Author's Note: I am deeply indebted to Naghmeh Sohrabi, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Rudi Matthee, Arang Keshavarzian, IJMES’ anonymous reviewers, and editor Beth Baron and managing editor Sara Pursley for their incisive comments. This research was made possible by a Swiss Foundation for the Sciences Fellowship for Advanced Scholars.

¹ Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), 29Google Scholar. I have adopted the title of my essay from Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

² Cronin, Stephanie, “Modernity, Change, and Dictatorship in Iran,” Middle Eastern Studies 39 (2003): 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Matin-Asghari, Afshin, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2002), 3Google Scholar, uses the terms “state-centric” and “power-centric.” See also Melville, Charles, “Persian Local Histories,” Iranian Studies 33 (2000): 7–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ For a general analysis of images of state-society dichotomy, see Mitchell, Timothy, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect,” in State/Culture, ed. Steinmetz, George (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 76–97Google Scholar.

⁴ McDaniel, Tim, Autocracy, Modernization, and Revolution in Russia and Iran (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

⁵ Friedl, Erika, Children of Deh Koh: Young Life in an Iranian Village (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Loeffler, Reinhold, Islam in Practice: Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Tapper, Richard, Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict, and Ritual among the Shahsevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran (London: Academic Press, 1979)Google Scholar. All of these are based on research conducted prior to 1979. See also Roy Mottahedeh's brilliant account of one Iranian's life and times, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985) and Eric Hooglund's penetrating village case study-cum-general analysis, Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980 (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1982).

⁶ Anthropologist Lois Beck bemoans the lack of “local-level studies” of modern Beck, Iran., “Local Histories: A Longitudinal Study of a Qashqaʾi Subtribe in Iran,” in Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie, ed. Matthee, Rudi and Baron, Beth (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2000), 265Google Scholar.

⁷ For example, see the excellent studies by Parsa, Misagh, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Moaddel, Mansoor, Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Marashi, Afshin, Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940 (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁸ This essay focuses on Anglophone and a few Persophone texts. It seems that German and French scholars of Pahlavi Iran also embraced methodological statism, but I am not in a position to make an informed judgment.

⁹ See, for example, Cronin, Stephanie, Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar; idem, “Popular Protest, Disorder, and Riot in Iran: The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Riza Khan, 1921–1925,” International Review of Social History 50 (2005): 167–201; Atabaki, Touraj, ed., The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society, and the State in Turkey and Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007)Google Scholar; Rostam-Kolayi, Jasamin, “Origins of Iran's Modern Girls’ Schools: From Private/National to Public/State,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 4 (2008): 58–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keshavarzian, Arang, Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schayegh, Cyrus, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900–1950 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar; idem, “Serial Murder in Tehran: Crime, Science, and the Formation of Modern State and Society in Interwar Iran,” Journal for Comparative Studies in History and Society 47 (2005): 836–62.

¹⁰ Scott's Seeing Like a State is an anthropologist's study of what he calls “high modernism.” Although he refers to Western high modernists, he focuses on how certain Communist and developing states framed people and nature in ways that simplified complex realities and created the impression of full top-down state control.

¹¹ My personal files and my italics.

¹² Social scientists still debate this difference; a foundational text is Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State,” Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1988 [1977]): 58–89.

¹³ Khachâyar, Ali-Asghar, Le culte d'État chez la nation iranienne (Paris: Lipschutz, 1936)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Jean-Pierre Digard et al., L'Iran au XXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 60.

¹⁵ Kazimi, Mushfiq, “Inqilab-i Ijtimaʿi,” Farangistan 1 (1924): 6Google Scholar. For negative views of the mashrutih, see Katouzian, Homa, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), chaps. 2, 3Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Hussein ‘Alavi, “Sihhat-i Tudih,” Ittilaʿat, 5 April 1936.

¹⁷ “Nukat va Mulahazat,” Kavih (4 September 1921), quoted in Jamshid Bihnam, Berliniha (Tehran: Farzan, 2000), 181. See also Atabaki, Touraj and Zürcher, Erik Jan, eds., “Introduction,” in Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Ataturk and Reza Shah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 3ff.Google Scholar; Epkenhans, Tim, Moral und Disziplin. Seyyed Hasan Taqizade und die Konstruktion eines “progressiven Selbst” in der frühen iranischen Moderne (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2005), 4, 195Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Afshari, Muhammad Reza, “The Historians of the Constitutional Movement and the Making of the Iranian Populist Tradition,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25 (1993): 477–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that differing interpretations of the mashrutih all framed it as a tragic failure.

¹⁹ Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, Entfernte Verwandtschaften: Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, New Deal, 1933–1939 (München, Germany: Carl Hanser, 2005), 10Google Scholar.

²⁰ Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Vintage, 1998), 109Google Scholar; Atabaki and Zürcher, “Introduction,” 4. For Turkey, see “Aghaznamih,” Ayandih 1 (1925): 5; for Italy, Kazimi, “Inqilab,” 7; and for Germany, the journal Iran-i Bastan (1932–35). For the authoritarian turn, see Epkenhans, Moral, 344–47.

²¹ Ansari, Ali, Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After (Harlow: Pearson, 2007), 71–85, 121–27Google Scholar.

²² Idem., “The Myth of the White Revolution: Shah, Mohammad Reza, ‘Modernization’ and the Consolidation of Power,” Middle Eastern Studies 37 (2001): 2Google Scholar; Roman Siebertz, Die Briefmarken Irans als Mittel der politischen Bildpropaganda (Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005), Abb. 26 (Figure 1, stamp issued in 1930), Abb. 80 (Figure 2, stamp issued in 1947), Abb. 69 (Figure 3, stamp issued in 1969).

²³ Matthee, Rudi, “Transforming Dangerous Nomads into Useful Artisans, Technicians, Agriculturalists: Education in the Reza Shah Period,” Iranian Studies 26 (1993): 326CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Hammih Bihtar Zindigi Kunim (Tehran: Nashriyih-yi Idarih-yi Kull-i Amuzishi-yi Buzurgsalan, 1964), back of front cover, 101.

²⁵ See, for example, Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 139.

²⁶ Farah, Empress, Kayhan International, 5 March 1977. Cited in Ervand Abrahamian, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), 9Google Scholar.

²⁷ Grigor, Talinn, “Preserving the Antique Modern: Persepolis 71,” Future Anterior 2 (2005): 22Google Scholar.

²⁸ Donald Wilber, Four Hundred Forty-six Kings of Iran (Tehran: Offset, 1972). Western archaeologists and art historians working in Iran helped establish the notions of age-old kingship and nationhood; see Grigor, Talinn, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The Early Pahlavi Modernists and their Society for National Heritage,” Iranian Studies 37 (2004): 30–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Later, they often uncritically accepted kingship; see Pio Filippani-Ronconi, “The Tradition of Sacred Kingship in Iran,” in Iran under the Pahlavis, ed. George Lenczowski (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Press, 1978), 51–83.

²⁹ Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste.’”

³⁰ Mina Marefat, “Building to Power: Architecture of Tehran, 1921–1941” (PhD diss., MIT, 1988), 99 (quote), 93.

³¹ David Holden, “Shah of Shahs, Shah of Dreams: Napoleonic Vision of Iran as a New Japan,” The New York Times, 26 May 1974, 9, 46, 48.

³² Sick, Gary, All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), 20Google Scholar.

³³ Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 139, quoting Newsweek 78 (27 September 1971), 61.

³⁴ Hettche, Thomas, “In der Eiseskälte eines kostbaren Moments,” DU 6 (2006)Google Scholar, www.dumag.ch/bisher.php?id=222 (accessed 26 February 2008).

³⁵ Nan Robertson, “Rich Spend Away Recession Jitters in the Swiss Alps,” The New York Times, 2 March 1975, 26.

³⁶ Daniela Meier, Helvetias guter Draht zum Pfauenthron: die Beziehungen der Schweiz zu Iran (1946–1978) (Zürich: Orell Füssli, 2002), 235; “Giscard Will Confer Today with the Shah at St. Moritz,” New York Times, 17 February 1975, 32.

³⁷ Scott, Seeing Like a State, 88, 4. See also Ferguson, James, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Latham, Michael, “Introduction,” in Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War, ed. Engerman, David C. et al. (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 1–31Google Scholar.

³⁸ Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian, “Mr. T. V. A. in Iran,” Danneshjoo 3, no. 3 (1956): 9.

³⁹ Interview (in Persian) with Abolhassan Ebtehaj, 1 December 1981, Cannes, France, tape 11, Harvard Iranian Oral History Project (henceforth HIOHP), www.fas.harvard.edu/~iohp/ebtehaj.html (accessed 28 September 2009); interview (in English) with Khodadad Farmanfarmaian, 10 November 1982 to 19 January 1983, Cambridge, Mass., HIOHP, www.fas.harvard.edu/~iohp/farmanfarmaian.html (accessed 28 September 2009); Frances Bostock and Jones Geoffrey, Planning and Power in Iran: Ebtehaj and Economic Development under the Shah (London: Frank Cass, 1989).

⁴⁰ Lilienthal, David E., The Journals of David E. Lilienthal (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 5:127Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Farmanfarmaian, HIOHP interview, 19 January 1983, tape 14, and 14 December 1982, tape 7. In a similar vein, A. Reza Sheikholeslami, “Administration. ii. The Pahlavi Period (1921–1979),” in Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London: Routledge, 1985), 1:470, states that the insertion of PO technocrats into “important administrative positions in other government departments” was greatly “resent[ed] [by] the more traditional bureaucrats.”

⁴² International Labor Office Archives, Geneva, Switzerland (hereafter ILO), Correspondence [C-] 48–2-131, May 1962, p. 1ff.; PO project 15714 on slums: Mustafa Nirumand and Major Ahsan, Hashiyih-nishinan-i Bandar Abbas (Tehran: ISSR, 1972); Mustafa Nirumand and Muhammad-Riza Husseini Kaziruni, Hashiyih-nishinan-i Ahvaz (Tehran: ISSR, 1973). See also Taqi Azad Armaki, Jamiʿih-shinasi-yi Jamiʿih-shinasi dar Iran (Tehran: Nashr-i Kalimah, 1999), 26–28, 48–52.

⁴³ Ehsan Naraqi, “Mutalaʿat va Tahqiqat-i Ijtimaʿi,” in Sukhanraniha va Guzarishha dar Nakhustin Siminar-i Muʾassisah-yi Mutaliʿat va Tahqiqat-i Ijtimaʿi dar barih-yi Masaʾil-i Ijtimaʿi-yi Shahr-i Tehran, ed. ISSR (Tehran: n.p., 1962), 9.

⁴⁴ Sheikholeslami, “Administration,” 1:470.

⁴⁵ Farmanfarmaian, HIOHP interview, 19 January 1983, tape 15.

⁴⁶ Interview with Richard N. Frye, 10 October 1984, Cambridge, Mass., tape 4, HIOHP, www.fas.harvard.edu/%7eiohp/FRYE04.PDF (accessed 28 September 2009).

⁴⁷ Ibid., tape 5.

⁴⁸ For repression from 1921 to 1979, see Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999), 17–123; for SAVAK, see Christian Delannoy, SAVAK (Paris: Stock, 1990).

⁴⁹ Nick Thomas, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A Social History of Dissent and Democracy (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 107.

⁵⁰ Meier, Helvetias, 246.

⁵¹ Hamid Shukat, Tarikh-i Bist Salih-yi Kunfidirasiun-i Jahani-yi Muhassilin va Danishjuyan-i Iran (Saarbrücken: Baztab, 1993), 2:396, 436; quotes are taken from the declarations of the 1971 and 1972 CISNU congresses.

⁵² Meier, Helvetias, 246.

⁵³ “Amnesty Says 1,000 Arrests in Iran,” Guardian, 26 November 1970, 4; “Ruthless Torture in Iran, Says Amnesty,” Guardian, 29 November 1976, 4.

⁵⁴ “Iranian Students Protest Government Oppression,” Christian Science Monitor, 6 March 1972, 14; Meier, Helvetias, 273–77.

⁵⁵ “Iran Accused,” New York Times, 29 February 1976, 5; Baraheni, Reza, Crowned Cannibals: Writings on Repression in Iran (New York: Vintage, 1977)Google Scholar; “Quiet, SAVAK May Be Listening,” Chicago Tribune, 3 January 1975, A4; Philip Jacobson, “Torture in Iran,” Sunday Times, 19 January 1975; CISNU, “Bericht eines Gefolterten,” Iran Report (April 1977): 70–78.

⁵⁶ Gavin Young, “The Shah's Police State,” Observer, 23 November 1975, 25; on SAVAK, see Halliday, Fred, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (New York: Penguin, 1979), 78–90Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Nafisi, Saʿid, Sukhanraniha-yi Amuzishgah-i Parvarish-i Afkar. Pishraftha-yi Iran dar ʿAsr-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Parvarish-i Afkar, 1939), 2Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (German Foreign Office), Berlin, Germany, file R78162 (“Der Schah und seine Familie—Personalien”), report A389 (“Inhalt: Persönlichkeit des Schahs”), 4, Ambassador Blücher to Auswärtiges Amt, Tehran, 27 October 1933; Ansari, Modern Iran, 89, n. 6; Hinz, Walther, Iran: Politik und Kultur von Kyros bis Riza Schah (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1938)Google Scholar; Elwell-Sutton, Laurence Paul, Modern Iran (London: Routledge, 1941), chaps. 5, 7Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Banani, Amin, The Modernization of Iran, 1921–1941 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), 1, 45Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 28–31.

⁶¹ Ibid., 24, 48.

⁶² Ibid., 21.

⁶³ Ibid., 4.

⁶⁴ Ibid., vii.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 146ff.

⁶⁶ Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Engerman, David et al. , eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

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⁶⁹ Gendzier, Irene, Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and the Third World (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1985), 4–7Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Binder, Leonard, Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1962), xiGoogle Scholar; Bill, James, The Politics of Iran: Groups, Classes, and Modernization (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1972), viii, 40, 142Google Scholar.

⁷¹ For a Marxist critique of this problem, see Halliday, Iran, 314, n. 2.

⁷² Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 1958), 359Google Scholar.

⁷³ Binder, Iran, 349ff.

⁷⁴ Bill, Politics, 1 (my italics).

⁷⁵ Ibid., 57.

⁷⁶ Ibid., chaps. 3–6, 156 (quote).

⁷⁷ Ibid., 61, 68, 119ff.

⁷⁸ Ahmad, Jalal Al-i, Plagued by the West (Gharbzadegi), trans. Sprachman, Paul (Delmar: Caravan, 1982 [1962]), 65ffGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 68.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 70, 67, 50, 81.

⁸¹ Ibid., 67, see also 50, 66, 77.

⁸² Ibid., 67. For critical intellectuals, see also Gheissari, Ali, “Truth and Method in Modern Iranian Historiography and Social Sciences,” Critique 6 (1995): 50, 54Google Scholar.

⁸³ “Pazhuhishha-yi Adabi, Pazhuhishha-yi Tarikhi,” Farhang va Zindigi 6 (1971): 104–33.

⁸⁴ Nikki Keddie, e-mail to author, 2 February 2009.

⁸⁵ Aghaie, Kamran, “Islam and Nationalist Historiography,” Studies on Contemporary Islam 2 (2000): 20–46Google Scholar. Historians were also hindered by limited access to ministerial archives. See Cronin, Stephanie, “Writing the History of Modern Iran,” Iran 36 (1998): 179CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Amanat, Abbas, “The Study of History in Post-revolutionary Iran,” Iranian Studies 22 (1989): 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the problems in building the Iran National Archives Administration, see Angel, Herbert, “Archives in Developing Countries: Iran as a Case Study,” The American Archivist 35 (1972): 173–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁶ Bill, James, “Iran and the Crisis of 1978,” Foreign Affairs 57 (1978): 327Google Scholar; Abrahamian, Ervand, “Structural Causes of the Iranian Revolution,” MERIP Reports 87 (1980): 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁷ Abrahamian, Ervand, “Iran in Revolution,” MERIP special issue 9 (1979): 3Google Scholar; see also Bill, “Iran,” 331.

⁸⁸ Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Halliday, Iran; Katouzian, Homa, The Political Economy of Modern Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keddie, Nikki, Roots of Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Homa Katouzian, e-mails to author, 23 and 26 January 2009. Other scholars emphasized that 1951–53 greatly affected their view of Iran: Ervand Abrahamian, e-mail to author, 24 January 2009; Nikki Keddie, e-mail to author, 2 February 2009; Misagh Parsa, e-mail to author, 28 January 2009.

⁹⁰ Katouzian, Political Economy, especially chaps. 2, 12.

⁹¹ Halliday, Iran, 7, 314ff., n. 2.

⁹² Ibid., 16.

⁹³ Ibid., 27.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 14.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 50–54.

⁹⁶ Ibid., 54.

⁹⁷ Keddie, Roots, 94, 283, n. 22. Two other optimists were Donald Wilber and Laurence Elwell-Sutton.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 93 (quote), 112, 174.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 107ff. (quote), 160.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 94.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 142–182.

¹⁰² Keddie, Nikki, “Introduction,” in Modern Iran, ed. Keddie, Nikki et al. (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981), 1 (quote)Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Ervand Abrahamian, “Social Bases of Iranian Politics: The Tudeh Party, 1941–53” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1969), 10. Abrahamian was intellectually influenced by Christopher Hill, E. P. Thompson, George Rudé, and Eric Hobsbawm. Idem, e-mail to author, 24 January 2009; see also idem, “The Crowd in Iranian Politics,” Past and Present 41 (1968): 184–210.

¹⁰⁴ Idem, e-mail to author, 24 January 2009.

¹⁰⁵ Idem, “Crowd,” 184.

¹⁰⁶ See, already in 1980, Abrahamian, “Structural Causes.”

¹⁰⁷ Idem, Radical Islam; idem, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993); idem., Tortured Confessions.

¹⁰⁸ Idem, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1 (quote), 75, 131, 134.

¹⁰⁹ See, for example, Moaddel, Class, Politics, and Ideology; Marashi, Nationalizing Iran.

¹¹⁰ Houchang Chehabi, “The Pahlavi Period,” Iranian Studies 31 (1998): 495, states that “the upheavals of the postrevolutionary years have preoccupied scholars so much that the detailed and dispassionate analysis of Iran under its last dynasty is still in its infancy.”

¹¹¹ Trouillot, Silencing, 19–21.

¹¹² Iggers, Georg, Historiography in the Twentieth Century (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), 66Google Scholar.

¹¹³ Also, some Iranians are wary that “writing a [‘true’] history . . . would put the writer at risk. . . .,” Setrag Manuoukian, “The City of Knowledge: History and Culture in Contemporary Shiraz” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2001), 179.

¹¹⁴ Cronin, “Writing,” 182. For an example of the state's rosy self-representation, see “Nizam-i Siyasi-yi Iran va Taʾsir-i an dar Vahdat-i Milli,” Farhang va Zindigi 25 (1978): 49–58. In the 1970s, Fadaiyan Amir Parviz Puyan—“whose theoretical essay The Necessity of Armed Struggle and a Refutation of the Theory of Survival was widely distributed among students and intellectuals”—described Iran as a country molded by “two absolutes” (du mutlaq), an all-controlling state and a powerless working class. Behrooz, Maziar, Rebels With a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 52Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Ettehadieh, Mansoureh and Bayat, Kaveh, “The Riza Shah Period,” Iranian Studies 26 (1993): 419CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See, for example, Islamiyih, Mustafa, Reza Khan Maksim (Tehran: Agha, 1992)Google Scholar; Hakimi, Mahmud, Dastanhai az ʿAsr-i Reza Shah (Tehran: Qalam, 1986)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Muzaffar Shahidi, Mardi bara-yi Tamam-i Fusul: Asad Allah ʿAlam va Saltanat-i Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (Tehran: Muʾassisih-yi Mutaliʿat va Pazhuhishha-yi Siyasi [hereafter MMPS], 2000); Tuluʿi, Mahmud, Bazigaran-i ʿAsr-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Tak, 1993)Google Scholar; Dawlatmardan-i ʿAsr-i Pahlavi bi-Rivayat-i Asnad-i Savak (Tehran: Markaz-i Barrisi-yi Asnad-i Tarikhi-yi Vizarat-i Ittilaʿat, 2006); Nasir Mashayikh, Palang-i Siyah: Zindigani-yi Ashraf Pahlavi (Tehran: Intisharat-i Asnad-i Inqilab-i Islami, 2001). HIOHP has published a series of interviews with politicians; see, for example, Shapur Bakhtiar, Khatirat-i Shapur Bakhtiar, ed. Habib Ladjevardi (Tehran: Ziba, 2001).

¹¹⁷ Muʿtazid, Khusruw, Miʿmaran-i ʿAsr-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Nashr-i Salis, 2000), 9Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ Fuyuzat, Ibrahim, Dawlat dar ʿAsr-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Chapakhsh, 1996), 133Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Muhammadi, Mujtaba-zadih, Lumpanha dar Siyasat-i ʿAsr-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Markaz, 2006)Google Scholar; MMPS, ed., Sukut (Tehran: MMPS, 2005).

¹²⁰ Abrahamian, Radical Islam; Chehabi, Houchang, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990)Google Scholar; Parsa, Social Origins; Behrooz, Rebels; Matin-Asghari, Student Opposition.

¹²¹ However, see Akhavi, Shahrough, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Aghaie, Kamran, The Martyrs of Karbala: Shiʿi Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2004)Google Scholar. See also van den Bos, Matthijs, Mystic Regimes: Sufism and the State in Iran, from the Late Qajar Era to the Islamic Republic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

¹²² Arjomand, Said Amir, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. Other classics are Dabashi, Hamid, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Fischer, Michael, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Keddie, Nikki, ed., Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiʿism from Quietism to Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Martin, Vanessa, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000)Google Scholar.

¹²³ Cronin, Tribal Politics, 3. See also Rostam-Kolayi, “Origins”; Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable; idem, “Serial Murder.”

¹²⁴ Milani, Abbas, The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Mage, 2001)Google Scholar; Nasr, Vali, “Politics within the Late-Pahlavi State: The Ministry of Economy and Industrial Policy,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32 (2000): 97–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schayegh, Cyrus, “The Development of Social Insurance in Iran: Technical-Financial Conditions and Political Rationales, 1941–1960,” Iranian Studies 39 (2006): 539–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also HIOHP and Foundation of Iranian Studies Oral History Collection interviews.

¹²⁵ Keshavarzian, Bazaar and State; see also Kaveh Ehsani, “Social Engineering and the Contradictions of Modernization in Khuzestan's Company Towns,” International Review of Social History 48 (2003): 361–99.

¹²⁶ Cronin, Stephanie, ed., Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar; idem, “Popular Protest”; Atabaki, State and Subaltern.

¹²⁷ Ansari, Modern Iran, 3ff.

¹²⁸ Keshavarzian, Bazaar and State; Cronin, Tribal Politics.

¹²⁹ See anthropologists’ collaboration: Mary Elaine Hegland and Erika Friedl, “Methods Applied: Political Transformation and Recent Ethnographic Fieldwork in Iran,” Anthropology of the Middle East 1 (2006): 8ff.

¹³⁰ For Iranian archives, see Ansari, Modern Iran, 346–49.

¹³¹ However, see Amin, Camron, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2002)Google Scholar; Elwell-Sutton, Laurence, “The Iranian Press, 1941–1947,” Iran 6 (1968): 65–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³² However, see Damandan, Parisa, Portrait Photographs from Isfahan: Faces in Transition, 1920–1950 (London: SAQI 2004)Google Scholar; Sheikh, Reza, “Asnad-i Tasviri: Uful-i Tamsal-i Humayuni, Naqdi bar ʿAksha-yi mashrutiyat,” Tarikh-i Muʿasir-i Iran 3 (1999): 319–23Google Scholar; Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle and Mohammadi, Ali, Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), chap. 4Google Scholar.

¹³³ Oral historians are less dependent than anthropologists on extended field research. If anthropologists can work under difficult circumstances in Iran—as Mary Hegland shows, for example—historians should be able to do so too. See Hegland, “Zip In and Zip Out Fieldwork,” Iranian Studies 37 (2004): 575–83.

¹³⁴ Hooglund, Land and Revolution, esp. 83, 87, 121ff.

¹³⁵ ILO, Technical Assistance Program [hereafter: TAP] 0–48-4–3, Letter, Tambouri to Paléologos, Geneva, 24 March 1965; ILO, TAP 0–48-4–6, Note d'information, Cuccodoro to Khadjenouri, Tehran, 24 January 1967, p. 21.

¹³⁶ ILO, TAP 0–48-4–3, Rapport no. 3 [by] Paléologos and Proust, Tehran, 30 April 1965, p. 3ff.

¹³⁷ Undated copy of letter to Burujirdi on prime minister stationery; reference to the letter and this particular flood in: Memo, Vizarat-i Kishvar to Sazman-i Barnamih, 8.7.1332s (30 September 1953). All records in nn. 137–44 form part of file 293006906 in Sazman-i Asnad-i Milli, Tehran, Iran.

¹³⁸ Memo, Vizarat-i Kishvar to Bungah-i ‘Umrani-yi Kishvar, 7.9.1333s (28 November 1954), no. 2/47566.

¹³⁹ Memo, Haji Asadullah Namazikhah to Nakhust Vazir, 26.12.1332s (17 March 1954), no. 1897; memo signed by several dozen people, 30.6.1328s (21 September 1949), no. 2272.

¹⁴⁰ Memo, Farmandari-yi Qom to Vazir-i Kishvar, 11.9.1332s (2 December 1953), no. 3653; Memo, Farmandari-yi Qom to Vazir-i Kishvar, 2.7.1332s (24 September 1953), no. 2412.

¹⁴¹ Memo, Shahrdari-yi Qom to Idarih-yi Farmandari-yi Shahristan, 11.9.1333s (2 December 1954), no. 5402.

¹⁴² Memo, Vizarat-i Kishvar to Sazman-i Mali-yi Barnamih, 24.8.1328s (15 November 1949), no. 2815; Memo, Bungah-i Rah-ahan-i Dawlati-yi Iran to Vizarat-i Kishvar, 28.6.1328s (19 September 1949), no. 17927. Memo, Nakhust-Vazir to Vizarat-i Kishvar, 15.10.1333s (5 January 1955), no. 24778; referring to the PO: Memo, Bungah-i ʿUmrani-yi Kishvar to Vizarat-i Kishvar, 10.8.1333s (1 November 1954), no. /9484.

¹⁴³ Memo, R. H. Werkinger, U.S. emergency fund, to Bungah-i ‘Umrani-yi Vizarat-i Kishvar, 24.9.1332s (15 December 1953), no. /15754.

¹⁴⁴ Memo, Shahrdari-yi Qom to Mudir-i Kull-i Idarih-yi Umur-i Shahrdari-ha, 9.9.1331s (30 November 1952), no. 5040; Report, Shahrdari-yi Qom, 28.1.1333s (17 April 1954), separate no. 681; Report, Shahrdari-yi Qom, 28.1.1333s (17 April 1954), no. 85; Report, Shahrdari-yi Qom, 31.1.1333s (20 April 1954), no. 100.

¹⁴⁵ See, for example, Sewell, William, Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ Idem, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage, 1984)Google Scholar; Bonnell, Victoria and Hunt, Lynn, eds., “Introduction,” in Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999), 1–32Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁷ For European everyday-life history, see Lüdtke, Alf, ed., The History of Everyday Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Iggers, Historiography, 101–17. For microhistory, see Ginzburg, Carlo, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things I Know About It,” Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 10–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levi, Giovanni, “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Burke, Peter (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 97–119Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁸ Blackbourn, David, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993)Google Scholar; Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ An ongoing PhD dissertation dealing with consumerism is Pamela Karimi, “Aesthetics and Ethics of the Iranian Home in the Age of Globalism” (MIT).

¹⁵⁰ For the economic data, see Paul Vieille et al., “Le bazaar et le tournant économique des années 1954–1960,” Studia Iranica 1 (1972): 55ff.

¹⁵¹ After 1953, Iran pressured the United States into financing infrastructural projects like the Karaj Dam that, although making little technical sense in the form proposed, were seen to stabilize the postcoup-state's shaky public standing. National Archives and Records Administration, Research Group 469, box 15, folder 504.1, memo, Harold Stassen, Karaj Dam Project, Washington, 8 October 1954. See also the (later) Workers’ Welfare Bank: interview (in Persian) with Ghassem Ladjevardi, 29 January 1983, Los Angeles, tape 2, HIOHP.

¹⁵² However, see Amin, Camron, “Importing ‘Beauty Culture’ into Iran in the 1920s and 1930s,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24 (2004): 81–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Figure 5: Ittila'at, various issues in September 1933; Figures 6 and 7: Ittila'at, various issues in April and May 1960.

¹⁵³ Paidar, Parvin, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 164Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁴ Ibid., 157, about women's general position.

¹⁵⁵ Bonine, Michael, “Shops and Shopkeepers: Dynamics of an Iranian Provincial Bazaar,” in Continuity and Change in Modern Iran, ed. Bonine, Michael and Keddie, Nikki (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981), 226Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁶ Ibid., 224–26; Hooglund, Eric, “The Khwushnishin Population of Iran,” Iranian Studies 6 (1973): 234ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵⁷ ISSR, “Musahibih-i Azad ba Alunak-nishinan-i Tehran,” typographed study (Tehran: ISSR, n.d.); Sattareh Farman-Farmaian Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; Kazemi, Farhad, Poverty and Revolution in Iran: The Migrant Poor, Urban Marginality, and Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁸ Firoozi, Ferydoon, “Tehran: A Demographic and Economic Analysis,” Middle Eastern Studies 10 (1974): 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵⁹ Floor, Willem, “The Brickworkers of Khatunabad,” International Review of Social History 48 (2003): 441CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dariush Bihazin and Anushirvan Rastumpur, “Gida'i va Vilgardi,” typographed study (Tehran: ISSR, 1968), 17.

¹⁶⁰ Ibid.; ISSR, “Musahibih”; about Tehran's Ferdowsi department store, see, for example, interview (in Persian) with Akbar Ladjevardian, 11 October 1982, Houston, tape 1, HIOHP.

¹⁶¹ Al-i Ahmad, Plagued by the West, 80, n. 137.

¹⁶² Abrahamian, “Structural Causes,” 25; Rejali, Dariush, Torture and Modernity: Self, Society, and State in Modern Iran (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993)Google Scholar; see also Walkowitz, Judith, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶³ Available at www.iranmania.com/travel/tours/ski/history.asp (accessed 29 January 2008).

¹⁶⁴ Billy Wilder, One, Two, Three (1961); see also Reinhold Wagnleiter, Coca-colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

¹⁶⁵ Vahabzadeh, Peyman, “Bizhan Jazani and the Problems of Historiography of the Iranian Left (Review Essay),” Iranian Studies 38 (2005): 170Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁶ Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 21.