand the unique opportunity for mobilization presented by Iran’s 2009 presidential election. The disputed election results prompted a week-long uprising that provoked a crackdown by the state. The chapter outlines how one continuous uprising morphed into many, and how Iran’s political calendar was usurped by the uprising for renewed social movement activity, with the crowd co-opting some of the most politically charged days from Iran’s revolutionary past to evade the security climate and protest the state. Friday sermons, the anniversaries of the US embassy seizure and Ayatollah Beheshti’s assassination, and Student Day, along with revolution-era strategies of action, such as the night-time chants of “Allahu akbar,” all became part of the uprising’s repertoire.