IngentaConnect Modernity, Change and Dictatorship in Iran: The New Order and its...

Abstract:

The early Pahlavi period in Iran has conventionally been seen through the prism of its state-building effort. Attention has been focused almost exclusively on the high politics of the Tehran elite and a positive or negative balance sheet drawn up according to assessments of this elite's success in transforming Iran into a modern, politically independent, nation state. This preoccupation with the Tehran regime and its version of modernity has typically been accompanied, as the other side of the same coin, by an almost complete silence regarding other interests and perspectives. Little attempt has been made to elucidate either the historical narrative or the perception of their own experience of, for example, non-elite groups such as the Tehran crowd, of non-metropolitan groups including the guilds and the bazaars of the provincial cities, or of any social category in the countryside. The authoritarian modernization imposed by the Riza Shah regime was aimed at transforming precisely these elements but it was neither received passively, nor opposed blindly, by them. The arrival of the new order rather evoked complex and multi-faceted responses from different layers and sectors of Iranian society. Whereas the restoration of relative order and stability in the first half of the decade had been widely welcomed, as the regime embarked on a more radical phase of modernization, especially during the years 1927-29, substantial social groups, especially subaltern groups, resorted to strategies of avoidance, opposition and sometimes resistance. In describing these responses and strategies, this article hopes to make some attempt at representing the 'history from below' of these years.

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Modernity, Change and Dictatorship in Iran: The New Order and its Opponents, 1927-29