Some Different Ways To Think About Iran, in lieu of an introduction
Well, here we go - my initial foray into sociological myth-busting on Iran.
Much of my discussions with fellow Iranians usually come around to the reasons for the actual or perceived state of Iran’s economy, politics, and society in the world. Even when the array of grievances and complaints does not directly compare Iran with another country, a comparison is implicit (with the US often as the standard bearer). Common to this list are: Iran is a wealthy country but its population does not benefit from this wealth, corruption on the part of bureaucrats and individualism on the part of society create a environment of “backwardness,” and, heard quite often, Iran was on a path to economic success until the 1979 Revolution set back its progress.
Iran’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in 2007 was USD $3,990. The US’ GDP per capita in 2007 was USD $45,778. These numbers alone do not tell us much, and it is better to measure national wealth in relative terms (a subject for a future post). Iran’s per capita GDP is though, once we do the math, 8.7% of the US.
I’ll leave the historical changes in this figure and comparisons with other middle income countries for another time. First I want to briefly raise some points on what is often called the internal/external debate in sociology circles. Much of the following was inspired from this excellent article by Professor Afshin Matin-Asgari.
Throughout the 1990s in Iran, amidst a period of relative openness for the publishing industry, several historical works on Iran became well-known bestsellers. These included Sadeq Ziba-Kalam’s How We Became What We Are (1995) and Tradition and Modernity (1998), Ali Riza-Quli’s The Sociology of Elite-Killing (1998), and Kazim Alamdari’s Why Iran Lagged Behind and Why the West Moved Forward (2000). These studies put forth a set of explanations that placed the blame for Iran’s historical and contemporary woes squarely on internal characteristics, usually by asserting that Iran had not developed the economic and political institutions found in Western states.
Alamdari provides an example of this argument when he asserts:
In the East, including Iran…the total domination of religions and their fusion with centralized governments left no room for free human thought. Free discourse was a result of a free economy and politics. But neither a free economy, nor free politics existed in Iran.
It is understandable that Iranians, frustrated by perceived inadequacies of their country, seek solace in perspectives that lay culpability on their own leaders, especially because the governing rhetoric in Tehran contains heavy doses of the “paranoid style of Iranian politics.” Yet, as Afshin Matin-Asgari pointed out, these studies usually identify “backward” outcomes of 20th century Iran as resulting from a series of absences: the lack of feudalism, private property, Western “rationality,” or separation of church and state. In doing so, contemporary Iranian social science often duplicates theories of political and economic modernization that formed the zeitgeist of American social science in the 1950s and 1960s. Modernization theory tended to abstract from the leading state of its day (the United States) a set of ideal-type institutions and norms, and then describe the absence of such ideal-types in other parts of the world as “traditional.”
Various ideal-typical depictions of Western “success,” whether in the economic, political, or cultural spheres, are compared to an Iranian polity that is found lacking in institutions, mentalities, or policies that would facilitate its “transition” to a national society more commensurate with Western standards. It is understandable that modernization theories in their Iranian guise are so resonant today, partly as a response to the intellectual currents of the 1960s and 1970s by thinkers such as Ali Shariati, who inspired much of the Third Worldist rhetoric of the 1979 Revolution, and partly as a reponse to state-sanctioned explanations/excuses. Yet the relative immiseration of Iran vis-à-vis Western states since the 18th century mirrors similar fates for many states in the former Third World.
Do we explain the continued wealth gaps in the world economy between North and South with recourse to supposed characteristics that are only contained in poorer states? Has Iran’s trajectory over the 20th century been exceptional, or can it be placed in a broader group of national states borne of former non-Western agrarian empires, almost all of which experienced top-down nationalist projects at state-building (Turkey, Egypt, India) or bottom-up revolutions (Russia, China, Iran)? If you visit any poorer country, you will get an earful of exceptionalism as to why that particular country is in its position relative to the wealthy parts of the world. The job of good social science is to sift through many single cases and come up with arguments that can better explain a set of similar outcomes. Iran’s modernization theorists are partly instrumental, in that their accounting for Iran’s contemporary position vis-à-vis more powerful states have been used by politicians and intellectuals who desire substantial political and social change. Yet that might not make their arguments right.
The internal/external issue remains.
