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Class Structure and Political Power in Iran Since 1796

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nikki R. Keddie
Nikki R. Keddie*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The transformation in the structure of classes and of power in the past two centuries in Iran, as in many Third World countries, can be seen as: (1) a change from a relatively decentralized structure of power in which several different groups and localities shared power to one in which power is concentrated in the center and is backed by a modernized army and bureaucracy, (2) a change from primarily vertical divisions in society, in which the most homogeneous groups--tribes, ulama, towns, and religious communities--comprise both rich and poor, to a division based on more horizontal class lines. These two changes go together and form part of the transformation often referred to under such rubrics as “modernization,” “westernization,” or “the impact of the West,” although none of these terms is fully satisfactory. This paper attempts to outline the basic lines of these two sociopolitical changes in modern Iran and also to assess recent sociopolitical developments there.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1-4: State and Society in Iran , 1978 , pp. 305 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1978

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Footnotes

Author's Note: This article, written in March, 1977, replaces the paper given at the UCLA conference on the structure of power in Islamic Iran, 1969. I chose not to reprint that article since it was already published as “The Iranian Power Structure and Social Change 1800-1969: An Overview,” in International Journal of Middle East Studies, II (1971), pp. 3-20, and since its many references to the present are now outdated. The present article is in the same general area, but its approach is different, as are the examples used; it went to press before the events of 1978.

References

Notes

1. I owe this idea to a personal communication from Robert McDaniel who is doing research on the military in modern Iranian history--an important and understudied topic.

2. For two fine works showing the new light that studies of material culture can shed on Middle Eastern History, see McC. Adams, R. Land behind Baghdad (Chicago, 1965)Google Scholar, and Bulliet, R. W. The Camel and the Wheel (Cambridge, Mass., 1975).Google Scholar

3. See the discussion of tribes in Malcolm, John Sir The History of Persia, from the Most Early Period to the Present Time, Vol. II (London, 1815)Google Scholar, and the tribal and population estimates in Issawi, C. ed., The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1971), p. 20.Google Scholar

4. Keddie, N. R. “The Roots of the Ulama's Power in Modern Iran,” in Keddie, N. R. ed., Scholars, Saints, and Sufis (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972)Google Scholar, and the references contained therein.

5. My ideas regarding the nonrevolutionary character of the Iranian peasantry were presented briefly at the end of Keddie, N. R. “Stratification, Social Control, and Capitalism in Iranian Villages: Before and after Land Reform,” in Harik, I. and Antoun, R. eds., Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington, Ind., 1972).Google Scholar They have been amplified by reading “The Non-Revolutionary Peasantry of Modern Iran” by Farhad Kazemi and Ervand Abrahamian, in the present volume.

6. For an excellent discussion of this period and Ironside's key role, see Ullman, R. H. Anglo-Soviet Relations 1917-1921, Vol. III, The Anglo-Soviet Accord (Princeton, 1972)Google Scholar, Ch. IX.

7. The best discussion so far of the Musaddiq period is in Cottam, R. W. Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh, 1964)Google Scholar, now unfortunately out of print. The day is fast approaching when official U.S. and British documents on this period will be partially open to scholars.

8. See Keddie, “Stratification,” and the sources cited therein and Eric Hooglund's excellent forthcoming work on land reform.

9. For these and other recent developments see D. Housego, “Quiet Thee Now and Rest,” The Economist, Aug. 28, 1976 and Eric Rouleau, “Iran: Mythes et réalitiés,” Le Monde, October 3-4, 5, 6, 1976.

10. Ann T. Schulz (“Iran's New Industrial State,” Current History [January, 1977], pp. 15-18 ff.) Estimates the pay differential between skilled workers and laborers as between 3:1 and 30:1. There is no doubt that skilled workers are now a kind of elite, as are nearly all workers in large factories, and that statistics citing their wages, or wages in laborshort occupations (such as building in some areas) are not a reliable guide to average wages for the working population as a whole.

11. On recent political-religious trends see H. Algar in this volume, “The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in Twentieth-Century Iran,” Scholars, Saints and Sufis, ed. N. R. Keddie, and M. Fischer's unpublished “The Qum Report: An Anthropological Account of Contemporary Shiism.” I have read numerous writings by Khumaini and by more liberal and radical elements of the religious opposition in Persian, and this material is treated at greater length in my article “Islam et Politique en Iran,” Le Monde Diplomatique, August, 1977, and in my “Religion and Society in Iran,” forthcoming in a volume edited by C. Caldarola

12. Among the many uncited works in various languages that have contributed to this article I can mention only a few: A. Ashraf and H. Hekmat, “The State of the Traditional Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth Century Iran,” forthcoming in the proceedings of the 1974 Princeton conference on the Economic History of the Middle East. ed. A. Udovitch; Bill, J. A. The Politics of Iran: Groups, Classes and Modernization (Columbus, Ohio, 1972)Google Scholar; Vieille, P. La féodalité et l'Etat en Iran (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar; and Zonis, M. The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton, 1971).Google Scholar (I have also been helped by several articles by E. Abrahamian and by Gene Garthwaite.) On women, see the articles on Iran and the introduction in Beck, L. and Keddie, N. eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the economy to 1973, see Looney, Robert E. The Economic Development of Iran: A Recent Survey with Projections to 1981 (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

On reading proof in October, 1978, I am struck by how little I would change in this analysis to 1977 despits the dramatic and important events of the last year. The conflict between the “two cultures”--the Westernized elite and the traditionalist popular classes--could have been stressed more.