Copyright by Bryan Campbell Sitzes 2018 The Thesis Committee for Bryan Campbell Sitzes Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Alienating Iranians from their Environment: Irrigation, Flood Control, and Public Health in Late Pahlavi Khuzestan APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Kamran Scot Aghaie Faegheh Shirazi Alienating Iranians from their Environment: Irrigation, Flood Control, and Public Health in Late Pahlavi Khuzestan by Bryan Campbell Sitzes Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 “What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” – C.S. Lewis Acknowledgements Many people helped me complete this project. I am extremely grateful to Professors Kamran Aghaie and Faegheh Shirazi for all their encouragement and suggestions. Dr. Samy Ayoub and Andrew Akhlaghi introduced me to environmental history, setting me on an exciting historical path. Dr. Dale Correa, Middle Eastern Studies Librarian and History Coordinator for the University of Texas Libraries, was extremely gracious with her time and tracked down several documents that made this paper possible. Many of my peers at UT - Austin helped me by challenging my arguments and encouraging me to persist when the project seemed difficult, especially Casey Boyles, Lucy Flamm, Robyn Morse, Garrett Shuffield, and Babak Tabarraee. Many teachers and friends have helped me learn Persian over the years, but Babak, Roja, and Anousha Shahsavari most of all. This paper absolutely would not have been possible without the love and support of Mai, Prudence, and Pele. v Abstract Alienating Iranians from their Environment: Irrigation, Flood Control, and Public Health in Late Pahlavi Khuzestan Bryan Campbell Sitzes, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisor: Kamran Scot Aghaie This thesis explores the changing relationship between rural Iranians, the state, and the environment in the mid-20th century through a regional study of the province of Khuzestan, in southwestern Iran. This research differs from predominant histories of modernization in Iran by its use of an environmental historical framework and its focus on rural communities on the national periphery. Environmental history, as opposed to political, economic, intellectual, or feminist history, emphasizes the dynamic dialectical relationship between society and its environment, acknowledging the historical agency of the latter. Examining changes in the relationships between society, rivers, and disease (types of “socio-environmental” relationships) demonstrates how modernization projects affected social institutions and Iranian conceptions of nature. 20th century state initiatives degraded the existing relationship between society and environment in Khuzestan because of a modernist faith in humanity’s power over natural phenomena and a capitalist drive to replace traditional modes of labor with new jobs integrated into a global cash economy. Engineers designed plans for new canals and a massive modern dam that vi foremen and their professional crews built with over one million tons of concrete. Village health agents coerced residents into mass chemotherapy treatments while school officials experimented with the diets of schoolchildren to see what mixture of proteins might produce the healthiest citizens. These projects reveal a state faith in the ability of experts to control natural phenomena and successfully order society without input from local communities. Using corporate archival material, state reports, and anthropological studies, I tell the story of how the Development and Resources Corporation’s arrival in Khuzestan drastically altered socio-environmental dynamics, how the state enhanced its power and presence in villages, and the ambiguous response of villagers to these changes. The attractions of modern technologies and comfort commodities often came at the price of personal and communal autonomy. I argue that the DRC and the state altered traditional modes of incorporating nature into rural social structures. These organizations partially alienated Iranians from their natural environment by conceptualizing it as a resource to be completely controlled, for profit and national benefit, rather than accommodated for local needs and demands. vii Table of Contents List of Tables ........................................................................................................ ix Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Irrigation and New Experts ...................................................................8 Chapter 2: Floods and a Great Dam ......................................................................40 Chapter 3: Public Health and Forced Treatments .................................................67 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................100 Bibliography .......................................................................................................108 viii List of Tables Table 1: Actions of villagers when catching a sickness ..................................95 Table 2: What villagers in the DIP believe cause sickness .............................97 ix Introduction This thesis explores the changing relationship between rural Iranians, the state, and the environment in the mid-20th century through a regional study of Khuzestan, in southwestern Iran. Examining changes in the relationships between society, rivers, and diseases (types of “socio- environmental” relationships) demonstrates how modernization projects affected social institutions and Iranian conceptions of nature. Using corporate archival material, state reports, and anthropological studies, I tell the story of how the Development and Resources Corporation’s arrival in Khuzestan drastically altered socio-environmental dynamics in the region, how the state enhanced its power and presence in villages, and how villagers responded ambiguously to these changes. The attractions of modern technologies and comfort commodities often came at the price of personal and communal autonomy. I argue that the DRC and the state altered traditional modes of incorporating nature into rural social structures. These organizations partially alienated Iranians from their natural environment by conceptualizing it as a resource to be completely controlled for profit and national benefit, rather than accommodated for local needs and demands. This environmental study of a peripheral province departs from typical histories of Iranian modernization in several ways. Geographically, historians of Iran have often examined modernization on a national scale or within major cities, usually Tehran. This paper’s study of the upper Khuzestan plains allows for a more granular examination of modernization processes in local communities, outside an urban setting, and away from the national political centers. Even within Khuzestan, the APOC/NIOC oil towns have received deserved attention for their roles in the economic and labor histories of Iran, but the predominantly agricultural areas of 1 northern Khuzestan have remained largely outside the focus of modern scholarship.1 Methodologically, historians have engaged economic, religious, political, intellectual, and feminist frameworks to illuminate a many of the aspects of Iran’s modernization period, but only a handful have recently begun to use an environmental framework. Environmental history incorporates actors often not regarded as especially significant within other frameworks, such as landscapes (e.g. mountains), bodies of water, disease, or animals. Traditional histories often view these kinds of actors within two extremes. The first completely disregards their agency, viewing non-human elements as tools or backdrops to a historical drama completely determined by humanity. The second, and far less common, extreme sees human history as molded by nature. Here, the conditions societies find themselves in largely predetermine the course of events.2 Environmental history as conceived by historians like J.R. McNeill, William Cronon, and Alan Mikhail, understands both human society and the natural environment as historical actors intertwined with, and inseparable from, each other. They act on each other and each affects the other’s historical trajectory, as Cronon formulated, Environment may initially shape the range of choices available to a people at a given moment, but then culture reshapes environment in responding to those choices. The reshaped environment presents a new set of possibilities for cultural reproduction, thus setting up a new cycle of mutual determination.3 Neither society nor environment are static. Instead both constantly evolve, both because of, and independently, from each other. Thus, environmental history looks at particular historical periods and places to see exactly how these socio-environmental dynamics occur. 1 One exception to this which was extremely helpful for writing this thesis was Cyrus Salmanzadeh’s Agricultural Change and Rural Society in Southern Iran (Whitstable: Whitstable Litho Ltd., 1980). 2 The most famous example of nature-dominated history is Karl A. Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power