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In A Social Revolution, Kevan Harris convincingly demonstrates how they are wrong. Previous studies ignore the forceful consequences of three decades of social change after the 1979 revolution. Today, more people in the country are connected to welfare and social policy institutions than any other form of state organization. In fact, much of Irans political turbulence is the result of the success of these social welfare programs, which have created newly educated and mobilized social classes advocating for change. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Iran between 2006 and 2011, Harris shows how the revolutionary regime endured though the expansion of health, education, and aid programs that have both embedded the state in every-day life and empowered its challengers. This is the first serious book on the social policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and opens a new line of inquiry into the study of welfare states in countries that are often overlooked or ignored.
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."
