This award to Stanford University will allow the investigator to conduct research on the social history of the Ethiopian revolution as it was experienced in a remote area of the country from 1974 to 1984. The investogator has extensive experience in the country and will study the role of religion as it influenced the course of social change. The hypothesis of the project is that the "top-down" nature of the Ethiopian revolution makes it a fundamentally different sort of social process than the "bottom- up" revolutionary experiences of China and Russia. This research is important because it builds upon the researcher's extensive prior experience with the Ethiopian social situation to allow him to explain the local significance of the revolution. In a world in which political unrest is pervasive, such a contribution to our understanding of how revolutions are experienced will help us deal with the different countries of the world as they work out their different political arrangements.
