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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Tables and Diagrams -- Acknowledgments -- Map of Iran -- Introduction -- 1 A Framework for the Study of Social Change in Iran -- Introduction -- Theories of Underdevelopment -- State and Culture in Social Change -- A Synthetic Framework -- Notes -- PART ONE SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN PRE-CAPITALIST IRAN, 1500-1800 -- 2 The Iranian Social Formation, circa 1630 -- The Nature of the State -- The Economic Structure of Iran in the 1620s -- International Trade and Relations with the West through 1630 -- The Social Structure of Pre-Capitalist Iran -- Ideological and Political Conceptions in Safavid Iran -- Notes -- 3 Social Change in Iran from 1500 to 1800 -- Types of Social Change under the Safavids, 1500-1722 -- The Long Fall of the Safavids -- Iran under the Afghans, 1722-1729 -- Iran under Nadir Shah, 1729-1747 -- Iran under Karim Khan Zand, 1750-1779 -- Iran's External Relations, 1747-1800 -- The Rise of the Qajar Dynasty -- Notes -- Conclusion to Part One: The Significance of the Safavid Period and the Eighteenth Century -- PART TWO SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN QAJAR IRAN, 1800-1925 -- 4 Crossing the Threshold of Dependence: The Iranian Social Formation from 1800 to 1914 -- External Political and Economic Relations -- Internal Social and Economic Development -- The State -- Conclusions: The Nature of Dependency -- Notes -- 5 Reform, Rebellion, Revolution, Coup: Social Movements in Qajar Iran -- Succession Struggles and Uprisings, 1800-1850: From Traditional to Transitional Forms of Protest -- Reform Efforts from 1800 to the 1880s: The Inadequacy of the State's Response -- The Tobacco Rebellion, 1890-1892: A Turning Point -- The Constitutional Revolution, 1905-1911: An Opportunity Missed.

Taking Power analyzes the causes behind some three dozen revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present. It advances a theory that seeks to integrate the political, economic, and cultural factors that brought these revolutions about, and links structural theorizing with original ideas on culture and agency. It attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions including the great social revolutions of Mexico 1910, China 1949, Cuba 1959, Iran 1979, and Nicaragua 1979, the anticolonial revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the failed revolutionary attempts in El Salvador, Peru, and elsewhere. It closes with speculation about the future of revolutions in an age of globalization, with special attention to Chiapas, the post-September 11 world, and the global justice movement

This volume offers a much needed look into the historical, social, and political developments leading up to the Iranian revolution. Bringing together a group of scholars, historians, and social scientists, most of them Iranian in origin, the book documents an extraordinary revolutionary heritage that predates this century

This volume offers a much needed look into the historical, social, and political developments leading up to the Iranian revolution. Bringing together a group of scholars, historians, and social scientists, most of them Iranian in origin, the book documents an extraordinary revolutionary heritage that predates this century.

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The Arab Spring and U.S. Occupy movements surprised the world in 2011, showing that movements for radical social change remain viable responses to the intertwined crises of globalization: economic precarity, political disenchantment, rampant inequality, and the long-term fuse of potentially catastrophic climate change. These movements possess political cultural affinities of emotion, historical memory, and oppositional and creative discourses with each other and with a chain of movements that have gathered renewed momentum and relevance as neoliberal globalization runs up against the consequences of its own rapaciousness.Three paths to radical social change have emerged that differ from the hierarchical revolutionary movements of the twentieth century: 1) the electoral path to power pursued by the Latin American Pink Tide nations, 2) the route of re-making power at the local level or seeking change at the global level, both by-passing the traditional goal of taking state power, and 3) the occupation of public space to force out tyrants, as in Tunisia and Egypt.This paper assesses the strengths and limitations of each path, arguing that social movements and progressive parties together may possess the best chances for making radical social change in this new situation. These threads of resistance may also point toward a future of radical social change as we imagine their enduring results, self-evident and more subtle.

The Arab Spring and U.S. Occupy movements surprised the world in 2011, showing that movements for radical social change remain viable responses to the intertwined crises of globalization: economic precarity, political disenchantment, rampant inequality, and the long-term fuse of potentially catastrophic climate change. These movements possess political cultural affinities of emotion, historical memory, and oppositional and creative discourses with each other and with a chain of movements that have gathered renewed momentum and relevance as neoliberal globalization runs up against the consequences of its own rapaciousness.Three paths to radical social change have emerged that differ from the hierarchical revolutionary movements of the twentieth century: 1) the electoral path to power pursued by the Latin American Pink Tide nations, 2) the route of re-making power at the local level or seeking change at the global level, both by-passing the traditional goal of taking state power, and 3) the occupation of public space to force out tyrants, as in Tunisia and Egypt.This paper assesses the strengths and limitations of each path, arguing that social movements and progressive parties together may possess the best chances for making radical social change in this new situation. These threads of resistance may also point toward a future of radical social change as we imagine their enduring results, self-evident and more subtle.

An assessment of the outcomes of the Cuban Revolution in terms of theories of both the causes and outcomes of revolutions in general reveals that that the revolution has been spectacularly successful in terms of ensuring the well-being of the vast majority of Cubans, while at the same time failing to deliver fully democratic institutions and freedoms. The success of the revolution in maintaining itself against U.S. hostility and the deepening of neoliberal global capitalism is attributed to the strength of the political culture that the revolution has forged and carried forward across the generations. The future of the revolution looks bright, especially if the Cuban people find a way to secure deeper democratic gains to match their social and economic ones.