Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change (Iranian Studies)

This book investigates the nature of modern social change in Iran through a novel combination of the theoretical insights of International Relations and historical sociology. It argues that there is a previously neglected international dimension to social change that when analytically incorporated sheds a new light on the specificities of Irana (TM)s distinctive experience of modernity.

This hitherto under-theorized international dimension is manifest in the formation of hybrid patterns of development that has involved modern and traditional forms. It is, the book argues, the tension-prone and unstable nature of these hybrid forms that marks Iranian modernity and fuelled the socio-political dynamics of the 1979 revolution and the rise of political Islam. The book therefore challenges sheerly comparative approaches to the Iranian revolution that explain it away either as a deviation from or a reaction to modernity on the grounds of its religious form. The alternative account that this book offers comprehends the revolutiona (TM)s specificities as the organic products of an intrinsic international property of social transformation.

This book will be of interest to academics and researchers interested in the Iranian revolution, modern Iran and political Islam working in the fields of IR, Middle East and Islamic studies, history, political science, political sociology, comparative politics, area studies.

This book provides a new interpretation of modern Iranian history, focusing in particular how international relations have played a central role in the development of society and in the Iranian revolution.

Arguing that this international dimension is manifest in the hybrid patterns of development, involving traditional and modern forms, whose tensions ultimately fuelled the socio-political dynamic of the revolution, the author shows that the role of international relations in the revolution was far more salient than the explicit record of Irana (TM)s foreign relations would suggest. Crucially, the book challenges orthodox academic explanations of the Iranian revolution as being either a deviation from the normal path to modernity or a counter movement against modernity.

Successfully combining the academic disciplines of International Relations and social theory, this book will be of interest to academics and researchers interested in the Iranian revolution, modern Iran and political Islam working in the fields of Middle East and Islamic Studies, history, political science, political sociology, comparative politics, area studies and IR.