The Tehran bazaar has always been central to the Iranian economy and, indeed, to the Iranian urban experience. Arang Kesharvarzian's fascinating book compares the economics and politics of the marketplace under the Pahlavis, who sought to undermine it in the drive for modernisation, and under the subsequent revolutionary regime, which came to power with a mandate to preserve the bazaar as an 'Islamic' institution. The outcomes of their respective policies were completely at odds with their intentions. Despite the Shah's hostile approach, the bazaar flourished under his rule, and maintained its organisational autonomy to such an extent that it played an integral role in the Islamic revolution. Conversely, the Islamic Republic implemented policies that unwittingly transformed the ways in which the bazaar operated, thus undermining its capacity for political mobilization. Arang Kesharvarzian's book affords unusual insights into the politics, economics and society of Iran across four decades.

The Tehran Bazaar has always been central to the Iranian economy and indeed, to the Iranian urban experience. Arang Keshavarzian's fascinating book compares the economics and politics of the marketplace under the Pahlavis, who sought to undermine it in the drive for modernisation and under the subsequent revolutionary regime, which came to power with a mandate to preserve the bazaar as an 'Islamic' institution. The outcomes of their respective policies were completely at odds with their intentions. Despite the Shah's hostile approach, the bazaar flourished under his rule and maintained its organisational autonomy to such an extent that it played an integral role in the Islamic revolution. Conversely, the Islamic Republic implemented policies that unwittingly transformed the ways in which the bazaar operated, thus undermining its capacity for political mobilisation. Arang Keshavarizian's book affords unusual insights into the politics, economics and society of Iran across four decades.

For decades, political observers and pundits have characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran as an ideologically rigid state on the verge of collapse, exclusively connected to a narrow social base. In A Social Revolution, Kevan Harris convincingly demonstrates how they are wrong. Previous studies ignore the forceful consequences of three decades of social change following the 1979 revolution. Today, more people in the country are connected to welfare and social policy institutions than to any other form of state organization. In fact, much of Iran’s current political turbulence is the result of the success of these social welfare programs, which have created newly educated and mobilized social classes advocating for change. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Iran between 2006 and 2011, Harris shows how the revolutionary regime endured though the expansion of health, education, and aid programs that have both embedded the state in everyday life and empowered its challengers. This first serious book on the social policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens a new line of inquiry into the study of welfare states in countries where they are often overlooked or ignored.

This book analyses the distant and proximate causes of the 1978 revolution in Iran as well as the dynamics of power which it set in motion. The volume explains the complex and far-reaching processes which produced the revolution, beginning in the late nineteenth century. In explaining the more proximate causes of the revolution, the book analyses the nature of the old regime and its internal contradictions; the emergence of some fundamental conflicts of interest between the state and the upper class; the economic crisis of 1975-8 which made possible a revolutionary mass immobilisation; and the emergence of a new religious interpretation of political authority and the unusual spread of the ideology of political Islam among a segment of the modern intelligentsia. The volume relates the diverse aspects of class, ideology and economic structure in order to provide an understanding of the political processes.

A myth-busting insider’s account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that destroyed US influence in the country and transformed the politics of the Middle East and the world. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the seminal events of our time. It inaugurated more than thirty years of war in the Middle East and fostered an Islamic radicalism that shapes foreign policy in the United States and Europe to this day. Drawing on his lifetime of engagement with Iran, James Buchan explains the history that gave rise to the Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters displaced the Shah with little diffi­culty. Mystifyingly to outsiders, the people of Iran turned their backs on a successful Westernized government for an amateurish religious regime. Buchan dispels myths about the Iranian Revolution and instead assesses the historical forces to which it responded. He puts the extremism of the Islamic regime in perspective: a truly radical revolution, it can be compared to the French or Russian Revolu­tions. Using recently declassified diplomatic papers and Persian-language news reports, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and theological tracts, Buchan illumi­nates both Khomeini and the Shah. His writing is always clear, dispassionate, and informative. The Iranian Revolution was a turning point in modern history, and James Buchan’s Days of God is, as London’s Independent put it, “a compelling, beautifully written history” of that event.

First published in 1998, Revolutionary Iran investigates two major political transformations in the modern history of Iran: the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-09 and the Islamic Revolution 1976-79 and their relation to the modernization of Iran in this century. It addresses a core question: Why did the clergy not take political power in the Constitutional Revolution when Iran was a traditional society and they played a key leadership role in the revolution; yet they succeeded in the more modern Iran of 1979. Characterization of socio-economic relationships between the two major influential groups of civil society in Iran and their role in political transformation is considered central for answering such a question. The book deals with revolution in terms of relationships between civil society and state; which, it is argued, are central to analysing and understanding modern movements in Iran and other Islamic countries. The major contribution of the book can be summarized as follows: It identifies a socio-political division of power and influence between state and civil society during a long period of Iran’s Islamic history as the key theoretical basis for understanding modern transformations of Iranian society. Such a division has, so far, been largely ignored. It explores the clergy and bazaris as the social basis of civil society in Iran, and challenges Gellner’s viewpoint that an Islamic civil society is an impossibility. It argues that the modernization of religion and the creation of modern political theories by the clergy were both crucial means for defeating a modern authoritarian state and seizing political power. It identifies the main social group without whom the Islamic Revolution of Iran would not have achieved political victory, i.e., the dispossessed. It presents a theoretical basis for analysing and understanding new Islamic movements in the Islamic world.

To examine the political role of architecture, this book presents an original engagement with the largest center of attraction in Tehran, namely, its bazaar. Through a rigorous study, it goes beyond the conventional sociopolitical and architectural discourses of this marketplace by considering architecture as an event. This book offers alternative modes of spatial thinking on a micropolitical level. Emphasis is placed on the focused exploration of key notions mainly drawn from the works of Michel Foucault. It deploys effective methods and shows how philosophical concepts can be deployed as a tool to analyse the ways through which architecture transforms individuals through the act of exchange—whether of words, things, bodies, or thoughts.

Thirteen years after the Shah of Iran was swept away in a tide of revolutionary fervor, the cruelty and brutality of the new regime remains shocking. In Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, Mansoor Moaddel provides the theoretical underpinnings for a richer and clearer understanding of Iran's tumultuous recent history. Analyzing the causes and processes of the revolution through the prisms of class, politics, and ideology, Moaddel argues that the currently dominant theories of revolution insufficiently address the requisite question of ideology: "Ideology is not simply another factor that adds an increment to the causes of revolution. Ideology is the constitutive feature of revolution." Moaddel explains how revolutionary conditions in Iran were created by a combination of state economic policies favoring international capital - which enraged segments of the powerful bourgeoisie - and fluctuations in the world economy that financially weakened Iran. But the central element of the revolutionary crisis of the late 1970s was the development of Shi'i revolutionary discourse as the dominant ideology. As liberalism and communism declined, the potent discourse of revolutionary Islam - with its martyrdom, its religious rituals, its symbolic structures - formed a powerful conduit for popular mobilization. Karl Marx likened the French Revolution to a gigantic broom which swept away all the "medieval rubbish." Drawing from his abundant theoretical, historical, and sociological knowledge, Moaddel illuminates the process by which the gigantic broom of the Iranian Revolution "swept all the medieval rubbish back in."

The Islamic revolution of 1979 heralded an expanded economic role for the Iranian state in safeguarding the revolution's redistributive aims. However, the Iranian economy in the 1980s and 1990s deteriorated markedly, and the state's enlarged role in the economy has been accompanied by acute macroeconomic instability and a sharp decline in the standard of living. This book of original essays identifies the principal issues, social, economic, and political, that have shaped and determined Iran's economic performance since the revolution.

This Ninth Edition of the standard work on Iran includes up-to-date statistics and current information on the country. It begins with an account of the history, arts, languages, and religions of Iran from 4000 B.C. to the present. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.