Social Movement theory and the Iranian revolution – a Historiographical Approach
2. mar 2011 22:07, H.Fosselius
1. Introduction:
In 1953 the absolute rule of the Pahlavi monarchy was reinstated and the Shah returned to supreme power in Iran by a coup orchestrated by the CIA. The Shah sanctioned an increasingly repressive regime and embarked on an extensive modernization program, exemplified by the secular reforms of the white revolution in 1962. In 1963, the white revolution was met with active opposition by religious traditionalists. Ayatollah Khomeini led a series of protest in Qom against the reforms and what were perceived as the increasing influence of foreign powers on Iranian affairs. Khomeini was subsequently exiled in 1964. At the same time there was a powerful intellectual trend, which linked the Shah’s regime to a radical critique of Western cultural imperialism. During the rest of the 1960s and 1970s a whole array of dissident movements became active in opposition to the Shah’s regime. What all these dissident groups came to have in common was the development and use of Islam as a revolutionary political ideology or as a social project against the common enemy – the Shah’s regime (Amineh and Eisenstadt 2007: 145). The movement culminated in the Iranian Revolution 1977-1979, which ended with the return of Khomeini from exile and the Iranian population overwhelmingly voting yes for the establishment of an Islamic State governed by Shi’i religious clerics. The question asked in this paper is how the academia in the decades that followed the revolution made sense of this extraordinary and unprecedented social and religious movement in modern history?
2. Formulation of Problem: This papers’ point of departure is a description of Social Movement Theory (SMT) and its relation to the study of religious movements. The paper then proceeds to analyse whether and which SMT approaches have been used to explain the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979. The analysis is rooted in samples of academic articles on the Iranian Revolution in the particular decade of the 1980s. The paper then discusses what the so called Culturalist turn of the 1990s means for the conceptualization of SMT in the particular case of the Iranian revolution.
3. The structure of the paper/Methodology: This paper is both theory and case-driven. It offers a description of SMT vocabulary and historical development, followed by an analysis and discussion of SMT’s relation to the Iranian revolution. In empirical terms, the basis of the material analysed are various articles including “the Iranian Revolution” in the caption or in the abstract, published within the decade of the 1980s, In the ensuing discussion articles and monographs are briefly discussed in terms of the implications of the culturalist turn for SMT in general and specifically for the Iranian Revolution. The paper uses an interpretivist approach, seeking to find SMT content through textual and discourse analysis of the examined material.
4. Definitions and conceptualization:
Historiography: the study of writing about history.
Social Movements (SM): Most definitions of SMs are based on three or more of the following axes: collective action; change-oriented goals or claims; extra- or non-institutional collective action; a degree of organization; and some degree of temporal continuity. SMs thus are made up of a number of individual actors with shared interests, goals or claims, capable of collective action, which often take the form of protest or advocating alternative visions of society. SMs aim at bringing about social change in society. They are different from interest-groups in that they usually are not embedded within the political system. They have some degree of organization (SMO) and are in existence for some length of time, either failing or succeeding in bringing about social change. (Snow, Soule & Kriesi 2004: 6) In relation to the specific focus of this paper, it must be asked how the Iranian revolution 1977-1979 qualifies as a SM.
The Iranian revolution as a SM: The distinct term “social revolution” can be applied to what happened in Iran in the late 1970s. The term “social revolution” was defined by Theda Skocpol (1976), who combined Samuel P. Huntington’s and Lenin’s definitions of revolutions and posited that social revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of socio-economic and political institutions, accompanied and in part effectuated through class upheavals from below. (Skocpol 1976: 175, 1982: 265) In other words a social revolution like the Iranian case can be viewed as a SM that succeeds. As such it is probable that SMT can be used to explain why and how the Iranian revolution came to be.
Social Movement Theory (SMT): is sociological theorizing with a distinct terminology about the causes and reasons for the emergence of SMs, about the structure, functioning, growth, and actions of SMs. Traditionally SMT has been divided into two schools, the European and the American. Experts claim that in recent years, theorists of the two schools have started to pay attention to each other (Crossley 2002: 13). As society change, the social movements which emerge in them change too. Consequently SMT has developed and mushroomed in order to contain the alterations in observed SM phenomena. It follows that events that have already taken place, are continually interpreted through the lenses of emerging paradigms in theory making. This paper is partly concerned with showing how the process of SMT development has been underway in the 1980s and in the later scholarship of the Iranian revolution.
Collective action/Social Breakdown approach: The collective behaviour approach portrays movement emergence as a reflex response to various forms of hardship, for example 'grievances', ‘relative deprivations', 'anomie' and 'structural strains'. In this branch of SMT, hardships are viewed as both a necessary and a sufficient cause of protest and movement formation. (Crossley 2002: 11) The approach emphasises processes of large-scale social transformations such as modernization that are hypothesized to generate social disorganization and associated strains, frustrations, anxieties, disorientations and grievances, which in turn may explode in collective violence and civil disorder.
Resource Mobilization theory: RMT criticizes the view of collective action as anomic and irrational behaviour resulting from rapid social change, and it questions ‘relative deprivation’ theory, which assumes a direct link between perceived deprivation and collective action. RMT focuses on the dynamics and tactics of the movements rather than on the reason for their existence. RMT is characterized by the assumption that collective action will not happen automatically when a certain level and variety of grievances have accumulated. The central question is therefore how and when it is possible to mobilize recourses for collective action. SMs are perceived as goal-oriented, struggling to acquire recourses to fulfil their goals, as well as striving to increase both their absolute- and relative power. The approach appropriates a rational actor model in positing that resources arise from inducing individuals to participate and contribute to the costs, while on the other hand, individuals participate because they see the benefits to be derived from joining the movement. Resource mobilisation is the approach which puts the strongest emphasis on the benefits and necessity of strong SMOs and leaders in successful SMs. (Phongpaichit 1999, Weissmann 2008). RMT has been further elaborated with studies of SMs reciprocal relationship with the state.
The political process approach (PP): emphasises the political, organisational and structural aspects of social movements. Collective actions and social movements are analysed in the context of the interaction between the SM, the political environment and the state. There exists a "political opportunity structure" which conditions, opens or closes for the emergence, strategies and successes of social movement activities and collective actions. The theory posits that Political opportunities need to be taken into account if a SM wants to make a difference or even an impact. (Weissman 2008)
Framing Processes approach (FP): is a theoretical development, which seeks to incorporate social-cultural contextual analysis into RMT. The term framing process refers to a SMs collective construction of meaning and perception of reality. Collective frames entail agency in the sense that what is evolving is the work of SMOs or movement activists. A collective frame is contentious in the sense that it involves interpretive frames that not only differ from existing ones but that may also challenge them. The resultant products of this framing activity are referred to as "collective action frames." Often frames have been confused with ideology. However, collective action frames function as innovative amplifications and extensions of, or antidotes to, existing ideologies or components of them. Accordingly, ideology can function as both a constraint and a resource in relation to framing processes and collective action frames. (Benford and Snow 2000: 613n, 614)
New social movements approach (NSM) is a European variant of SMT. It emphasises the importance of the individual as an actor, and asks why social movements arise in the first place. The first NSM approaches tried to do away with class consciousness as an explanatory model for collective action and to eradicate the economic reductionism of Marxism. NSM theory directs attention to the fact that most post-1960’s NSMs are not class based, nor always related to crisis or structural contradictions. Instead they oppose the intrusion of the modern democratic state, which has degenerated into authoritarianism and technocracy, and the domination of the market forces, which have turned citizens into consumers, in social life. Participation in NMSs is an attempt to defend the public and the private sphere against the inroads of the state system and the market economy and to reclaim the identity of the individual subject. The NSM approach thus posits that NSMs stand for a critique of conventional politics and the existing structures, and explains SMs as linked to the failure of the democratic system in post-modern society to guarantee individual freedom, equality and fraternity. In general therefore, NSM theory focuses on the importance of the post- modern culture in the formation and creation of the individual’s personal-, collective-, and public identity and interests. (Buechler 1995)
Religious Movements: the sociology of religion distinguishes between churches, sects, and cults when they use the term religious movements. A church is a conventional religious organization, i.e., an organization that supports the norms of its surrounding society. In the case of Iran, there is no church per se; rather the religious tradition of Twelver Shi’i Islam serves as the organizational support of norms in Iranian society. A sect is a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices in contrast to a cult, which is a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices. In the sociology of religion, cults are termed new religious movements (NRM) because their religious culture is deemed too novel to be classified as belonging within the conventional religious traditions of the society in which they are being observed (Pitchford, Bader and Stark 2001: 380) NRM may appear via two means: innovation and importation. In the case of the Iranian revolution, the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini’s “governance of the jurist” and his ideas of an Islamic state was an innovation within the traditional Shi’ite theology.
Shi’a Islam: constitutes app. 16 % of the Muslim population. Iran is one of a few places where Shi’i Islam in the form of the Twelver variant is the majority religion. In contrast to Sunni Muslims, Shi’i Islam posits that the Prophet Muhammad’s son in law Ali’s family line is the only legitimate heir to religious leadership (the imamate). Twelver Shi’i Islam believe that there were twelve imams, beginning with Ali, and his two sons, who were physically present in this world, until the last in line (the twelfth imam) left the visible world and went into occultation. As the twelfth imam was spiritualized, religious authority was routinized with the body of ulama (or mullahs), who exercised control over religious doctrine and practise. The Shi’i ulama in Iran have participated in popular resistance toward the state before, but historically the Shi'i ulama have been engaged in a quietist relation to the state and have not been contesting for governmental power until Khomeini began to do so. (Brown 2000: 15, 38-39). As such Khomeini’s legitimization of religion taking on political and governmental power represents a novel feature in Shi’i theology, which places Khomeni’s revolutionary movement within the paradigm of NRM theory.
Ideology is generally portrayed as a fairly broad, coherent, and relatively durable set of beliefs that affects one's orientation not only to politics but to everyday life more generally. This conception holds whether one subscribes to a more general and neutral view of ideology or to a more critical view wherein ideology is seen as functioning to sustain existing class structures and relations of domination. In either case, the reference is to fairly pervasive and integrated set of beliefs and values that have considerable staying power. (Benford and Snow 2000: 613n) Ideology has been an extensive part of the explanations of why and how the Iranian revolution took place.
5. Content: Social movement theory and Religious movements.
5.1 The American/positivist tradition of SMT:
As a theoretical field social movement theory (SMT) is grounded in the nineteenth century sociological theories of social change, tied to the processes of modernization, urbanization and industrialization, which took place in Western Europe and America in the late nineteenth century. Because SMT developed within Western European and American contexts, much of the early (and later) theorizing about social movements reflects the historical experiences and political concerns of these cultures.
To begin with the theoretical interest in the aforementioned mass phenomena generated a view in which social movements were regarded as a threat to society. In particular crowd psychologists were alarmed by the growth of mass movements with socialist orientation, but they also identified an explanation of social change in the conceptualization of collective activity infused with “irrational” behaviour. Simultaneously in the 1950’s as a reaction to the terrifying developments in Europe up to and during WW II, a new version of mass society theory developed, which causally linked societal breakdown, the rise of demagogues and extremists policies. These ideas also found a way into SMT. Consequently the collective behaviour approach is sometimes also referred to as breakdown theory. (Useem 1998) The 1960s’collective behavior approach is linked to theorists like Herbert Blumer and Neil Smelser. (Beckford 2003: 154)
In the late 1960’s and into the 1970s resource mobilization theory (RMT) was introduced. In the first stages of the theory’s development, the approach espoused a rational actor model, which posited that social actors were not irrational, but used cost-benefit calculations upon entering social movements. Also a structural 'network' model of social relations and social life was adopted, which explained a SMs success as proportional with its ability to link to other networks of groups and organisations. RMT thus focused wholly on the strategies, which theoretically would make a SM successful in its demands for a change in government policies and legislation. The second stage of RMT development, which gained primacy in the 1980s and 1990s, was represented by the approach termed “political opportunity” or “political process theory.” This combined approach sees SMs as a form of mass politics, which can only be understood through its linkage to the state. Movement activists do have grievances, but it is the political contexts which stress certain grievances, around which movements organize. The chances of a SMs success are discussed in terms of the political opportunity structure that is available. If a government is strong and committed to repression, SMs demanding change are likely to fail, on the other hand if a government is weak, political opportunities may rise, which if recognized and taken advantage of will lead a SM to success. RMT thus grew in sophistication and complexity during the 1980s and became on the whole the dominant paradigm in the American strand of SMT. (Pongpaichit 1991: 1-2, Crossley 2002: 12-13). The American school of SMT is associated with names such as Charles Tilly, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, David Snow, Verta Taylor, John McCarthy, Mayer Zald, and others. (Jordan, Lent, McKay and Mische 2002: 6)
The differentiation between the debates within SMT starts with a recognition that the European tradition often focuses on culture, ideology and collective consciousness and posits that SMs are the producers or constructors of collective identities, while the American emphasis is on organization and instrumentality. European debates have typically been about the structure and type of society in which modern movements emerge, the relation of those movements to that society and their 'historical role' therein, whereas the American debate has centered on the structure of the movements themselves, and is characterized by a more empirical, scientific and, to a degree, empiricist frame than the European tradition. (Crossley 2002: 12)
In this line of thinking, the American school of SMT is situated within a broader positivist tradition, where researchers aim at gathering unambiguous data and concrete evidence in order to discover rules and regularities that allow a structural and context free explanation. Examples of SMT researchers within this tradition are Bert Klandermans (1985) and Christian Davenport (1995).
Such SMT is dominated by quantitative studies using the inductive approach on the study of SMs. Researchers make generalizations from specific and large quantities of observations, and this way try to reach the discovery of universal laws of behaviour (della Porta and Keating 2008: 26). As such SMT seeking predicative power is supposedly more common in the American paradigm than in the European.
5.2: The European/Interpretivist tradition in SMT: In Europe, Marxist theories of class conflicts generating social change have had a significant impact on the conceptualization of SMT. Classical Marxism presumes that all politically significant social action will derive from the economic logic of capitalist production and that all other social logics are secondary in shaping such action. Classical Marxism also posits that the most significant social actors will be defined by class relationships rooted in the process of capitalist production and that all other social identities are secondary in constituting collective actors. These premises led Marxists theorists to privilege proletarian revolution rooted in the sphere of production and to marginalize any other form of social protest. (Buechler 1995: 442)
In the 1970s, a new approach emerged, in large part as a response to the inadequacies of Marxism for analyzing collective action, and as a critique of Marxist reductionism. A variety of neo-Marxist theories, the socalled New Social Movements (NSM) developed, often associated with theorists like Alberto Melucci, Alain Touraine and Jürgen Habermas. NSM theory claimed that SMs change as society changes, and that SMs like society were no longer as they used to be, they were “new” and often transnational. In later years there has been a tendency to abandon the term “new” in exchange for “global,” recognizing that social movements and the world has changed again (Wieviorka 2005: 8). Examples of NSMs are gay and lesbian rights movements, feminist movements, environmentalist movements, anti-globalization movements and fundamentalist religious movements or “cults/sects.” NSM theory sees a SM as a predominantly left-wing collective form of action to contest the abuses of political and economic power. The aim of NSMs is to change the political and market institutions in order to produce a better society. NSM theorists have primarily looked to logics of action based in politics, ideology, and culture as the root of much collective action, and they have looked to other sources and contexts of identity such as ethnicity, gender and sexuality as the definers of collective identity (Pongpaichit 1999: 3).
The NMS theory’s emphasis on culture, context and ideology places European SMT within the constructionist or interpretivist tradition. This tradition denies the positivist worldview of the world as an objective reality that can be known in its entirety. Instead it posits that propositions about reality are constructed by perceptions and interpretations of reality, and that the “objective world” therefore is inseparable from human subjectivity. Theories are partial ways of understanding the world, and should be compared with each other for their explanatory power. Researchers have to rely on interpretation, because it is impossible to understand or give meaning to historical events or social phenomena without looking at the perceptions individuals have of the reality they live in.
This tradition therefore focuses on meanings and aims at understanding human nature and the diversity of societies and cultures. The focus on context often makes interpretivists choose to study specific cases, rather than variables. Researching contextual cases, interpretivists seek to explain and to refine theoretical concepts. Examples of SMT theorists writing in this tradition are William A. Gamson, (1991) and John W. Mayer and Ronald L. Jepperson (2000). They are not concerned with predicting outcomes. The qualitative methodological approach relying on case-driven narrative conceptualization, unstructured interviews, textual analysis and content analysis is common within the interpretivist tradition. (della Porta and Keating 2008: 27-28) ).
5.3: SMT and the sociology of religion.
Several authors note that there has been a remarkable neglect of religion and religious movements in SMT paradigms. (Hannigan 1991; Hart 1996; Beckford 2003). This is explained as a consequence of considerable historical, ideological and conceptual opposition to the inclusion of religious movements as a legitimate topic for study.
The ideological opposition to inclusion of religious movements into SMT is manifold. In the collective behaviour approach during the 1960s, religion was seen as the pillar of status Q, and religious movements were treated as withdrawals from rather than encounters with social change. (Hannigan 1991: 317) For example Herbert Blumer categorized “cults” as expressive phenomena that represented the chaotic stage of “elementary” collective behaviour, out of which might emerge a new social order; Neil Smelser included “cults” among the value-oriented responses to excessive strains in the social system, (Beckford 2003: 154-155) these explanations amount to the idea that people seek refuge in religion to alleviate strains and grievances and use religion as a substitute for real social action. In 1971 Alain Touraine, one of the “fathers” of NSM theory characterized religious movements as nostalgic attempts to “rediscover the core of a lost civilization”, He saw Religious movements as cultural movements whose political commitment were passive rather than active. Again religious movements were deemed weak in regard to political action. (Hannigan 1991: 317) The Iranian revolution deviates from these interpretations of religious movements. There may have been concern with discovering a lost Islamic civilization, but this concern was everything but passive. Furthermore, the dismissal of religious movements in the Marxist dictum that religion is the “opiate of the masses,” has survived in the view among many left-wing and neo-Marxist scholars that religion is a “false” alternative to collective political action. This view is discernible is some Marxist scholarship of the Iranian revolution but also in the “Vacuum theory” found in some RMT approaches to the Iranian revolution In RMT religion is often seen as merely another movement resource, one possible channel of mobilization, primarily because RMT is more interested in the religious organisations than in religion per se. In a somewhat myopic fashion RMT theorists have only chosen to study religious movements, when they have an impact on the political system. (Hannigan 1991: 315) As we shall see early scholarship on the Iranian revolution was therefore well covered in regard to resource mobilization and political opportunity paradigms. What the Iranian revolution spells out in capital letters is that expressive religious ideas and radical social action are indeed compatible. The rise of Khomeini’s Shi’ite political and revolutionary movement showed that the basic institutions of a society can be transformed in line with an ideological vision. Such a religious movement is neither retreatist nor purely cultural, it is also political.
Finally the conceptual problems that have hinged a full inclusion of religious movements into SMT, has to do with a failure to identify both how social and religious movements resemble one another and how they differ. Also sociologists of religion have had problems with defining where to set the boundaries for religious versus secular movements. As a result there has been a kind of conceptual limbo, even though a religious movement can aptly be described as a social movement whose ideology stresses the supernatural element in its system of meaning, i.e. the belief in God and the religious tradition linked to that belief in God. (Hannigan 1991: 319)
Both Hannigan (1991) and Beckford (2003) call for a closer association between NSM theory and NRS theory. As a matter of fact, it can be argued that it is appropriate to place the Iranian revolution within a combined NSM and NRS perspective, which will be dealt with in the conclusion.
6. Analysis: The early explanations of the causes of the Iranian Revolution (1980s)
Many of the early explorations written during the 1980s of the Iranian revolution use existing theories of revolution, with the issues defined in terms of understanding “revolution” more than understanding the Iranian experience within SMT paradigms. (Skocpol 1982, Keddie 1983, Arjomand 1985) But even so some of the revolutionary studies make use of the SMT conceptualization outlined in section 5. Roughly speaking, the content of the examined articles about the Iranian revolution in the 1980s can be placed in three different SMT areas:
1. The collective behaviour approach (Tehranian 1980, Skocpol 1982, Bayat 1983);
2. The Marxist SM/revolutionary oriented studies and interpretations (Elwell Sutton 1979, Ervand Abrahamian 1980 and 1982, Nikki Keddie 1983, Val Moghadan 1987). It is possible to discern overlaps between the two first approaches as well as an alignment between Third Worldism ideology and NSM theory (Abrahamian 1982, Nikki Keddie 1983, Val Moghadan 1987).
3. In the mid 1980s, specific SMT terminology from RMT in the form of political opportunity studies and network analysis appears. (Said Amir Arjomand 1985, Ahmad Ashraf and Ali Banuazizi 1985, Misagh Parsa 1988, Ahmad Ashraf 1988).
Many of the studies across the different approaches stress the ideological importance of Shi’i religion and traditions and Ali Sharia’ti’s anti-imperialism as a frame in the revolution, even as there are different explanations as to why and how this came to be. Nearly all the studies thus bear witness to the religious factor in the Iranian opposition though sometimes with reluctance and clear misgivings.
6.1: The Collective behaviour approach and the Modernization Monster:
In 1980 Majid Tehranian described the revolutionary fervour as a reaction to modernity’s triple curses: Westernization; alienation between the secular Iranian elite and the “Islamic” Iranian masses; the fact that the process of modernization created a gap between expectations and achievements. Tehranian explains that modernisation came to be envisaged not as an evolutionary process but as the wholesale replacement of one set of conditions by another of foreign origin. The search for dignity and identity were therefore sought as a means to alleviate a sense of humiliation due to having succumbed to Westernization. Tehranian belongs in the collective behaviour approach, because he sees the negative consequences of the modernization process as the roots of the Iranian revolution. He uses elements of mass society theory and espouses an estrangement thesis: the Shah’s totalitarian modernization process resulted in three sociological consequences: atomization of society; the bureaucratization and centralization of authority; homogenization of culture, leading to estrangement and alienation from cultural roots, giving rise to widespread discontent (Tehranian 1980:7)
Theda Skocpol’s article from 1982 also makes comments of the above kind, but she develops the modernization argument. Skocpol like Tehranian stresses the fact that the revolution was constructed – “made” by a mass based SM suffused with discontent with the Shah’s “corrupt” and “imperialistic” rule. This mass movement coalesced under the rubrics of Shi’i Islam and the leadership of Khomeini. She puts forward the notion that the revolution was a product of societal disruption, social disorientation, and universal frustration with the pace of change in the modernization process (Skocpol 1982: 267). But she says “In fact disruption and discontent alone do not give people the collective organizational capacities and the autonomous resources that they need to sustain resistance to political and economic powerholders” (Skocpol 1982: 272) Skocpol then suggests that the Shah’s policies of alienating important groups like the bazaaris and the ulama were the defining elements in the revolution, because these two groups then began to function as SMOs in fuelling the “widespread disgust” with the Shah’s regime. This suggestion has proved very productive of subsequent research, particularly in the subsequent RMT approach.
In 1983 Nikki R. Keddie also offered a clear grievance centered approach as explanation for the revolution. She describes the underlying current of the revolution as dependent on hardships stemming from the displacement of people through an accelerated modernization, secularization and centralization process. Keddie lists the socio-economic factors of the revolution as the gap between rich and poor, corruption, galloping inflation, shortage of housing and consumer goods combined with an economical over-commitment when oil revenues fell after 1975, a development which again produced more hardship like massive unemployment. The focus on hardships are wholly consistent with the collective behaviour/societal breakdown model approach.
The strength of Keddies analysis is her explication that the modernization process in Iran cannot be divorced from its anti-Western and anti-imperialist understanding of modernization. She mentions the influence of Jalal e- Ahmad’s concept of Westoxification, i.e. Westernization as a disease and the influence of Ali Shari’ati’s combination of interpreting Islam with socialist ideas as examples of cultural grievances voiced through ideology. This emphasis has become a common consensus feature in much of the scholarship on the Iranian revolution as a whole.
Keddie like Tehranian then focuses on the complex and cultural relation between the forced secularization and westernization of Iranian society and the creation of a religious, revolutionary ideology, which functioned as a frame work of the revolution: “there developed among the alienated a search for roots and for a return to “authentic” Iranian or Islamic values” (Keddie 1983:594) and: “Increasing numbers of Iranians shifted to progressive versions of an indigenous Islamic ideology perceived to be likely to restore Iranian self-esteem and combat Westernization” (Keddie 1983: 594). Keddie suggest that it was because Khomeini aptly voiced such cultural grievances and cultural solutions that he received the huge following he got during the revolution. Keddie thus gives even treatment to socio-economic and cultural grievances as explanation for revolutionary causes.
6.2: Combined perspectives – Socio-Economic factors and how the Clerics stole the revolution from the Iranian Left.
L. P. Elwell Sutton’s article from the summer of 1979 analysed the meaning and significance of Shi’i political thought and concluded that the revolution was Islamic in name only, and that the interesting question was how the Shi’i hierarchy had managed to manipulate themselves into the dominant position they came to be in. Sutton posits that economic pressures formed the background of discontent in the form of inflation, corruption, and the process of massive and swift urbanization. Furthermore the expectations to the promises of modernization were not met. These socio-economic factors combined with a shared opposition to foreign imperialism in general caused that “the left-wing guerrillas despairing of making progress under their own steam, decided to seek the collaboration of the religious leaders.” (Sutton 1979: 405) The religious leaders whom the Shah had alienated with his secular policies, then succeeded in waking the “sleeping giant” – the urban unemployed who driven by poverty, unemployment and despair caused the downfall of the Shah. It is a highly simplified scenario. It is clear that Sutton seeks to accommodate a Marxist conception of revolution with the idea of the political left-wing as the true revolutionaries that were really cheated by the religious clerics, who managed to steal the revolution.
In 1980 Ervand Abrahamian presented a thoroughly Marxist socio-economic and grievance-oriented analysis of the structural causes of the revolution. According to him political underdevelopment in the face of economic and social changes strained the link between the social structure and the political structure. The channelling of social grievances into the political system was blocked. This caused alienation of several different classes, who in unison produced the pressure that led to the fall of the Shah. Abrahamian’s analysis is akin to Keddie’s, but does not focus so much on the dislocations caused by modernization, but places more stress on the structural and socio-economic factors like the inflation of 1975-1977, deprivations and grievances like inadequate housing in urban centers, work opportunities failing to keep pace with rising standards of education, stagnation in agricultural production, income inequality, inegalitarian hierarchies, financial scandals and corruption: “ Thus the structural tensions were aggravated not by modernization per se, but by the way the modernization was implemented and by the fact that the capitalist method of modernization invariably benefits the rich more than the rest of society” (Abrahamian 1980: 23). He thus manages to place the revolution within a capitalistic conflict between classes, exemplified with an emphasis on the bazaaris as a “petty bourgeoisie” with clear economic interest, which furthermore had social, financial, political and ideological as well as historical links with the religious establishment. Incidentally the Shah managed to alienate both of these two influential groups – the bazaaris through the profiteer campaign, in which the bazaaris were used as scapegoats for the inflation, and the clerics through replacing the religious Muslim calendar with a new royalist calendar and reforms which disregarded Shari’a laws. Abrahamian is in accord with Skocpol in placing extraordinary importance on these two “classes.” According to Abrahamian it was the moral problem that helped to create the “Khomeini phenomenon” within the ranks of the clergy. The clerical opposition to the regime was reinforced by the “moral problem” created by unplanned urbanization, because the sprawling urban shanty towns produced crime, alcoholism, prostitution, delinquency, and rising suicide rates. Predictably the Iranian Shi’i mullahs argued that moral laxity had endangered society and that the only remedy was to enforce traditional value. Abrahamian sees the clerics as a class, which reacted to modernization and urbanization not in economic terms but in moral terms. Thus again we find elements of a combined collective behaviour and Marxist approach in explaining the causes for the Iranian revolution.
In 1983 Mangol Bayat denied that the revolution was merely a reaction to the process of modernization. Instead he suggested that the modernization process should be seen as an important phase in the revolution. Bayat focuses on the role of the politically conscious Iranian intellectuals as a decisive factor in the revolution. He claims that the modernization process had spawned a professional middle class with secular nationalist identities, who were ready for active political life. Because the hated Pahlavi regime was increasingly identified with secular anti-imperialism, the middle class intellectuals and professionals transferred their commitment from the secular nationalist cause to an Islamic revolution, because: “Shia Islam provided them with a useful means to two different ends: to assert an independent national ideology in opposition to Western, especially American, involvement in domestic affairs, and to reach the masses in order to mobilize their force for the revolution they wished to undertake” (Bayat 1983: 33). As such the revolution is after all seen as a reaction to modernization in the guise of anti-imperialism. Bayat’s analysis comes across like a construction carried by a grave misgiving over the fact that Iranian intellectuals helped the clerics to power. The masses are seen as being without a “head” so to speak, and Khomeini’s religious populism with his innovative concept of “governance of the jurist” is seen to provide that head. As such Bayat is trying to make sense of his perception of “irrational crowd behaviour” by explaining the appeal of Khomeini as populism, a view which places Bayat’s analysis within the collective behaviour approach. Bayat’s focus on the interests of the politically conscious and intellectual middle class furthermore points to the Marxist vein of explanation and has much in common with the earlier article by L.P. Elwell Sutton.
6.3: Third Worldism fuses with religion – a NSRM in the making:
None of the examined 1980s articles explicitly mentions NSM theory, but not a few of them mentions the influence of Third Worldism and dependency theory in the formation of the Iranian revolutionary ideology. (Abrahamian 1982, Nikki Keddie (1883) and Val Moghadan 1987) The paradigm of Third Worldism bears some resemblance to left-wing oriented NSM theory as outlined in section 5.
According to Abrahamian (1982) Ali Sharia’ti, the “true” ideologue of the Iranian revolution was very much influenced by Franz Fanon and other Third Worldist thinkers. Sharia’ti accepted the view that history was a history of class struggle, but in the modern age, he asserted, the main struggles evolved not around capitalists and workers but around imperialists and the Third World. He disagreed with the prevalent secular notion that Third world countries would have to give up their own traditional religions in order to wage a successful struggle against imperialism. Instead Sharia’ti suggested that the peoples of the Third World could not fight imperialism and social alienation unless they first regained their cultural identity, which was often interwoven with popular religious traditions. Sharia’ti wanted to make room for religion as a vehicle of social protest. Therefore Sharia’ti insisted that the Iranians had to rediscover their religious roots in order to challenge the West, through returning to a more pure Islam resembling socialistic Islam. Sharia’ti can thus be seen as molding an ideology of a combined NSM and NRM, which reads as a critique of the prevailing world order and of the intrusion of imperialist nations and their market economy upon countries in the Third World.
Nikki R. Keddie (1983) also ponders the implications of a fusion between the “Manichean” world outlook of Khomeini and the phenomenon of Third Worldism. She explains that the Manichean trend sees the world as divided into the just Muslim oppressed and the Western oppressors, while Third Worldism talks of the Third World as economically drained and culturally colonized by an imperialist West. “The blend of Islam and Third Worldism fits an anti-Western, anti-imperialist mood” (Keddie 1983. 596). Val Moghadan (1987) also theorizes in this vein. In her outlook on the Iranian Left she has much in common with Sutton and Bayat. Moghadan explains that the Iranian Left during the 1960s was empowered by the discourse and practise of Third Worldism, which stressed the evils of dependent capitalism and imperialism, but during the revolution the Left wasted that empowerment on an “inordinate emphasis on the anti-imperialist struggle and an almost mechanical application of dependency paradigm,” consequently neglecting the question of democracy and underestimating the power of the Islamic clergy. The Iranian Left supported the Islamic republic precisely because it was anti-imperialistic and defiant of American government and capitalism. Moghadan finds it a tragedy that the Iranian Left’s project as a NSM was meshed up with the clerics’ project of a NRM.: “the religious forces were weaving a radical-populist Islamic discourse that would prove very compelling – a discourse which appropriated some concepts from the Left (exploitation, imperialism, world capitalism), made use of Third Worldist categories (dependency, the people) and populist terms (the toiling masses) and imbued certain religious concepts with new and radical meanings” (Moghadan 1987: 14) What Moghadan offers here is a good description of a fusion between a left-oriented NSM and a right- wing NRM, sharing the same language and the same goal, namely overthrow of a hated regime.
So far all the articles mentioned have been written in the European interpretivist tradition, without any of them really professing allegiance to SMT. We will now turn to the positivist treatment of the Iranian revolution to see if that changes.
6.4: Political Opportunity Structures and network analysis in the Iranian revolution:
Said Amir Arjomand’s article from 1985 applies the paradigm of political opportunities to the Iranian revolution almost as an experiment within another agenda. Arjomand is primarily concerned with revolutionary theory and with the value-ideas revolutions pass on. He compares the Iranian revolution with the English, French, Russian and Fascist revolutions and asserts that the Iranian revolution is their equal and has most in common with the Fascist revolution, because they both share a cluster of value-ideas, among them populist socialism and the rejection of modernity. He proceeds to analyse the common feature of the mentioned revolutions, which he finds in the rather simple thesis that when a regime weakens, the right conditions for revolution emerges. Arjomand focuses on political opportunity structure and states that revolutions owe their success more to internal breakdown than to the power of revolutionary groups and that the decisive factor in a revolution is the fragility of the political system. A system is fragile when it lacks legitimacy. Arjomand explains that the loud demands for the overthrow of the Shah (lack of legitimacy) in connection with “the complete exclusion of other political considerations was the single factor that brought many disparate factions together under Khomeini’s banner.” This is a statement amounting to the so called “Vacuum theory,” which will be dealt with below.
Arjomand voices Charles Tilly’s ideas of the consequences of fluctuations in a regimes repressive behaviour. The reluctance to use force invites increased aggression: “The study of revolutions reveals that inhibitions concerning the use of forces are more important than inefficiencies, shortages, defeats or disintegration” (1985: 44). Clearly Arjomand’ revolutionary analysis is influenced by SMT terminology in the vein of PP theory and he works very hard to make the case fit the theory: “the decisive historical accident making possible the establishment of a Shi’ite theocracy in Iran was the internal crumbling and rapid collapse of the Pahlavi state” (1985: 51), in this way Arjomand manages to belittle agency to near extinction.
Ashraf and Banuazizi’s article published at the same time as Arjomands in the same publication in 1985 is very similar in its argumentation about political structure: “It was not the dislocations produced by modernization, but rather the relaxation of the coercive measures of the old regime that led to the creation of opportunities for effective revolutionary mobilization” (1985: 36) Ashraf and Banuazizi also use the vacuum theory to explain the mobilization of the revolution: “In the absence of genuine political parties, independent labour unions and professional associations, and freedoms of speech and assembly, religion became the only rallying point around which a mass movement could be built. It could provide the ideological articulation, the occasions (e.g. holy day observances, congregational prayer meetings, mourning rituals etc.) for purposes of political mobilization” (Ashraf and Banuazizi 1985: 9). The vacuum theory is peculiar. It implies that a lack of alternatives made the choice of religion as a force of mobilization a no-choice. At the same time it implies that in the event of the “empty space” – the vacuum, something else “should have” been there. The vacuum theory echoes the reluctance of SMT to really take religion serious on its own terms as an empowerment vehicle for social protest and SM action.
The second part of the essay offers an analysis of how the interaction between external pressures – the “foreign factor”- and the internal opposition created opportunities for the opposition to mobilize. The authors assert that the Shah’s dependence on his patron state, the US, played an important role for the outcome of the revolution and claim that a pattern – a “political process” can be discerned: Each stage of the revolution began with an upsurge of protests and other collective actions against the regime, on the one hand, and foreign pressures on the state to use restraint on the other. The authors describe how the changing tides of the regime’s relaxing and appeasing in turn with constraining and repressing policies gave the opposition opportunities to take advantage of “openings” and opportunities to retreat and widen its support base while developing new modes of mobilization and organization, preparing for new and escalated assaults on the state. This description pared with empirical data on the escalation in the frequency of the various forms of activity during the stages of the revolution, places the article firmly in the positivist RMT analysis of SM activity. However the thesis is not altogether convincing as no evidence is provided to show the weight of the “foreign factor” in the political process. Nevertheless, we can conclude that by 1985 the observed paradigm shift within the positivist tradition of SMT has also arrived in the scholarship on the Iranian revolution.
In 1988 we see this emphasis strengthened. Misagh Parsa now gives conscious attention to the earlier paradigm of the collective behaviour/social breakdown model and makes explicit moves to reject it and replace it with a Charles Tilly inspired version of RMT: “Any explanation of the revolutionary conflicts in Iran must take into account variables emphasized by resource mobilization theory: conflicts of interests, capacity for mobilization, opportunities for collective action, and formation of coalitions. A full explanation must also analyze the structural vulnerabilities of the Pahlavi state:” (Parsa 1988: 45) Parsa points to several theoretical weaknesses in the earlier paradigms and correctly points out that the collective behaviour/social break down model provides at best only a partial explanation of the Iranian. But partial explanations these approaches offer nevertheless. It would be a mistake to contend that the approaches that came before RMT and PP carry no explanatory power. Parsa continues Skocpol’s concern with the Bazaari-Mosque alliance, and proceeds to make a network analysis in which he investigates various groups’ different reasons for mobilizing against the regime. He posits for example that the Bazaari-Mosque alliance came into being because the Bazaari protecting their own economic interests needed the Mosque as an overarching and autonomous SMO and as a safe space to gather and organize protests. He thus denies that religion played any role for the Bazaaris aside from being a mobilizing resource.
In the same year Ahmad Ashraf (1988) contributed a much more nuanced networks analysis than Parsa’s, and contended persuasively that historical evidence showed that both the Bazaari and the Mosques had repertoires (the closing down of shops, experience with organizing and participating in mass demonstrations and street rallies) of protest and indeed possessed both the financial and organizational capacity for mass mobilization as well as they both easily could channel mass action in the direction and at the time preferred by them.
What is representative of the 1980s articles examined within the RMT paradigm is the fact that even as the articles utilize a reductionist view of agency and a dismissal of religion as anything other than a mobilization resource, the paradigm nevertheless enriches the scholarship on the Iranian revolution, because the RMT paradigm provides fresh perspectives and encourages researchers to dig deeper than the earlier paradigms had managed to do.
7: Discussion: The implications of the Culturalist turn in SMT for the scholarship of The Iranian Revolution.
In the 1990s culture moved to the forefront of SM research (Swidler 1995: 25). The so called “culturalist turn” in RMT theory can be exemplified by the publication in 1992 of a collection of essays of RMT self-criticism and theoretical reformulations in the volume Frontiers in social movement theory (Eds. Morris and Mueller), in which one of the editors states “one central message of this volume is that culture must be brought back into social movement analysis” (Hart 1996: 87 and 93). In the scholarship of the Iranian revolution the concern with culture is foremost translated into the extensive interest in the role of the religious revolutionary ideology of Shi’ i Islam.
The Shi’i revolutionary ideology is seen as a change-oriented and action-motivating ideology, which offers a simple master plan presented in symbolic and easily communicated terms, at the same time providing a sense of sharing in the control and rewards of destiny, as well as a feeling of personal worth and power, ultimately resulting in collective empowerment and sense of collective identity. A prominent example of this is Mansoor Moaddel’s conceptualization of “ideology as episodic discourse” e.g. consisting of general principles, concepts, symbols, and rituals that shape human action in a particular historical period (Moaddel 1992, 1993). Also RMT approaches of the Iranian revolution like the political process oriented study of Ali Mirsepassi-Ashanti (1994), which emphasises the vacuum theory, makes a contextual analysis of Shi’i political Islam as a vehicle of self-empowerment and national identity.
In the tradition of RMT the heightened concern with culture has resulted in a third phase, carrying RM and PP theory into the conceptualization of framing processes (FP) associated with Erving Goffman (1974). FP is concerned with socio-political constructions of meanings, which a SM uses to help to render events or occurrences meaningful. The collective frames of a SM function to organize experience and guide action. (Benford and Snow 2000: 614) SMT theorists writing within the conceptualization includes Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodvin (1994). Stephen C. Poulson’s monograph about Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Iran. Culture, Ideology and Mobilizing Frameworks (2005) is also written within this paradigm. A related development is Charles Tilly’s repertoire of contention theory, which seeks to capture the historical peculiarity of the methods of protest that SM agents use. (Crossley 2002: 127)
It has been more generally recognized that even though there are similarities and analogous patterns in SMs, each one of them is influenced by its own very unique location in geographical space and history. SMs therefore share a “family resemblance” but differ in composition and variations in underlying emotions, grievances, and strains, as well as in ideology and perceptions of reality, it amounts to recognition that one cannot understand a given SM unless one understands the society in which it emerges. This notion is analogous to the trend in scholarship of the Iranian revolution, which recognize that the revolution consists of so many complex historical factors, which when working together burst the frame of any theory attempting to stand alone as an explanation of the revolution.
In the last decades therefore, there has been ongoing attempts to overcome previous polarizations between SMT approaches. Researchers have drawn, in a more open-minded and dialogic fashion, on both the American positivist streams of thought and the European interpretivist stream of thought. “This is true both across continents, with both clusters having effects in social movement studies around the world, and across ideas, with some beliefs flowing across previously perceived divisions.”(Jordan, Lent, McKay and Mische 2002: 6) The main insight that has furthered this process is the understanding that no SMT concept alone be it collective identity, relative deprivation, grievances or political opportunities, can explain a complex phenomenon such as an SM. See for example Charles Kurzman’s elegant critique and reworking of the political process approach, in which he argues for a combination of subjective (perceived) and objective (structural) opportunities as a factor in the Iranian revolution (1996) and Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Jaswinder Khattra’s (1999) critique of general RMT theory, which claims that an invariant and universal theory of SMs is not possible. This is directly discernible in the Iranian revolution scholarship of the mid 1990s, which is often partly concerned with gathering and listing the various theoretical approaches and paradigmatic explanations floating in the vast amount of accumulated analysis of the revolution see for example John Foran (1994).
In addition to this it seems that older theories are being dusted off and reintroduced in new combinations, for example SMT theorist Nick Crossley seeks a return to Smelser’s collective behaviour approach from the 1960s in a combination with Pierre Bordieu’s cultural approach as voiced by his theory of practise from the late 1970s (see Crossley 2003: Making Sense of Social Movements).
Charles Kurzman’s monograph The Unthinkable Revolution (2004) is structured around different explanations and causes of the revolution and reads as an interrogation into the social scientific faith in causal explanations. It can be argued that Kurzman utilizes a return to a behavioural approach. He asserts that because ‘non-routine episodes are characterized by confusion and uncertainty, and by increased reflexiveness and intentionality’( 2004:169), it is impossible to predict a revolution. This lack of predictability means that an explanation is not possible either.
In 2009 Ervand Abrahamian did something similar in a well-written analysis of crowd behaviour in the revolution. He alludes to George Rude’ (1910-1993) – a British Marxist historian who specialized in “history from below,” points to the force of rumours and public perceptions and offers the idea that the street demonstrator’s behaviour can be seen as a spontaneous outbursts without any central organization. In a way it seems that SMT has come full circle and will hopefully now commence with the task of trimming and standardizing the maze of SMT terminology in order for everyone to agree about what is actually being talked about.
7: Conclusion
This paper has examined how SMT approaches like the collective behaviour approach, which focuses on the large scale transformation of modernization and urbanization and employs grievance and alienation oriented explanations for the causes of the revolution, has been employed to explain the revolution early in the 1980s. The Marxist approach which emphasise mobilization as a matter of class based interests, structural problems within the economy and underdevelopment of the political structure has been shown to often blend with the behavioural approach. Together the two approaches embody the ground work of early scholarship on the Iranian Revolution and should be understood as partial but indispensable explanations. Furthermore it has been argued that the RMT approach with focus on a conceptualization of the political opportunities and political process fluctuations between repression and relaxation in the course of the revolution despite its rejection of other approaches provided a positive dynamic to scholarship on the Iranian revolution.
The emphasis on religion in the scholarship of the Iranian revolution is inescapable. Sociologists who opt for cultural approaches understand religion as a major source of cultural content or templates: values and views of reality. These are appropriated, transformed, and then used by movements to frame or to guide their activities and also to articulate movement purposes, garner support and to produce collective identities. Religious tradition can thus play a major role in a SM. (Hart 1996: 89-90) Religion as a cultural frame of protest in collective action was clearly at work in the Iranian revolution, as it was a very prevalent practise to use the Shi’i religious calendar’s many festivals like memorial services for the dead and the passion plays and processions of Moharram to stage protests against the Shah’s regime. The so called vacuum theory, which tries to explain why religion became a mobilizing factor in the Iranian revolution belittles the role of religion per se. The blend of Third Worldism and Islam points in the direction of NSM theory and NRM theory.
The problem with traditional NSM theory and perhaps a general problem with SMT is that what has primarily concerned SMT is predominantly left-wing SMs in America and Europe. There has been a tendency to neglect SMs in other parts of the world, to neglect right –wing SMs and SMs with religious orientations and beliefs while building and developing SMTs core theories. This lack of concern should be remedied. The Iranian revolution is the harbinger of a broader “new,” “social” AND “religious” movement, which has had an immense impact on many different Muslim communities all over the world. The understanding of the Iranian revolution as a new social and religious movement (NSRM), particularly a very successful one, could be a contribution both to SMT theory and to the scholarship on the Iranian Revolution in general.
9. Sources
Cited works in order of apperance:
M. P. Amineh and S. N. Eisenstadt: “The Iranian Revolution: The Multiple Contexts of the Iranian Revolution” in Perspectives on Global Development no. 6, 2007, pp. 129-157
Eds. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi: The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Blackwell publishing ltd. 2004
Theda Skocpol: “France, Russia, China: A Structural Analysis of Social Revolutions” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Apr., 1976), pp. 175-210
Nick Crossly: Making Sense of Social Movements, Open University Press 2002
Pasuk Phongpaichit: “Theories of Social Movements and their relevance for Thailand”. Position paper for project on Social Movements in Thailan
