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Informationen zum Autor Majid Sharifi is assistant professor in international affairs and government at Eastern Washington University. He has done extensive field research in the political development of Iran and surrounding countries. His research focuses on political and security trends and transformations in the littoral states of Persian Gulf, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Klappentext Thematically, this book problematizes Iranian official nationalism. It reviews how every modern Iranian regime since the constitutional revolution of the 1905-06 has failed to legitimize its official identity, resulting in the fall of five different regimes. The book details how the collapse of each regime resulted in the interruption of the official meaning of being Iranian, as well as the meanings of its enemies. What remained the same was how every Iranian regime represented itself as the agent of a particular national desire defined in terms of making Iran to become sovereign, developed, democratic, and constitutional. Nonetheless, no regime was able to convince a great majority of the people that it achieved what it represented. This book makes three specific contributions. The first contribution is pedagogical. By focusing on the dynamics of regime changes, it provides a heuristic model for identifying challenges that all Iranian regimes have faced. Moreover, the book is a comprehensive review of the disruptive, oppressive, and bloody nature of the rise and fall of different regimes. The second contribution is theoretical. Rather than examining the behavior of various Iranian regimes in isolation from their international context, the book examines how each regime got to understand itself in relations to its imperial others. By examining the governmental rationality of each regime, the book offers a better theoretical framework for understanding political development not only in Iran, but also in all other Middle Eastern and South Asian states. Finally, the third contribution of this book is its critical approach to the main body of the literature on Iran, modernity, development, democracy, and constitutionalism. Majid Sharifi thoroughly researches politics in Iran for the past one-hundred years. He depicts the five regime changes accurately and then reviews the fundamental dynamics of the rise and fall of each regime and why it is that they have all failed to nationalize their narrative of Iranianness. Any reader of Imagining Iran will walk away with a well-informed sense of political history of Iran, especially in relation to what the state has accomplished and not accomplished in the past vis-a-vis the Iranian population. -- Abdy Javadzadeh Majid Sharifi breaks new ground in connecting the development of Iranian nationalism to the imperial and colonial experiences of other subaltern states. His book fits within the emerging field of coloniality/decoloniality. It shows that the darker side of modernity has shaped Western as well as non-Western societies. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of global/local affairs. -- Sean Chabot Zusammenfassung The thematic focus of this book is the tragic yet inevitable effects of subaltern nationalism. The book covers the systemic challenges that all modern Iranian regimes have faced in establishing a sovereign! developed! democratic! and constitutional nation-state. Inhaltsverzeichnis PrefaceChapter 1: Contested IraniannessChapter 2: The Emergence of Modern Iranian NationalismChapter 3: Subaltern Developmentalism: Reza Shah's Reign (1921-1941)Chapter 4: Imperial Interventions (1941 and 1953)Chapter 5: Formation of a Hegemonic National Opposition (1953-1978)Chapter 6: The Islamic Republic: The Creation of an Islamic Iranian SubjectChapter 7: Consolidation of the State Power but Crisis in National IdentityChapter 8: Islamic Nationalism RedefinedChapter 9: Official Nationalism in Practice: Seduction ...
