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"This impressive book pushes Iranian studies from the cloisters of area studies to the wider precincts of global political economy."—Charles Kurzman, author of The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran
"An original account of how the revolutionary regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran was able to survive years of turmoil. Harris has had the privilege of gathering the materials from inside Iran, access few American scholars have had since the 1979 revolution."—Ervand Abrahamian, author of The Coup: 1953, the C.I.A., and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations
"A Social Revolution offers an invaluable counterpoint to the prevailing conventional wisdom and should be required reading. Harris goes beyond the standard theocratic political frame to document a surprisingly successful Iranian variation on the developmental state."—Peter B. Evans, author of Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1. Can an Oil State Be a Welfare State?
2. Seeing like a King: Welfare Policy as State-Building Strategy in the Pahlavi Monarchy
3. Creating a Martyrs’ Welfare State: 1979, War, and the Survival of the Islamic Republic
4. The Revolution Embedded: Rural Transformations and the Demographic Miracle
5. Development and Distinction: Welfare-State Expansion and the Politics of the New Middle Class
6. Lineages of the Iranian Welfare State
Conclusion: Development Contradictions through the Lens of Welfare Politics
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Kevan Harris is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Summary
For decades, political observers and pundits have characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran as an ideologically rigid state on the verge of collapse, exclusively connected to a narrow social base. In this book, the author demonstrates how they are wrong.
Additional text
"A Social Revolution shows that the Islamic Republic relied on welfare provision as the main source of state making, and this is a remarkable finding. I contend that this book is a must read for students of welfare studies, the Middle East, and social movements."
