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Explaining Social Movements in Two Oil-Exporting States: Divergent Outcomes in Nigeria and Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Edmund Burke III  and
Paul Lubeck
Edmund Burke III
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Paul Lubeck
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Extract

If one were to survey social movements in the last decade that were inextricably linked to global socioeconomic processes, the significant social movements that have emerged in Islamic oil-producing countries could hardly escape notice. Since nine oil-exporting states possess Muslim majorities, there appears to be an objective relationship between the global consequences of the post–1973 oil-price revolution and the socioeconomic transformation of Muslim populations. Although most Muslim states experienced social movements in this period, it is clear that in the oil-producing Islamic countries, the particular social impact and institutional location of petroleum rents greatly intensified the disruption of urban social networks. Indeed, the cases of Shi‘ite Iran and Muslim northern Nigeria indicate how this disruptive element may have contributed to Islamic revolutionary movements which, though having quite distinct goals, ideologies, and social bases, remain inexplicable without analyzing the consequences of the petroleum boom on the relationship between state and society.

Type
The Politics of Change
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 643 - 665
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

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References

1 See, for example, Amuzegar, J., “Oil and Wealth: A Very Mixed Blessing,” Foreign Affairs, 60:4 (04 1982), 814–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pipes, D., “The Curse of Oil Wealth,” The Atlantic (07 1982), 19–25Google Scholar.

2 For of a typical example of export-commodity determinism, see the work of Wallerstein, Immanuel, notably his The Capitalist World Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Cultural determinism is, of course, the predominant paradigm used in analyzing Islamic societies. For a typical example, see Paden, John, Religion and Political Culture in Kano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Sometimes, as in the work of Daniel Pipes, the two are run together. In his “‘This World is Political!!’ The Islamic Revival of the Seventies,” Orbis, 24 (Spring 1980), 9–41Google Scholar, Pipes not only manages to confuse the Saudi-backed Nigerian ‘Yan Izala movement with that of ‘Yan Tatsine (discussed here), but puts forward his own theory of commodity determinism (p. 40).

3 See for example, Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In her later analysis of the Iranian revolution, “Rentier State and Shi’a Islam in the Iranian Revolution,” Theory and Society, 11 (05 1982), 265–83Google Scholar, however, Skocpol shifts her ground and adopts a culturalist explanation. The mystificatory powers of orientalist discourse have rarely been better illustrated.

4 For an excellent overview of the transformations associated with the petroleum boom, see Richards, Alan, “Oil, Agriculture, and the State: A Research Agenda,” in State and Agriculture in Nigeria, Watts, Michael, ed. (Berkeley: Institute for International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

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13 The population of Nigeria is unknown. We accept the estimate of the World Bank (87 million). We argue that Nigeria is at least half Muslim because of the population density in the northern precolonial Muslim states, the rapid rate of Islamization among the Yoruba, and the pronounced tendency of urban migrants to affiliate as Muslims.

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16 It is interesting to contrast this with the experience of Iran, where the Mossadegh government's comparatively modest nationalist program led to its overthrow by Western intelligence services. The survival of the politically weak Iranian monarchy was seen by Iranians to depend upon its Western backers. Viewed through Nigerian spectacles, the shah's regime had two strikes against it. It was obviously not nationalist, and the survival of the dynasty, rather than the interests of merchant and industrial groups, came first: Thus it had no class base when the chips were down.

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18 See Paul Lubeck, “Industrial Labor in Kano” (147–69), and Shea, Philip, “Approaching the Study of Production in Rural Kano” (93–115), both in A History of Kano, Barkindo, B., ed., Studies in the History of Kano (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1983)Google Scholar.

19 These statistics are taken from Watts, Silent Violence, 483.

20 Statistics are from R. Sarly, “Urban Development Strategy in Metropolitan Kano,” unpublished World Bank paper (1981), cited in Frishman, Alan, “Urban Transportation Decisions in Kano,” Department of Economics, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1982), manuscript, 12Google Scholar.

21 For example, cement construction is being replaced"by traditional mud-brick construction, mostly because of labor cost increases. Similarly, motorized transport is replacing pushcarts and head porterage.

22 See Lubeck, Paul, “Class Formation at the Periphery: The Convergence of Class and Islamic National Consciousness,” in The Sociology of Work: Worker's Consciousness, , R. and Simpson, I., eds. (Greenwich, Conn.: J.A.I. Press, 1981), 37–70Google Scholar. See also Lubeck, Islam and Urban Labor.

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24 Maganar Kano (Kano), (19 12 1980), p. 8Google ScholarPubMed. We wish to thank Ahmed Bako for his assistance in translating this article.

25 Nigerian Standard (JOS), (13 02 1981), p. 1Google ScholarPubMed.

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27 See Algar, “Oppositional Role.” Also see Keddie, Nikki, “Iran: De l’indépendence religieuse à l’opposition politique,” Le monde diplomatique (08 1977), 11–12Google Scholar.

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39 On the guerrillas, see Abrahamian, Ervand, “The Guerrilla Movement in Iran, 1963–1977,” M.E.R.I.P., no. 86 (03/04 1980), 3–21Google Scholar.

40 See, for example, the work of Farhad Kazemi, especially Poverty and Revolution in Iran, and his “Urban Migrants and the Revolution,” Iranian Studies, 13 (1980), 257–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Hooglund, “Rural Participation.”

41 Scholars have recently drawn attention to the ways in which Shi’ite doctrine has evolved in modem times. See, for a summary of this discussion, Keddie, “Religion, Society, and Revolution”; and Said Arjomand, Amir, “Religion, Political Action, and Legitimate Domination in Shi’ite Iran: Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries A.D.,” Archives europeennes de sociologie, 20:1(1979), 59–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.