Abstract
This chapter suggests that the quest for a grassroots social democracy in Iran holds deep and diverse socio-intellectual roots. It is as old as the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, and as broad as secular and religious socialists of Muslim, Marxist, and nationalist origins. It briefly examines the contribution of Mohammad Nakhshab, Khalil Maleki, and Ali Shari‘ati to a social approach to democracy. The chapter also problematizes the limits of liberal paradigm and highlights the merits of the twin pillars of a grassroots social democracy: social justice and societal empowerment. It examines what today’s Iran can learn from the global and local tradition of social democracy. It also sheds light on the possibility of a discourse building toward a grassroots social democracy in Iran.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, Roy R., Robert F. Seibert, and Jon G. Wagner (ed). 1998. Politics and Change in the Middle East: Sources of Conflict and Accommodation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bayat, Asef. 2007. Islam and Democracy: What it the Real Question. Leiden: Amsterdam University Press.
———. 2009. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Brown, Wendy. 2015a. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2015b. Neoliberalism Poisons Everything: How Free Market Mania Threatens Education—And Democracy. Salon, June 15. Accessed April 22, 2016. http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/democracy_cannot_survive_why_the_neoliberal_revolution_has_freedom_on_the_ropes/
Burhan, Abdullah, ed. 1997. Khalil Maleki, Nehzat-e Melli-ye Iran va Edalat-e Ejtema‘i (Khalil Maleki, Iran’s National Movement and Social Justice). Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz.
Dabashi, Hamid. 2015. Can Non-European Think? London: Zed Books.
Derrida, Jacques. 2005. The Politics of Friendship. London: Verso.
———. 2010. Spectres of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. London: Routledge.
Dussel, Enrique. 2012. Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation. Transmodernity 1(3): 28–58.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. The End of History? The National Interest (Summer): 3–18.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1996. Three Normative Models of Democracy. In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib, 21–30. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2006. Religion in the Public Sphere. European Journal of Philosophy. 14 (1): 1–25.
Hunter, Shireen T. 2014. Iran Divided: The Historical Roots of Iranian Debates on Identity, Culture, and Governance in the Twentieth-First Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Katouzian, Homa. 2003. Khalil Maleki: The Odd Intellectual Out. In Intellectual Trends in 20th Century Iran: A Critical Survey, ed. Negin Nabavi, 24–52. Miami: University of Florida.
———. 2004. The Strange Politics of Khalil Maleki. In Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left, ed. Stephanie Cronin, 165–188. London: Routledge.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Mahdavi, Mojtaba. 2011. Post-Islamist Trends in Postrevoliutionary Iran. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31(1): 94–109.
Manoochehri, Abbas. 2003. Critical Religious Reason: Ali Shari’ati on Religion, Philosophy and Emancipation. Polylog. Accessed April 12, 2016. http://them.polylog.org/4/fma-en.htm
Mignolo, Walter. 2015. Foreword: Yes, We Can. In Can Non-European Think? ed. Hamid Dabashi, viii–xiii. London: Zed Books.
Monshipouri, Mohmood. 2003. The Politics of Culture and Human Rights in Iran: Globalizing and Localizing Dynamics. In Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization, ed. Mahmood Monshipouri et al., 113–144. London/New York: Routledge.
Nakhshab, Mohammad. 2002. Majmu’eh-ye asar-e Mohammad Nakhshab (The Collected Works of Mohammad Nakhshab). Tehran: Chapakhsh.
Nekuruh, Mahmoud. 1997. Nehzat-e khodaparastan-e sosiyalist (The Movement of Socialist Theists). Tehran: Entesharat-e Chappakhsh.
Pishdad, Amir, and Homayoun Katouzian. 2002. Nameha-ye Khalil Maleki (Letters of Khalil Maleki). Tehran: Markaz.
Przeworski, Adam, et al. 2000. Development and Democracy: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rahnama, Ali. 2000. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati. New York: I.B. Tauris.
Shahibzadeh, Yadollah. 2015. The Iranian Political Language: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2016. Islamism and Post-Islamism in Iran: An Intellectual History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shari‘ati, Ali. 1981. Collected Works Volume 16 (in Persian). Tehran: Ershad.
———. 1982. Collected Works Volume 2 (in Persian). Tehran: Ershad.
———. 1995. Collected Works Volume 33 (in Persian). Tehran: Elham.
———. 1998a. Collected Works Volume 4 (in Persian). Tehran: Chapakhsh.
———. 1998b. Collected Works Volume 22 (in Persian). Tehran: Chapakhsh.
Sho‘a‘iyan, Mostafa. 1976. Jahad-e emruz ya tezi barayeh taharrok (Today’s Jihad or A Thesis for Mobilisation). In Chand neveshteh (Selected Writings), ed. Mostafa Sho‘a‘iyan, 5–32. Florence: Mazdak.
Soroush, A. 2000. The Three Cultures. In Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam, ed. M. Sadri, and M. Sadri, 156–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taghavi, Seyed Mohammad Ali. 2005. The Flourishing of Islamic Reformism in Iran: Political Islamic Groups in Iran 1941–1961. London: Routledge Curzon.
Vahabzadeh, Peyman. 2007a. Mostafa Sho‘aiyan: The Maverick Theorist of Revolution and the Failure of Frontal Politics in Iran. Iranian Studies 40(3): 405–425.
———. 2007b. Mustafa Shu‘a‘iyan and Fada‘iyan-i Khalq: Frontal Politics, Stalinism, and the Role of Intellectuals in Iran. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 34(1): 41–59.
Vahdat, Farzin. 2002. God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Walzer, Michael. 1990. A Credo for This Moment. Dissent 37(2): 160.
Weber, Max. 1998. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited by C. Wright Mills and Hans Heinrich Gerth. New York: Routledge.
———. 2001. The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mahdavi, M. (2017). Iran: Multiple Sources of a Grassroots Social Democracy?. In: Vahabzadeh, P. (eds) Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44226-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44227-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)