Social Histories of Iran
Modernism and Marginality in the Middle East

A social history of modern Iran 'from below' focused on subaltern groups and contextualised by developments within Middle Eastern and global history.

Stephanie Cronin (Author)

9781107190849, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 January 2021

320 pages
23 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.6 kg

'Every chapter is rich in detail, supplemented by footnotes that serve as a wonderful guide to the social history literature in Persian and English, and a 28-page bibliography. The introductory chapter is an excellent, detailed summary of the book's theses. Recommended.' P. Clawson, Choice

Histories of Iran, as of the wider Middle East, have been dominated by the twin narratives of top-down modernization and methodological nationalism. In this book, Stephanie Cronin problematizes both of these narratives. Its attention is firmly fixed on subaltern social groups: the 'dangerous classes' and their constructed contrast with the new and avowedly modern bourgeois elite created by the infant Pahlavi state; the hungry poor pitted against the deregulation and globalization of the late nineteenth century Iranian economy; rural criminals of every variety, bandits, smugglers and pirates, and the profoundly ambiguous attitudes towards them of the communities from which they came. In foregrounding these groups, the book also seeks to move beyond a narrow national context, demonstrating, through a series of case-studies, the explanatory power of global, transnational and comparative approaches to the study of the social history of the Middle East.

Introduction
I. Iran: 1. The Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic and the 'Red 1970s': a Global History
2. Bread and Justice in Qajar Iran: the Moral Economy, the Free Market and the Hungry Poor
3. The Dark Side of Modernism: the 'Dangerous Classes' in Iran
II. The Wider Middle East: 4. Noble Robbers, Avengers and Entrepreneurs: Eric Hobsbawm and Banditry in Iran, North Africa and the Middle East
5. Islam Slave Agency and Abolitionism in Iran, North Africa and the Middle East
6. Modernism and the Politics of Dress: Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]