Chapter 6 outlines the conclusions of this investigation and highlights the lasting impacts of modern nationalist discourse on Iran. In addition, the concluding chapter looks at the most recent examples of resistance, through the agency of Iranian citizens. It also looks at contemporary politics inside Iran, and political events related to US–Iran relations with events as recent as the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. In the case of modern Iran, the state and community have been imagined and contested, legitimized and challenged, through the interaction of the state and the people within the global context of colonialism and modernity. By appreciating the complexity of this interaction, we can hope to ascertain a better understanding of national identity in modern Iran. Thus, the book moves beyond the essentialist representation of bipolar Iranian identity, emphasizing Islam versus pre-Islamic civilization, and the more recent proclivity in scholarship to reject both identities as inauthentic.

Groups advocating change had long existed in the form of political parties, intellectuals, guerrilla organizations, and of course the clergy. Yet only in 1977 did a number of developments converge to usher in a mass movement against the state. These included a sudden rise in levels of urban unemployment sparked by slumps in the global oil market and the domestic construction sector, the government’s need to open up political space in response to the Carter administration’s demands for reforms, and missteps by the government itself in its efforts to introduce reforms and to appear receptive to middle-class needs. Allowing for some grievances to be aired without addressing their root causes only encouraged more open expressions of popular anger, resulting in largely unorganized protests and strikes, which over time gained in frequency, intensity, and size. Poor at crisis management, panicked reactions by the state only deepened what had rapidly become a serious crisis. As the social movement grew into a revolution, the state proved woefully unprepared to deal with the expansive popular anger. Devoid of a meaningful base of social support, by the final months of 1978 the monarchy’s slide toward collapse was all but irreversible.

This chapter analyzes the rise and consolidation of Qajar rule from a tribal monarchy to a national dynasty. It examines the pervasiveness of centrifugal forces dominating the country’s landscape following the collapse of the Safavid dynasty, and slow rise in the 1780s of the Qajars from a tribal chieftaincy to a dynasty. The Qajars consolidated power, eliminated various tribal rivals, incorporated the clerical classes into the power structure, and implemented what was at best halting and scant social and economic reforms. Personal autocracy, and the avarice of successive monarchs and courtiers, undermined prospects for any kind of political development, paving the way for the dynasty’s steady decline and eventual collapse.

This chapter examines the steady decline and ultimate collapse of the Qajar dynasty and the subsequent establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty. It examines the rise of the dynasty’s founder, Reza Khan, and the social and political context within which the new monarch sought to implement a series of far-reaching social and cultural initiatives designed to modernize the country. A strong central state was established, local rebellions were put down, and various bureaucratic institution were founded in order to affect social change and foster economic development. New, modern schools proliferated across the country. But Reza Shah’s reforms remained ultimately devoid of institutional support, and many were therefore abandoned or altogether reversed when he was removed from office by the British.

The state that evolved under the second Pahlavi monarch featured rapid economic development and persistent political underdevelopment. Especially from the 1950s onward, when the amount of oil revenues coming into the economy increased significantly compared with before, the economy began showing classic signs of the “resource curse.” As is often the case, resource curse – that is, the negative consequences of overabundance of a single commodity and the riches accrued from it to the economy – had manifold ramifications for Iran. As the economy grew, reliance on its single, biggest source of growth, oil, deepened greatly. This occurred at the expense of other sectors of the economy, especially agriculture. It also hastened rural flight, resulted in unplanned urban growth, and brought about maladjustments between economic needs on the one hand and resources, skills, and opportunities on the other. More detrimentally, it froze or significantly slowed down any transition out of rentier arrangements and strengthened existing institutions and practices where they were. The state may have fostered economic development, but it remained politically underdeveloped itself.

Chapter 5 explores Iranian cinema and television. While cinema and television were important mediums before the revolution, they became especially significant after the revolution in legitimating the newly established Islamic Republic. Media has been used and often tightly controlled by the I.R. for its own ends, but after the war artistic expression became gradually more relaxed and Iranian cinema began to flourish in the late 1990s. In spite of its international acclaim however, cinema in Iran still operates with structured guidelines and artists have come under severe pressure from authorities. Here, we see the interaction of the state and the people and the contest over media and identity formation. While popular films such as Āzhāns-e Shishehi (The Glass Agency) and Ekhrāji-ha (The Rejects) picked out themes from the Iran–Iraq war, both films also challenged stereotypes and depictions of the war. Films like A Separation captivated Iranian audiences for their realism in portraying multifaceted characters and stories of everyday life. The characters in these films questioned the simple binary of good and bad often depicted in war films. Instead, they added layers and nuance to the nature of Iranian people, the lives they lead, and the complexity of their identities.

Chapter 2 provides historical background of Pahlavi monarchy and its nation-state project. To be a modern nation-state required a cohesive national identity and complimenting narrative. The significance of that account was not lost on the shah, who tried to formulate an uninterrupted history of Iranian dominion. Chapter 2 relies heavily on a close reading of the words of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to shed light on the shah’s rationale for upholding this narrative. The shah understood that Iran could not forge its independence and image as a modern nation-state without freedom from foreign control. According to the shah, it was his father who "created" the modern Iranian state and saved Iran from the ineptness of its previous dynasty. This chapter also challenges the shah’s account and explores how his subjects saw him as foreign and as a symbol of Iran’s capitulation to external powers. The shah’s failed nationalism left space for his opposition to produce an alternative narrative that captured the imagination of the masses of Iranian people. Chapter 2 lays the foundation for the sections that follow by presenting not only the newly constructed image of Iranian nationalism, but also why it was needed in order to advance the cause of independence.

The epilogue examines the importance of this study in relation to recent events and spotlights female Iranian voices and their ability to express themselves more freely on the Internet. Specifically, the epilogue uses Twitter as an archive to look at the complexity of how Iranians react to contemporary events, which often elicited national sentiments, such as the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, the 2017 Iranian election, the United States quitting the deal in 2018, the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, and others. Though the topic of Iran is a staple of our mainstream media and foreign policy debates in the United States, knowledge of Iran’s history, which informs our current state of affairs, is commonly absent from the discussion. The epilogue thus draws on this study to examine the present circumstances of US–Iran relations.

This chapter discusses how Saudi women have actively negotiated gender boundaries and expanded their scope through the daily practice of charity work and the networks established among fellow social workers and volunteers. Founded in 1961–2 as a women-only initiative, the First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah counts among the oldest extant welfare associations in the kingdom enlisted with the Ministry of Social Affairs. The longue-durée perspective adopted in the chapter pays attention to the changing aspirations of different generations involved with the charity organization.

Although the First Women’s Welfare Association is often considered a "traditional charity" with an "Islamic aid" approach, its focus on single women, female-headed households, and the feminization of poverty transgresses traditional norms in multiple ways. The chapter discusses the charity’s use of donations, zakat and ṣadaqa, food banks, endowments, and shelters for single women and female-headed households. By situating practices of almsgiving within the wider legal and political framework of the zakat tax imposed by the Saudi state, as well as within the context of further legislation targeting money laundering and terrorist financing, the research highlights that religious ideals are subject to interpretation and object to various authoritative claims.

The first chapter posits the book’s approach in the context of dominant ideas about civil society in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is widely considered an authoritarian state with little space for any civil initiative to maneuver in or to flourish. The rentier state paradigm, which has dominated much of the discussion of state–society relations in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, assumes that the oil-rich state buys its citizens’ acquiescence through the strategic investment of hydrocarbon revenues into welfare and high living standards. Yet Saudi Arabia’s growing wealth gap challenges these assumptions.

This book presents a different perspective from which to view and understand Saudi Arabian society, not from a top-down vantage point but "bottom-up," from the point of view of local civil society initiatives. The chapter introduces the four charity organizations that form the basis of the book’s analysis. Given the difficulties of field research in Saudi Arabia, the chapter discusses opportunities and challenges that this project faced and how these contributed to the research design and findings.