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Revolution and Society in Modern Iran

This panel was compiled by the Conference Program Team from independently submitted paper proposals

Presentations

Seyyed Hasan Taghizadeh’s Role in the Process of Modernization of Iran
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One of the persons who played an exceptional role in the history of modernization of Iran in the XX-century is Seyyed Hasan Taghizadeh. This figure experienced in such an historical condition had a wide range of political, social and scientific activity, and throughout all his life defended the liberal principles. Started his political activity as a member of the first Iranian parliament Seyyed Hasan Taghizadeh, unlike his predecessors for the first time making an important step in the modernization system of Iran had played a key role in the creation of new political party- the Democratic Party of Iran. The relatively radical and secular position of the Democratic Party of Iran founded by him and of the Democratic faction in the Iran's Assembly was the result of Seyyed Hasan Taghizadeh’s activity. Rose to the liberal level in his political outlook Seyyed Hasan Taghizadeh made statement in Iran's conservative-clerical environment with the idea of separation of religion from politics, and emphasized that the XX century was the era of modernization in the East and Iran.
Since the first period of Seyyed Hasan Taghizadeh’s activity was related with his smaller homeland – Azerbaijan, his close collaboration with Mohammad Amin Rasulzadeh who came from the Caucasian Azerbaijan and took part in the organization of DPI (Democratic Party of Iran) and in the publication of its press organ “Iran-e Now”, turning of these relations into a long-term friendship and other such issues made this personality interesting in the Republic of Azerbaijan as well, and led to the creation of research works related to his multilateral activities.

The Idea of 'A Return to Self' in Post-Coup Iran: A Fresh Look.
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This paper seeks to theorize and delineate the contours of “The Idea of a Return to Self” [Ideh-ye Bazgasht beh Khish], a discourse that emerged in the years between the 1953 coup d’états and the Islamic revolution of 1979. “A Return to Self” was the Iranian version of the discourse of authenticity, which swept across many “Third World” countries in the 1950s. This discourse, led to a widespread anti-colonial uprising that resulted in the independence of more than thirty countries in the global south. In Iran, however, despite its wide appeal among several groups and parties, “the Idea of a Return to Self” has remained neglected, avoided, and even brushed off without due scrutiny. The main purpose of this paper is to fill that gap in the literature. I will first identify Jalal-Al-e Ahmad, Ali Shariati, Ehsan Naraqi, and Dariush Shayegan as the championing promulgators of “A Return to Self” and then suggest that, based on my in-depth examination of the texts they have produced, “A Return to Self” is not altogether regressive, romantic, and traditionalist. Quite the contrary, it contains progressive elements that transcend the nativism / modernism binary opposition, which has plagued discursive mappings of post-coup/pre-revolutionary (1953-1970) Iran, to this day. I will further suggest that the main pillars of the discourse of “A Return to Self” share several philosophical roots with the counter-Enlightenment discourses that emerged in Western Europe in the aftermath of the WWII, namely the Frankfurt School. Looking at the above-mentioned thinkers and belletrists in this new light will equip us, I suggest, with an improved philosophical insight into how the project of an Iranian modernity can forge ahead.

Rewriting the History of Sociological Imagination in Iran
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The official history of sociology in Iran backs to 1950's, when the academic discipline of sociology established at University of Tehran. On the other hand, we can find those before this date who speak “in the name of society” for the first time in Iran. These reformists, physicians and doctors, novelists and fiction writers, travellers and revolutionaries mainly tried to change society in a practical way and for this reason; they introduced the best forms of governance. So, they started to speak about social phenomenon to analyse the market, poverty, cultural lag, despotism and power. In this sense, they were the first ones to link individual issues to social and historical context and shaped the sociological imagination. In this new field of knowledge, they cited some practices and areas in which the Social would be highlighted and the linked to the idea of governance, from simple practices like eating to taxpaying and ethical practices. Thus, in the late nineteenth century, Iran was a social laboratory for a group of thinkers who - though sometimes were in a dialogue with the West – used modern sciences vocabulary to take a fresh look at their own society and explain their point of view. So, they established a form of pre-sociology approach to analyse different aspects of Iranian social life based on a historical background. Furthermore, reorganization of state’s power in a global framework of governance led to shape the modern state that was interested in and dealt with issues of territory and population. As a result, this emphasized on role of people and society. Analysing texts from 1900-1930, this paper shows the ways that pre-sociologists in Iran linked individual issues to a broader socio-historical basis. These analytical texts along with population and geographical statistics lead us to a new origin of sociological imagination which has shaped non-official and non-academic sociological thoughts in Iran.

Reflections on Two Revolutions: The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 Versus the Revolution of 1979
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Based a secularist reading of history, the Constitutional Revolution should have occurred in 1979 not in 1906 and the Iranian Revolution in 1906 not in 1979. Although it was far behind Egypt and Turkey in terms of economic development in the late nineteenth century, it was the first Middle Eastern country to experience a major revolution for constitutional change in 1906. What is more, the revolution was led by two ayatollahs. In 1979, Iran was a modernizing country highlighted with an impressive rate of economic development that surpassed both Egypt and Turkey. Again, it was the first country to experience a major revolution that brought religious extremists to power. Like the Constitutional Revolution, religious leaders led the revolution. While in the Constitutional Revolution a foreign (i.e., the British) embassy was used to stage a sit-in at its site in order to force the Shah to consent to constitutional change, in the 1979 revolution a foreign (i.e., the American) embassy was seized by a group of religious zealots in order to mobilize the public against the U.S., defeat their liberal opponents, and pass a constitution that gave absolutist power to the ruling cleric.
From the perspective of irreducibility of religious ideas, we employ the concept of discursive space in order to explain these two diverse historical outcomes. To elaborate our understanding of the concept, we start with the premise that any system of sociopolitical thought shaping human behavior—be it rooted in religion, Marxism, or various nationalist worldviews—may display a degree of rigidity or flexibility in incorporating or accommodating new ideas. We conceptualize this flexibility as a discursive space: an interstitial capacity or opening in the conceptual system that enables its practitioners to detect, recognize, discuss, and even reconcile inconsistencies. Although the relationship between discursive space and flexibility may not be linear, to some degree the wider the discursive space, the more flexible the system of thought. The discursive space consists of the space that is occupied by the number of problematic elements in a system of sociopolitical thought that could be removed without essentially causing the collapse of that system. We argue that the discursive space in the Islamic thought in the late nineteenth century was wide and this allowed the rise of Shi’i modernism and support for constitutionalism. In the sixties and seventies, this discursive space narrowed down, provided favorable context for the rise of Shi’i fundamentalism.