The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran :

Rating:
Summary: Read for the story and its lessons - not what you'd expect.
Review: The Iranian Revolution was totally unexpected before it happened. It is difficult to fathom this essential truth after the fact. The Shah had the military and secret service as well as wealth to put down any revolution it was assumed. In any case material progress and modernization were moving ahead to provide benefits and quell discontent. The Revolution didn't care! It came anyway. But it could not be predicted by any of the social sciences: economics, political science, sociology, etc. Nor by religion.

Kurzman, himself a Sociologist, uses each chapter to apply these disciplinary viewpoints and show their limitations in explaining events. Circumstances, and personal decisions, became crucial when enough people changed their own expectations to believe that revolution might really be possible - to think the unthinkable.. Khomeini was critical for this but as a catalyst for various grievances both liberal and revolutionary to seem to have a chance of success.

Close examination in each chapter show anomalies, confusion, lack of central control. Culture contributed but was remade in the process. Shi'a religious organization gave it some coordination and direction lacking for many other elements but can not be said to be solely responsible for the revolution.

Two important corollaries follow from this, although Kurzman makes little of either.

First the Fundamentalist Iranian Revolution is not the Bogeyman that many see. It inspired enthusiasm among some Muslims in various parts of the world but was not a model to be copied. It was not "typical" of Islam (among other things Iran was Shi'a with a somewhat unique religious elite unlike Ulema or Sufis elsewhere). There were many motives and supporters that were practical and not 'religious'. US antipathy is more a knee jerk reaction than based on understanding of Iran or of Islam.

Also it is clear that the various social sciences and traditional approaches to explaining revolution need History - each situation is unique and "unthinkable" before it happens; there exist not sufficient "laws" to predict revolution. None of the disciplinary approaches hold together without history too.

Kurzman's book is interesting therefore in numerous ways: the description of the Revolution; the acts and thoughts of individual participants; the anomalies and limitations of causation theory of various social sciences. The policy implications are consequential and should not be ignored.

Rating:
Summary: Sociology Gives Up explaining the Iranian Revolution?
Review: Working within a relatively small timeframe (1977-1979), Kurzman methodically examines five explanatory paradigms which have hitherto been mobilized to explain the success of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Emplotting each paradigm on a brisk narrative of the revolution itself, he begins with the political explanations (attributing the revolution to increased liberalization), organizational explanations (focusing on mosque and university networks), cultural explanations (pointing to the utilization of 40 day martyrdom mourning cycle as a means of sustaining protest), economic explanations (citing the gridlock caused by the nation-wide strikes in key industries), and military explanations (pointing to the feeble attempts of the Shah's forces to restore state control). Each of these he finds inadequate and only some completely false. At best, an explanation remains partial but not compelling for the whole. Moreover, they demonstrate a consistent occurrence of the 'inversion of cause and effect', e.g., student mobilization created the utility of the mosque networks, mobilization led to the state's economic crisis, not vice versa.

Kurzman attempts to cut the Gordian knot by offering his own 'anti-explanation'-namely, the revolution succeeded when it become viable in the minds of its core constituents. This 'anti-explanation', he asserts, is non-predictive because it depends on the anomalous nature of the agency of social actors. What is left for the sociologist is to strive for an understanding of a peculiar, unique event.

This deconstructive enterprise is essentially a treatise against retroactive prediction that argues rather for sociological reconstructions of historical events rather an attempt to derive patterns for the sake of being able to predict when future, nascent revolutions are about to occur. Kurzman unconsciously it seems has merely constructed an argument for the values of social-history over sociology as such. Where his novel, so-called 'anti-explanation' differs from what we call 'history' eludes me.

Overall, the writing in the book is fluid, lucid and accompanied by a nice balance of anecdote and analysis. His usage of jargon is sparse and rare-limited mostly to a few quotes from famous sociologists such as Bourdieu and Parsons. He demonstrates a familiarity with Persian culture and language that manifests itself in many subtle ways through the work. General readers, historians and sociologists will find this book an immensely rewarding study.