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State Power and Revolution: Toward a Strategic-Relational Analysis of the 1979 Revolution in Iran

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State Power and Revolution: Toward a Strategic-Relational Analysis of the 1979 Revolution in Iran State Power and Revolution: Toward a Strategic-Relational Analysis of the 1979 Revolution in Iran Nader Talebi This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2018 Department of Sociology To the past, present and future freedom and equality fighters ﺑﮫ ھﻣﮫ ﻣﺑﺎرزان دﯾروز، اﻣروز و ﻓردای آزادی و ﺑراﺑری Declaration This thesis has not been submitted in support of an application for another degree at this or any other university. It is the result of my own work and includes nothing that is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated. Many of the ideas in this thesis were the product of discussion with my supervisor Prof Bob Jessop. Apart from the front matter, abstract, acknowledgments, and references (860 + 5261 words), this thesis has 81317 words, which reflects cuts for the sake of concision as well as additions to respond to the comments of my examiners. Nader Talebi, PhD candidate Lancaster University, UK Abstract This study is an attempt to understand how Islamists, especially a significant part of the Shi’a clergy, become the dominant political force in Iran in the 1970s, which was a decade of state transformation. Employing a conceptual toolbox and methods of investigation based on the Strategic-Relational Approach and Cultural Political Economy, this study introduces fresh perspectives, concerns, and concepts to reconstruct the key features of the complex revolutionary moment in 1979 and provide a periodisation of state (trans-)formations in Iran. It identifies two main periods: national state building (1848-1970) and expansion (1970-). By exploring the recontexualization and changing articulation of three discursive formations and taking note of different temporalities, this study identifies a ‘holy triad’ (justice, progress and independence) that sheds light on the development of the national state in Iran. I argue that justice is the master frame for conceptualising the changing significance of the other two. The thesis also argues that the political economy of oil became the triad’s primary point of crystallisation in the 1970s. Thus, an economic crisis that followed the collapse of the oil boom in the mid-1970s profoundly disoriented the state’s political and cultural legitimacy. This crisis created the setting for the rise and dominance of an innovative, Shi’ite messianic narrative. This was embodied in Khomeini’s role in Iranian politics. Therefore, this study explores the history of Shi’ism and the Shi’a messianic movements to identify the resources and capacities available to Khomeini to promote his counter-hegemonic visions. A further factor favouring Khomeini’s messianic movement was the history of (semi-)colonialism in the region and the intensifying Arab- Israeli conflict, which tended to confirm Khomeini’s narrative rather than the ideas of his rivals. In short, rather than re-interpreting the 1979 Revolution in the light of new historical findings, this study provides a spatio-temporally sensitive strategic-relational account of revolutionary conjuncture and historical specificity of the background to the revolution and its path-shaping impact on the present moment. Acknowledgements I cannot express enough thanks to my supervisor and friend, Bob Jessop, for his outstanding support during my study for writing this thesis. It was my great honour to work under his supervision. The completion of this project could not have been accomplished without the lifetime support of my Family: Farideh Rahmanfard, Azizollah, Sareh and Sepehr Talebi. I would like to offer my special thanks to Maziar Samiee, Ebru Çiğdem Thwaites, Ngai-Ling Sum and Michael Krätke for their comments and feedback on my work. I am particularly grateful for the assistance given by João Nunes de Almeida, Muzeyyen Pandir, Nasrin Reza, and Leyli Behbahani that eased my stay in the UK. I like to extend the appreciation to my other friends Çağdaş Sümer, Özge Yaka, Serhat Karakayali, Bülent Diken, Amir Nikpey, Mohammad Maljoo, Mehdi Yousefi, Hamid Nowzari, Ahmad Ghorbani, and many others for sharing their interesting observations with me. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Shirin Ahmadnia for her trust, support and friendship that enabled me to overcome several obstacles in completing this work. I would like to express my very great appreciation to Ebrahim Towfigh for inspiring and guiding me in working on the national state in Iran before and during this project. I am also indebted to Naika Foroutan and my colleagues in Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung for giving me the chance of academic participation in Berlin. Likewise, I was privileged to meet and spend time with Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat for a few months in Berlin. I would like to thank their wonderful friendship that contributed significantly to the completion of this project. Thanks are also due to my friends and comrades in Tehran and Berlin for their love and support that remind me of a brighter future out of the current struggle for making a better world. Finally, I want to thank my partner, friend and comrade, and the love of my life, Firoozeh Farvardin. I was lucky to meet her and have the opportunity of learning from her vast knowledge. She has generously introduced me to many new concepts, fresh perspectives and alternative approaches. As with my master thesis, I cannot imagine finishing this study without her support, assistance and honest feedback. Nader Talebi Berlin, August 2018 Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 8 1.1 The 1979 Revolution ....................................................................................... 9 1.2 Periodisation .................................................................................................. 13 1.3 Mapping the following chapters .................................................................... 18 2. Theorising the Iranian State and 1979 Revolution ............................................... 24 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 24 2.2 A few general remarks .................................................................................. 27 2.3 The national state in Iran ............................................................................... 29 2.4 Modernisation Theory ................................................................................... 40 2.5 The political economy of the pre-revolutionary era ...................................... 48 2.6 Shi’a Islam, clergy and the 1979 Revolution ................................................ 52 2.7 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 66 3. Toward a conceptual toolbox ............................................................................... 68 3.1 Theorizing societalization .............................................................................. 70 3.2 State Power ................................................................................................... 78 3.2.1 From Allgemeine Staatstheorie to the state as a social relation ........... 81 3.3 Periodisation and temporal concepts ............................................................ 84 3.4 State space and spatial concepts ................................................................. 88 3.5 On methodology ............................................................................................ 93 3.6 Discursive formations as framing devices .................................................... 96 3.7 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 99 4. Shi’ism, State and the Political Imaginary of Islamists in 1979 Revolution ....... 101 4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 101 4.2 Islam and Shi’ism ........................................................................................ 106 4.3 Formative phase of Shi’ism (7th-10th A.D.) .................................................. 107 4.3.1 Ali.......................................................................................................... 108 4.3.2 Husayn ................................................................................................. 108 4.3.3 Sadiq .................................................................................................... 112 4.3.4 Mahdi .................................................................................................... 113 4.4 Shi’a in medieval times (10th-15th century A.D.) ....................................... 120 4.4.1 Isma’ilism ............................................................................................. 120 4.4.2 Hurufism ............................................................................................... 122 4.4.3 Nuqtavism ............................................................................................ 123 4.5 From messianism to de-apocalypticization ................................................. 123 4.5.1 Safavid: The Shi’a Empire ................................................................... 123 4.5.2 Variation of Shi’a orthodoxy ................................................................
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