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Available From UC Press
A Social Revolution
Politics and the Welfare State in Iran
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.
Kevan Harris is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"This impressive book pushes Iranian studies from the cloisters of area studies to the wider precincts of global political economy."—Charles Kurzman, author of The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran
"An original account of how the revolutionary regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran was able to survive years of turmoil. Harris has had the privilege of gathering the materials from inside Iran, access few American scholars have had since the 1979 revolution."—Ervand Abrahamian, author of The Coup: 1953, the C.I.A., and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations
"A Social Revolution offers an invaluable counterpoint to the prevailing conventional wisdom and should be required reading. Harris goes beyond the standard theocratic political frame to document a surprisingly successful Iranian variation on the developmental state."—Peter B. Evans, author of Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation
"An original account of how the revolutionary regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran was able to survive years of turmoil. Harris has had the privilege of gathering the materials from inside Iran, access few American scholars have had since the 1979 revolution."—Ervand Abrahamian, author of The Coup: 1953, the C.I.A., and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations
"A Social Revolution offers an invaluable counterpoint to the prevailing conventional wisdom and should be required reading. Harris goes beyond the standard theocratic political frame to document a surprisingly successful Iranian variation on the developmental state."—Peter B. Evans, author of Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation