انقلاب اجتماعی: سیاست و دولت رفاه در ایران

by Kevan Harris, محمدرضا فدایی (Translator)

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 A Social Revolution, Kevan Harris convincingly demonstrates how they are wrong. Previous studies ignore the forceful consequences of three decades of social change following the 1979 revolution. Today, more people in the country are connected to welfare and social policy institutions than to any other form of state organization. In fact, much of Iran’s current 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, Harris shows how the revolutionary regime endured through the expansion of health, education, and aid programs that have both embedded the state in everyday life and empowered its challengers. This focus on the social policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens a new line of inquiry into the study of welfare states in countries where they are often overlooked or ignored.

Genres: Iran, History, Sociology, Middle East, Economics, Politics, Social Welfare

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Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harris does a sociological study of the whole Iranian nation, which is a fairly enormous target group. He investigates things like why a government formed by a revolution has not become a one-party state, but instead a country with fierce competition between elite groups, each of them striving to mobilize mass support. How has a country with a stagnant economy made major improvements in public health and education, so that most people have improved social welfare but less wealth? It’s a big, complicated study with lots of data analysis, but Harris keeps it interesting.

[Alireza Kd · Rating 1 out of 5]

اطلاعات زیادی فراهم آورده و ابعادی از تاریخ معاصر مانند شاخص‌ها، سیاست‌ها، مصوبات و بطور کلی معماری رفاه اجتماعی در ایران را مورد بررسی قرار داده که کمتر بدان توجه شده است. نویسنده علاوه بر گردآوری اسناد و آمار و ارقام، چند ماه را در استان‌های ایران گذرانده و با برخی از نزدیک مصاحبه کرده اگرچه چند و چون آن کامل تشریح نشده است. کتاب‌ تک‌بخش‌های موشکافانه‌ای دارد مانند روایت کارآمدی نظام بهداشت و درمان در دهه نخست بعد از انقلاب ۵۷ که از آن بعنوان جزیره کارآمدی یاد می‌کند یا استفاده از استخدام و حقوق‌بگیری دولت به مثابه نوعی حمایت اجتماعی اما در کل منطق روایی منسجم و روانی آنچنان که بتوانی بعد از خواندن برای کسی تعریف کنی و دستاوردهایش را بر بشماری یا حتی آن را درست نقد کنی ندارد. داده‌های گردآوری شده گاهی خوب سازماندهی شده‌اند و گاهی سازماندهی‌شان تعریفی ندارد. برخی ادعاها هم نادقیق و سهل انگار است. کتاب نه آنقدر قدرتمند و تاثیرگذار است که بتوانی با علاقه و پیگیری به انتها برسانی نه موضوع آنقدر تکراری و بی‌اهمیت که براحتی کنار بگذاری.

فرشید یزدانی در لینک زیر کتاب را زیر ذره‌بین گذاشته و نقد موشکافانه‌ای بر آن نوشته است:

https://bit.ly/2ZudI2O

[Mohammad Mollanoori · Rating 4 out of 5]

معتقد است که اقتصاد ما رانتی نیست و می توان از خلال مبارزات سیاسی، گسترش نظام رفاهی را درک کرد.

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent account of how the Iranian revolution of 1979 was, at bottom, a social revolution as much as a religious one that aimed to deal with the contradictions that had emerged out of the economy-modernizing state of the Shah. Far from being a medieval throwback, in other words, the "Islamic Republic" (a new concept in political theory and practice) appealed to a broad range or Iranians precisely because it promised a more inclusive social vision, and indeed would go on to deliver on that in terms of all classic developmental indicators from economic growth to health, education, and housing. The fact that the regime was an international pariah, operating under sanctions of various sorts, in fact strengthened social solidarity - as did the devastating war with Iraq. In the end, the regime was dedicated to expanding the welfare state, in other words, to a program of social modernization, albeit under the veil of religious orthodoxy. Corporatist bodies with revolutionary Iran became sites for bottoms-up inclusionary claims-making for students, women, villagers, and professionals. Yes, oil revenues provided the means for the building of such a welfare state, but as we know from countless African examples, the presence of oil revenues does not necessarily mean that the revenues will be deployed to expand welfare for the purposes of social leveling, class reshuffling, and balancing the rural-urban divide. This in turn because, contrary to dominant Western representations of the Islamic republic as a totalitarian regime, the Iranian post-revolutionary state (like most states) was in fact a site of conflict and compromise between different social strata, status groups, and elite actors inside and outside the state, and that the negotiations between these groups in fact yielded more socially and economically egalitarian outcomes than had been the case under the Pahlavi dictatorship.

This yields the counterintuitive result that, from a social welfare perspective, the Ayatollah was actually a better modernizer than the Shah. The Shah, to be sure, under the rubric of the White Revolution, had pursued "a particular vision of modernity, whereby the Shah would transcend the antagonisms of perceived backwardness in a semiperipheral country through political dictum." Land reform took place during the 1960s that effectively disappropriated the old feudal class, though it failed to provide adequate land to most peasants. In other words, rather than "a response to broad social demands by peasants... it emerged from the developmentalist vision of state elites, one that was shared by their intellectual critics." (65) Huge projects to build factories led only to the building of white elephants and huge opportunities for graft. The Shah's project was increasingly seen as ineffective, vain, and exacerbating of social inequality.

In Harris's rendering, Iran becomes a classic case of the Tocquevillian theory of where revolutions come from: the reformist impulses of the Shah in fact fostered the conditions that led to revolution by mobilizing the social forces and individuals who would eventually overthrow the government. "Each group came to believe in Ayatollah Khomenei's leadership of the opposition as the most obvious solution. Bazaar-based workshop proprietors saw him as the defender of private property and an intractable foe of the monarchy. The intelligentsia saw him as an anti-imperialist Mossadeq in clerical regalia. Workers saw him as a populist redistributor of status and wealth. Rural households saw him as someone who could fulfill the White Revolution's failed promises. Lastly, the bureaucratization of the state allowed civil servants and public-sector workers to see themselves not as cogs in the state machinery but as members of the discontented middle classes." (74-75) In sum, "the revolution set different groups of modernizers in fervent struggle against each other." (79)

Just as "the technocrat king saw no contradiction between a tradition-clad monarchy and a developmental state," (68) so the revolutionary regime would come to see no contradiction between imposing the religious strictures of Islam and technocratic delivery of social welfare. As the revolutionary regime matured, however, it would become every bit as technocratic as the Pahlavi regime it had superseded. By the late 2000s, "every politician in the Islamic Republic framed his or her position in terms of technocratic, expert governance against an opposing side that was ideologically biased and managerially incompetent." (155) Harris attributes this shift to a speech given by Rafsanjani in November 1990 in which he "proclaimed the superiority of consumerism over asceticism, the benefits of work over idleness, and the goal of overcoming individual vulnerabilities as opposed to harnessing the collective power of the oppressed." (156)

[Ashkan Ansari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't seen any impartial research on Iran's Society after the 1979 revolution. This book is the only research that wasn't motivated by politics. This book even helped me, an Iranian, to understand Iran's society better. I truly suggest reading this book instead of watching news streams or listen to politicians if you really want to understand Iran.

[عابر علف · Rating 3 out of 5]

کوان هریس مدعیه که همزمان با جابجایی قدرت [سیاسی] طی انقلاب ۱۳۵۷ در ایران، انقلاب اجتماعی هم رخ داده که من باهاش ابداً موافق نیستم. هر چند که از خوندن تحلیل‌هاش نکات زیادی فراگرفتم و از مقایسۀ تطبیقی‌ای که ارائه شده بود، لذتی وافر بردم. در ادامه بگم که مؤلف با بررسی سازمان‌های گوناگون در حوزهٔ تأمین اجتماعی اعتقاد داره که نظام اجتماعی بعد انقلاب کارآمدتر بوده. می‌شه این گزاره رو با تبصره‌های بسیاری قبول کرد اما باید یادآور شد که این دوره محدود بود و تا حدودِ زیادی هم به جو انقلابی زمانه و شرایط جنگی برمی‌گشت. هر چند که امروز فرسنگ‌ها از همون نظام نسبتاً فراگیر فاصله داریم. فقر و نابرابری هم به‌نحو چشمگیری گسترده‌تر شده.