The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Hardcover)

by Charles Kurzman (Author)
Key Phrases: embassy memorandum, retroactive prediction, mosque network, Iranian Revolution, United States, Mehdi Bazargan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
When Elias Canetti, the Nobel-prize winning theorist, spoke of a people’s "propensity to incendiarism," he had in mind one of the most dangerous traits of mass gatherings: their potential for unpredictable combustibility. Iran’s Islamic revolution, like many other uprisings, was a consummate instance of this, Kurzman argues, and he continues in Canetti’s tradition by using the Shah’s overthrow to engage in his own meditation on crowds and power. Kurzman’s investigation propelled him to the Islamic republic, where he conducted countless interviews, in an attempt to chart the eddies and undercurrents of one of the world’s most complex and sudden social upheavals. Along the way, he takes a critical tour of canonical political and sociological theory. The result is a thought-provoking combination of journalism and analysis that offers an atypical juxtaposition of voices: shopkeepers, lawyers and high school students share their views on what happened, as do academics and policymakers. Perhaps the most intriguing voice is Kurzman’s. His interviews and reading lead him to conclude that any historical approach that seeks to restore "20-20 hindsight" to Iran’s revolutionary movement is mistaken; "explanations in general," he decides, are problematic. Instead, he says, one should embrace history in all its specificity, and accept that anomalous behavior and confusion are norms that cannot be neatly decoded. "I propose anti-explanation," he says, coining a term that "means abandoning the project of retroactive prediction in favor of reconstructing the lived experience of the moment." Unquestionably, some readers may feel cheated by this intellectual back flip, especially since this is, unavoidably, an explanation in its own right.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
When the shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, it was something of a surprise to the CIA and the Carter administration, who as recently as October 1978 saw only a strong ruler and inconsequential protests; legacy of this intelligence failure has plagued the state department ever since. What if, however, revolutions like that which put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power were unpredictable? What if even the best intelligence misses the scent of possible uprising because even the people uprising don't know uprising is possible until they start doing it? Sociologist Kurzman addresses five familiar sets of explanations about why the Iranian revolution took place--political, organizational, cultural, economic, and military arguments--and finds each valuable but flawed, offering instead an "anti-explanation" that foregrounds anomaly and characterizes the revolutionary moment as confusing, unstable, and as unpredictable for participants as it is for outside observers. Despite this, optimism is in order; there is, after all, exciting potential in moments in which the unthinkable suddenly becomes thinkable. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067401328X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674013285
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #985,665 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sociology Gives Up explaining the Iranian Revolution?, June 8, 2004

By	Tron Honto - See all my reviews

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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A dispassionate voice that Iranians will ignore at their peril, August 30, 2005

By	Ak Atri "Kia Atri" (U.K.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kurzman's research is thorough, systematic and dispassionate. He demolishes the Economic arguments many of the leftists have marshalled in explaining the root causes of Revolution. He does so by recourse to Macroeconomic data and comparative analysis of similar economies.

He is equally convincing when he argues against the supposed inefficiency of State suppression under the Shah; the armed forces were not so much ineffective in the act of suppression as 'being overwhelmed' by the magnitude of the insurrection. The proponents of this discourse have according to Kurzman not seen the logic of the Shahs carrot and stick approach.

On cultural issues too he takes to task the discourse of the `Mosque network' as the activists godsend for mobilising a largely religious and devout people. He argues convincingly that even by as late as summer of 1978 many of the Mullahs were either non-committal or at least cowed by the potential wrath of the system

The conclusion that Kurzman draws and- one that I still do not share so readily- is that there is no explanation for this Revolution. At least there is no explanation that can withstand the critical scrutiny of dispassionate academic inquiry. Adequate explanations may not exist, not by virtue of their non-existence, but by the non-transparent information asymmetry that has pervaded Iranian political landscape

I would have also liked Kurzman to dedicate a chapter to the discourse that argues that the Shah had by 1953 lost all legitimacy to rule. It would have been interesting to see how a rational, academic and cerebral mind such as Kurzman's would have countered this argument.

Nevertheless I very much salute this as a sober inquiry that Iranians must take on board. Kurzman may not have convinced me of the Anti-Explanation discourse but he will most definitely have shifted the analytical paradigm. His book is extremely well written and easy to read and should appeal to Researcher and layman alike.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read for the story and its lessons - not what you'd expect., May 19, 2004

By	L. F Sherman "dikw" (Wiscasset, ME United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.