Social Origins Of The Iranian Revolution

Misagh Parsa develops a structural theory of the causes and outcomes of revolution, applying the theory in particular to Iran. He focuses on the ends and means of various groups of Iranians before, during, and after the revolution. For Parsa, revolution is not a direct result of ideologies, which may be less important than structural factors such as the nature of the state and the economy, as well as each group's interests, capacity for mobilization, autonomy, and solidarity structures. Existing theories of revolution explain earlier revolutions better than the Iranian revolution. In Iran most of the protest was in urban areas, the peasants never played a major role, and power was transferred to the clergy, not to an intelligentsia. In the 1970s, oil revenues increased, the economy developed rapidly but unevenly, and the state's expanded intervention undermined market forces and politicized capital accumulation. Systematic repression of workers, aid to the upper class, and attacks on secular and religious opposition showed that the state was serving the interests of particular groups. When the state tried to check high inflation by imposing price controls on bazaaris (merchants, shopkeepers, artisans), their protests forced the state to introduce reforms, providing an opportunity for industrial workers, white-collar workers, intellectuals, and the clergy to mobilize against the state. Thus, structural features rendered the state vulnerable to challenge and attack. Parsa's thorough explanation of the collective actions of each major group in Iran in the three decades prior to the revolution shows how a coalition of classes and groups, using mosques as safe gathering places and led by a segment of the clergy, brought down the monarch of 1979. In the years since the revolution, the conflicts that existed before the revolution seem to be reemerging, in slightly altered form. The clergy now has control, and the state has become centrally and powerfully involved in the economy of the country.

In Revolutionary Iran, Michael Axworthy offers a richly textured and authoritative history of Iran from the 1979 revolution to the present.

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.

Observers of Iran have often ascribed the main cause of the revolution to economic problems under the Shah’s regime. This book, first published in 1990, on the other hand focuses on the political and social factors which contributed of the Pahlavi dynasty. Mehran Kamrava looks at the revolution in detail as a political phenomenon, making use of extensive interviews with former revolutionary leaders, cabinet ministers and diplomats to show the central role of the political collapse of the regime in bringing about the revolution. He concentrates on the internal and the international developments leading to this collapse, and the social environment in which the revolution’s leaders emerged.

Rev. version of the author's thesis (M.A.--University of Kansas)

Study of the impact of ill-conceived economic policies on the 1979 revolution in Iran, Islamic Republic - discusses theoretical issues, economic development trends since 1949, development planning objectives modernization and import substitution-based industrialization, land reforms, inappropriate choice of technology and technological change; economic disparities; issues relating to increased petroleum revenue, increasing public expenditure, irrational agricultural policies, commercial policies, price policies and counter-inflationary monetary policies, etc. Bibliography.

A social history of modern Iran 'from below' focused on subaltern groups and contextualised by developments within Middle Eastern and global history.