Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.

This book analyzes the processes of social transformation in Iran from the height of the country's power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the Safavid dynasty to the aftermath of the startling revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy in 1979.

This comprehensive history of the Iranian Revolution views it in the context of an ongoing conflict between religious and political authorities dating back to the establishment of Shi'ism as the state religion of Iran in 1501. The historical context is seen as being critical in understanding the staying power of Khomeini's regime and its ruthless elimination of internal opposition to the Islamic Republic. The significance of the appearance of widespread popular discontent, the ideological differences among the ruling clergy, and the issue of Khomeini's succession are also considered, and the book concludes with a comparison between the Iranian Revolution and other famous historical revolutions.

-- An insider's account of Iran's people, its politics, and the threat of invasion -- This is the first book to explore the changes taking in place in Iran from the ground up. While the world keeps its eyes riveted on Iran's nuclear programme, the Islam

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations. Social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. It develops a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, Skocpol urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.