 Page
2
>>> Page
1
The formal space of Abadan, as I mentioned before,
consisted of several segregated neighborhoods, the residents of
which were carefully assigned housing according
to their job, rank in the company roster, and even race, nationality, and ethnicity.
A rigid and inflexible hierarchy defined the neighborhood, street, alley, and
specific house of each individual employee according to his rank, work record,
skill, and even ethnicity, and assigned a house to his family (the employees
being all male).
Senior European staff was housed in 'Braim',
[see: Summer
of 1978] which consisted of large villas
and bungalows set on green lawns, surrounded by parks
and gardens and lined with English hedges, and built on lots averaging 1000
sqm, and 4.5 units per hectare. Workers' neighborhoods, such
as Bahmanshir, Bahar, etc., were row houses with high walls and
tiny courtyards, built in
straight lines and wall to wall, averaging 120 sqm, with a density of 26
to 31 units per hectare. In between these extremes poles laid the middle
and
lower staff neighborhoods, such as Bawardeh, which were combinations of these
two
forms in terms of architecture, design, and scale. [see: Bird's
eye]
The spatial discipline that laid out Abadan's urban design like a chessboard
was not as spectacularly successful in subjugating the rugged hills and mountains
of Masjed Soleyman to its rational blueprints. Consequently, the design of
Masjed Soleyman appears to be fragmented and unplanned. Nevertheless, as formal
company neighborhoods were laid out in the vicinity of workshops, oil wells,
and industrial installations closer scrutiny will show the same segregationist
and segmentationist approach as in Abadan, but on a more spread out and disconnected
pattern.
With the passage of time and successive political
developments, such as the ongoing haggling between the government
of Iran and the company over
the composition of the labor force and the distribution of profits from
the operations, the share of Iranian employees began to rise considerably.
Gradually,
the racial segregation that separated the spaces of routine interaction
and daily life between Iranians and the English became less marked,
in comparison
to the occupational and class distinctions that served as the norms of
segmenting city spaces.
Despite all this, what truly set Masjed
Soleyman and Abadan apart
was the cities' glaring modernity, reflected in their unique architecture
and design, but also in most other details of urban space and life. These
cities were the sites of the first airports, motor vehicles, cinemas,
technical schools,
mixed schools (boys and girls, foreign and Iranian) [See: Back
then],
leisure clubs, sports clubs, bus services, mass transports, luxury
inns,
well
equipped hospitals,
etc. in Iran and the region. At the same time, all these amenities were
segregated for different social layers and classes, to the extent
that Masjed Soleyman
even had separate cemeteries for workers and staff [44].
This system allowed the social position and status
of each individual employed by the company to be public knowledge
through his residential
address,
the means of transportation and the medical facilities he and his family
were
allowed to use, the country and sports clubs he was allowed to join,
and the schools
his children could attend. At the same time, because the company's
internal organization was also to a large extend a meritocracy,
and as each step
up the career ladder translated into greater material privileges and
social status,
the workers were encouraged both to feel envious and to compete against
each other, and to pursue individual and personal rather than collective
benefits
[45]. Transforming urban amenities and city spaces into symbolic capital
is one of the most effective instruments of controlling the population
in these
cities [46].
Modernizing the household
The authoritarian spatial design of company towns both reflected
the social relations that prevailed within this industry, as
well as reinforcing
and
reproducing them. The Company had to not only house its workers (initially
there were no
housing available in these barren locales), but it also had to adapt
this raw labor force to the rigorous and special demands of modern
industry. It had
to retain them, to keep them relatively satisfied or at least dependent
on wage labor, but also and at the same time docile.
We can witness
the reflection
of all these goals in details of the urban design, from the architecture
of the houses to the types of materials used in their construction,
in the different
designed and organized spaces of entertainment and leisure, the types
of
walls surrounding the residences and their heights, the length and
width of streets
and alleys, the morphology of planned formal neighborhoods, the types
of kitchens and bathrooms implemented in individual units, etc.
The French geographer Xavier de Planhol has argued
that the walled-in row houses of the workers were designed to duplicate
native architecture
and
a sense of
privacy, rooted in 'Islamic values' [47]. There is a striking similarity
between this argument and rationalization of the demolition of
old neighborhoods of Algiers under French colonial rule, at about
the
same time, in the
inter war period [48]. These neighborhoods were replaced with modern
apartment blocks,
designed by French architects and urban planners, who also tried
to incorporate 'native' and 'Islamic' values and norms in their
constructions.
In fact,
far from reflecting the domestic
architecture of the rural and tribal origins of the migrant laborers,
these row houses were designed with two apparent purposes in mind:
first, the mass
production of a great number of cheap and durable houses and second,
to directly intervene in the domestic space of the family and to
modernize
it [49]. The
tiny courtyards and high walls prevented air circulation, especially
in the atrociously humid and hot summer months.
The widespread
use of new or modern
construction materials, such as bricks, stones, and metal frames,
instead of adobe and wood, were faster, standardized, and cheaper
but unlike
traditional
materials, did not have the ability to modify extreme seasonal
and climatic fluctuations. As a result, these new houses depended
on
modern amenities,
such as electricity, fans, some form of air conditioning, and heaters
(gas and electricity,
provided by the Company, overtime became common features in Company
housing). The provision of these modern amenities, as well as sewerage,
piped water,
and medical facilities helped to augur in new notions of personal
hygiene and public health.
The monopoly ownership by the Company of the means
of production, as well as reproduction is the main instrument of
social control
in company
towns.
In
other words, both occupation and the source of income are in the
monopoly of the company, as well as real estate, housing, and social
services.
The household
unit, aside from being the smallest, collective social unit, plays
a key role in many societies in shaping the 'individual', and in
placing him/her within larger networks of social relations. For
this reason macro social institutions
and powers, such as capital and the state, consistently attempt
to penetrate the household, and to shape and regulate it according
to their norms and interests.
This intervention often requires the imposition of radical change
upon existing household organizations, and sometimes even the prevention
of the survival
of these older forms.
The rigidly fixed residential architecture
of Abadan and Masjed Soleyman, enforced by the Company who owned
the real estate and
housing stock, prevented the accommodation of large extended families,
the basic unit of social life in the region. Nor did it allow the
use of the domestic
space for economic and productive activities, through the maintenance
of livestock and chicken, the production of meat, dairy, and eggs,
and vegetable garden
plots. The small, one or two roomed houses were not even practical
for traditional handcrafts, such as kilim weaving.
All these activities,
quite widespread in
the region up to this day, are crucial for making the household
into an economic unit, despite their small scale, by providing
income and food supplements.
They also bestow status and a sense of identity upon the household,
and provide it with relative economic autonomy and self-reliance.
As importantly, these
activities also happen to be the realm of the economic agency of
children and especially women.
Overall, this domestic architecture
promoted the nuclear family as its privileged unit, but it also
altered gender roles within
the
household, as well as the
other major division of labor between different generations. In
this setting the adult male becomes the sole legitimate economic
agent,
in
the sense
of his productive activity being socially validated, through the
labor market.
The workplace is thus separated and set apart from the place of
residence, and the result of his economic activity would return
to the household
in the form of a money wage or salary.
The other consequence of
this spatial
division
of labor is that the house becomes the exclusive domain of the
wife/woman, but deprived of the economic and productive activities
it previously
allowed. At the same time, domestic space also becomes a boundary,
between the private
and the public domains, and thus a physical constraint for women
who no longer can easily and routinely cross the porous boundaries
of the
household
space.
This spatial and gender division of labor, the new
role assigned and imposed upon women which in many ways dramatically
limited
their social
roles and,
in short, this 'modernization' of the household which so characterized
life in Abadan and Masjed Soleyman reflected directly the developments
that were taking place in the capitalist West at about the same
time. Contrary to
the extended household, the 'modern' nuclear family, a form imposed
by the domestic architecture of company towns, curtailed the number
of children and other generations or relatives who could live under
the
same roof, primarily
because of the shortage of space and the design of the house.
Ordinarily,
the only other generation who could reside in these houses were
the children who,
instead of participating in collective household productive activities,
were sent out of the home to schools (vocational and regular) in
order to replace
their parents eventually at home, workshop, refinery, and oil field
after several years of disciplined training and socialization [50].
This modernization of the family, gender, and women
has been a mainstay of 'modernity'.
However, its early imposition from above in Khuzestan's company
towns set the stage for its replication in later periods elsewhere
in the
country, long after AIOC had relegated its role to the oil Consortium
and the
Iranian State.
The anomie and social problems mentioned have remained
acute in newer
and smaller company towns of Khuzestan and elsewhere, such as
the agro-industrial model villages of Dezful, the sugar cane plantations
of Haft-Tappeh,
the steel town of Mobarakeh, the copper mining town of Sarcheshmeh,
the industrial machinery
town of Arak, etc. This is especially the case for women, where
geographic isolation and their seclusion in the household is not
relieved by
the large scale of the urban setting and the diversity of city
life, as
it was in Abadan
and Masjed Soleyman [51].
Possibly discontent in smaller company
towns is caused by the smaller scale and the cultural poverty of
these towns,
whereas what
distinguished Abadan and Masjed Soleyman, as we shall discuss later,
was their exponential growth, in spite and against the wishes of
the Company, and their
maturation into large and multifaceted cities which did come to
produce diverse, autonomous, and cosmopolitan spaces and a vibrant
urban
culture and life.
Public Space
The wide boulevards and the grid pattern that characterized the
formal space of Abadan distinguished it from other Iranian cities
at the
time. Khuzestan's
historical cities, Dezful and Shushtar [52], follow the local physical
topography, primarily as the means of water allocation by gravity.
They have narrow, winding
alleys and cul de sacs, lined by high brick or adobe walls, intended
to defend neighborhoods from wind and dust, extreme fluctuations
in climate, and from
physical and military attacks and molestation. In these cities
an important part of social life and relations flows and is shaped
in
the public
space of streets and bazaars.
The formal public space of company towns differs
from this historical model in several important respects: In Abadan,
instead of long
and narrow winding
alleys forming a maze, the front doors of the row houses open onto
either short, narrow, and straight alleys which abut onto large
streets at both
ends, or
directly onto large avenues. In this way each house is set up as
distinct from its neighbors, and separated from the neighborhood,
the intimate
street life,
and ultimately from the workers' society. Any collective protest,
or suspicious gatherings among neighborhood residents can be quickly
detected,
and each street, alley, and even neighborhood can be easily cordoned
off from the others should the need arise.
The assignment of housing by the Company, based
on occupation and rank (and race, in the early days of British
ownership), and the
constant
displacement of the personnel within the company hierarchy, made
the forging and maintenance
of lasting spatial solidarities difficult. Because the independent
ability to chose one's residence is denied the workers seeking
company housing,
the formation of autonomous and spontaneous networks of solidarity
in space by using common kinship, ethnic background, or geographic
origins,
are near
impossible to form.
In Abadan, the obsession to use urban space as an
instrument of controlling the population can be readily detected
in the details
of the design
neighborhood and public spaces of the formal city. Forty years
ago, the French sociologist
Paul Vieille and his collaborators pointed out some of glaring
examples of these coercive aspects of the urban design of Abadan
in a study
that is still
one of the best published examples of spatial analysis in Iran
[53].
The motives followed in the urban design of Abadan,
they argued,
were not the
conventions
of urban planning, nor the price of land and economic calculation,
but the separation and distinction of different areas of the city
from one
another
by a central authority. It is self evident that if different city
neighborhoods were constructed adjacent to each other the provision
of common services
and infrastructure would have been far cheaper due to the economies
of scale.
In
fact, city neighborhoods were built apart and separated by wide
stretches of empty terrain, wide roads, pipelines, administrative
and industrial
facilities and, of course, the enormous bulk of the refinery itself.
This imposed separation
prevents easy intermingling and routine pedestrian interaction,
as well as potentially dangerous collective congregation between
separate
city
sections.
Roads do not connect different city sections to
traffic exchanges. Rather they end in several bottlenecks that
allow the surveillance
of all communication
between different parts of the city. The boundaries of different
neighborhoods are marked by guard posts, and there are regular
police stations near
or at
the entrance of workers' neighborhoods.
The Abadan Refinery was
the monopoly owner of all land in the formal company town. It
was responsible
for
organizing different sections of the city, as well as creating
and maintaining the distinctions
between its different parts. It was the force responsible for
creating the segregated and hierarchic landscape of the city.
In Masjed Soleyman, the topography and physical
setting had to a large extent aided and modified the process of
social engineering.
Houses
and urban facilities
were constructed, in a spread out fashion, around oil wells and
industrial
facilities. Specific neighborhoods were often called after these
facilities -for example 'Nomre-e Yek' (Number One, referring to
the first
discovered oil well), 'Nomre-e Chehel' (Number 40), Naftak (Little
Oil), Naftoun, etc.
The distance and area between neighborhoods
was connected by narrow, company built roads, and rugged hills,
left
barren and undeveloped.
Every action for building unauthorized hovels and houses was immediately
confronted by the Company's bulldozers. Like Abadan, official Company
areas were
built separately from one another, and had only one narrow access
road in and out. Neighborhoods are designed either in circular
pattern, or as parallel
streets which are interconnected by perpendicular streets, but
dead end on both sides cutting and isolating the neighborhood with
the
world
beyond,
except
thorough the single, easily guarded access road.
Company neighborhoods are segregated according to
rank and status, set in separate places with different amenities
and characteristics.
The
senior managers live
in 'Shah Neshin' (Seat of the King), senior staff in Naftak and
Talkhab, junior and petty staff in Nomre-e Chehel, Camp Scotch,
and Pansion-e Khayyam, and workers in Naftoun, Do Lane (Two Lanes)
Seh
Lane (Three
Lanes), Bibian, etc.
The space of leisure and entertainment in Masjed
Soleyman, as in Abadan, was differentiated according to rank and
class. Senior
staff and managers
had membership
to 'Bashgah-e Markazi' (the Central Club), junior staff had the
'Bashgah-e Iran', and workers Bashgah-e Kargari (Workers' Club),
located in
Naftoun. Only members and their guests had access to each club.
The rest of the city's population, not employed by the Oil Company
had no right to
use company facilities, especially the clubs.
All these social
clubs had more or less similar facilities, such as cinema, restaurant,
cafeteria, swimming
pool, ping pong, bingo, billiard, etc. The difference was not so
much in the range of amenities as the quality and, more important,
the prestige conferred
by membership in each institution, which played an important role
in bestowing symbolic status on individuals and their family. In
Masjed Soleyman even the
company stores and types of 'ration' assigned to each member was
distinguished by rank and social class [54].
Production of place
as a contested process
Place is a social construct which both constitutes and is constituted
by social relations. The production of place and the interpretation
of its
meanings are
equally contested processes. People and institutions struggle over
defining, using, and shaping space and place according to their
individual and
collective interests. We have been discussing how APOC built Khuzestan's
oil towns and the architectural and design rational behind it.
I have argued that this
rational was both utilitarian, as well as a discursive exercise
of power.
The Company wanted to attract and maintain a labor
force that
would be
at the same
time competent, efficient, modern, and submissive. However, there
has always been a fragile balance between the power of the Company
over
place, and its
own clear lack of autonomy from both global markets, as well as
domestic and local dynamics. On closer scrutiny we can see that
the structured
coherence
of this industrial landscape has always been shaky and open to
contestation.
Company towns of the 20th century, as mentioned
before, have been designed by using two contradictory as well as
complimentary principles:
The
idea of general welfare and the assimilation of the labor force
into the generic
values
of the 'middle class' and, on the other hand, the praxis of colonialism,
both internal and external, in the form of a one sided domination
over an alien and weaker region and people, for the main purpose
of the
extraction of their
natural and human resources and abilities. Contrary to the first
principle above, the aim of colonial social planning is not necessarily
to integrate
and standardize the subjugated region and people into a larger
unit (national, for example), but rather to create and proliferate
its
internal divisions,
differences, and distinctions in order to better control and dominate
it.
The presence of both these principles can be detected
in Abadan and Masjed Soleyman: These cities were built in isolated
regions,
away
from any
significant centers of population. Their designed physical and
cultural space precipitated
a break between the new and migrant population and their mostly
tribal and rural background and surroundings. Various planned aspects
of
the city design
and organization generated and maintained new norms, principles,
and behaviors conforming to the needs of modern industry. In other
words,
even though
the Oil Company was not a 'colonial power' per say, nevertheless
it both made free use of colonial practices and mechanisms, as
well as
relying on principles of corporate welfare policies.
The standard
of living,
services, level of education and technical training, and the overall
urban culture of
Masjed Soleyman and Abadan exceeded the rest of the country for
a long period. In Khuzestan the Oil Company created a wholly new
and
modern
society. However,
the lasting legacy of this experiment was not embodied only in
the physical structures it put together. Long after the political
events
of the oil
nationalization movement and the 1953 coup détat brought
about the end of AIOC and its total hegemony over the oil fields
of Khuzestan, the social imaginary and the
collective forces and institutional practices it had produced have
continued to exert a significant influence. The cultural, geographic,
and institutional
legacy of AIOC influenced not only the industrial proletariat and
management but also had a deep and lasting impact on Iran's then
and future 'social
engineers', namely the planners, urban designers, professional
elites of various kinds, industrial managers, and technocrats.
Abadan soon witnessed the growth of a spontaneous
city, with a 'native' architecture, bazaars, 'informal' residential
and commercial
neighborhoods,
illegal
hovels and shanties, and especially forbidden places housing brothels,
drug sellers, and smugglers who made the most of the location of
the city on the
international border. These subversive places grew across from
the manicured lawns and hedges of fancy Company neighborhoods such
as
Braim and Bawardeh.
Workers' squatter neighborhoods like Abolhassan, Ahmadabad, and
Karun, were rapidly constructed next to formal Company compounds
with fancier
literary names such as Pirouz, Bahar, and Farahabad.
The formal
Company town's 'public' space
was confined to clubs, sports fields, stores, and amenities that
only employees of the Company had access to. In contradistinction,
the informal
Abadan city
with its anarchic streets and constant and never stopping urban
confusion and hubbub, its colorful stores, streets teeming with
pedestrians
and people until
the wee hours of the dawn, presented a lively, adventurous, exciting,
untamed and unsupervised public arena to all citizens, whether
employed by the Company
or not. The two cities confronted each other with striking
contrasts: the formal city was affluent, comfortable, ordered,
and staid.
It was shaped by disciplinary
powers of separation, distinction, ranking, and surveillance
that kept its residents under constant control. The spontaneous
and
informal city was a public
place, in the more accurate sense of the word. It was open, integrated,
public and, at the same time, quite hectic and anarchic [55].
In these 'free zones' which did not belong to the
refinery and laid outside its control and surveillance all manners
of people
inevitably worked, cohabited, and mixed together: villagers and
tribesmen, Arab,
Lur, Bakhtiari, Turk, Esfahani, men and women, rich and poor, etc.
A third of the
population of the 'Bazaar' neighborhood and some 60% of residents
of the notorious Ahmadabad were Company employees, who were forced
to settle in these neighborhoods due to a chronic shortage of company
housing.
In other
words, the Company's efforts to mold and create an ideal society,
fit to satisfy its needs was consistently subverted and ran into
crisis
as a result of the formation of these adjoining, visible, and
accessible free zones. As
a result of these tensions and the co-presence of alternative
places the tight and controlled cast of the planned company town
was continuously
broken, making
Abadan and Masjed Soleyman lively, cosmopolitan places with a
strong sense of identity and a sophisticated culture [56].
The point is
that no matter how
powerful the Oil Company and its economic resources and organizational
means, it could not in the end manage to impose a full hegemony
upon the place it
had created. Spontaneous civil institutions, informal networks
of trade, guild, political, religious, and ethnic activities
were always
prominent
and exceptionally
active in Abadan until the Iran Iraq war destroyed the city.
In Masjed Soleyman also an extended and bizarre
informal and illicit space grew around the formal Company area.
The grand buildings
and geometrically aligned company structures contrast with squatter
settlements
that after
nearly a century have become permanent fixtures of the city. As
mentioned before,
Masjed Soleyman's topography is odd, as the city is constructed
in a rugged mountainous region, around a series of seven hills.
To quote
Kamal
At'hari's excellent study of Masjed Soleyman, "As the Company
prevented the construction of housing units adjacent to its own
residential
areas migrants were forced
to build their dwellings where the company bulldozers were unable
to reach and destroy. As a result of this the social, class,
and economic differences
of the city are reflected in and defended by the sheer cliffs,
and deep gorges and flood channels. The city is divided into
neighborhoods with English names
such as 'Camp Scotch', 'Khayyam Pension', and 'Western
Hostel', as opposed to [rugged and informal areas with local
names such as] 'Kalgeh', 'Sar Koureh' ('By the Smokestack'),
and 'Mal Karim', 'Mal' being the smallest social unit
of the Bakhtiari [57]. Conclusion
In a classic study of the impact of French colonial rule on Algeria
Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad use the terms 'acculturation'
and 'deculturation'
to describe the different experiences of displacement among the
mountain Berbers
versus the forced resettlement of Arab population on the plains
of Algeria.
The argument goes that the Berbers, among other
reasons, due to the more
rugged and inaccessible geography of their settlements, maintained
a greater degree
of internal autonomy than the more geographically vulnerable
Arab population of the coasts and the plains. Although many
cultural
and
economic tenets
of French rule penetrated the Berber society, nevertheless Berber
communities managed to maintain a sense of internal coherence
and ethnic solidarity
which
allowed them to adapt and even use many of the material benefits
accruing from this European encroachment.
The Arabs, on the other
hand, were
more vulnerable
and, despite fierce resistance, were turned into an instrument
for successive experiments in social engineering, which included
the
massive destruction
of towns and villages, the forced resettlement of whole populations
in concentration
camps, military zones, and planned housing complexes and neighborhoods.
The experience of Arabs was a brutal, alienating, and profound
deculturation compared
to the acculturation of the Berbers whom, despite the hardships
they had to endure, at the same time managed to accumulate certain
abilities
and resist
other encroachments [58].
In Khuzestan, the establishment of company towns
and model villages in the agro-industries of Dezful in the
1970's, and the semi-forced
resettlement
of tens of thousands of peasants, which has been the subject of
a thorough study
by Grace Goodell [59], was a deculturating experience. But it would
be difficult
to pass the same kind of judgement on Abadan and Masjed Soleyman,
despite the fact that they were the first and by far the most massive
such
experiments in social engineering.
Despite the fact that life in
these cities led
to undeniable
and fundamental changes in the social life and the culture of their
population, nevertheless this migration was voluntary in the end,
while in the cities
themselves, thanks to the diverse and large population and the
dynamic urban setting, the
possibility of negotiation and enough room for individuals to maneuver
was available. Consequently, Abadan and Masjed Soleyman had, on
the one hand,
a modern and authoritarian structure and organization, while on
the other hand,
thanks to the heterogeneity and energy of their population, as
well as the forbidding scale the cities had reached despite the
company's
wishes
and attempts, this modernity always remained conditional. The result
of these contradictions were cities and urban cultures that were
energetic and dynamic,
but also eclectic and hybrid.
As mentioned before, Abadan and its citizens
played a significant role in the revolution of 1979 and its
victory. Its physical destruction
during the
Iran
Iraq war and the forced dispersal of its population not only eradicated
an important city but also severed a unique industrial and urban
culture,
a
mature and advanced urbanity, and a human capital that had been
accumulated over seven
decades, from the physical space where it had been engendered.
Today,
after a decade of 'reconstruction', Abadan is only a shadow
of its former self. Its population, which had reached 300 thousand
on the eve of the Revolution,
some six years after the War (1994), when the population country
had almost doubled compared to two decades before, was only
213 thousand. The war severely
damaged the refinery, urban infrastructure and facilities, neighborhoods,
and palm groves around the city were severely damaged.
The
process of post war
reconstruction has been running into serious criticism by the residents
[60]. The activities of the refinery and oil industry are still
limited and minimal.
Many of the workers and staff are not native to the region. Many
of the Abadanis who have returned because of their attachment
to their city are dissatisfied
and await retirement to settle elsewhere. The morphology and fabric
of the city has been altered and its population, like the early
years of its founding,
contains many rural and tribal people, while the industrial labor
market and the economic institutions no longer have the old
ability and resources to shape
and influence the population, or to employ them.
Social problems,
especially addiction and smuggling, primarily due to an economic
depression, are rampant. But the worst problem is that of the
young generation of Abadanis who, for a significant part of
their lives, have
lived and
grown up as refugees and
migrants elsewhere - in Tehran, Ahvaz, Esfahan, Shiraz, etc.- and
find contemporary Abadan both alien and alienating. The cultural
continuity and the accumulation
of place identity which gave such a unique character to this city,
was violently severed at one point, and little has been done
to revive or save it from oblivion.
Masjed Soleyman has not been spared a troubled
and uncertain faith either. After the decline of oil resources
there in the
late 1960's,
and the
final shutting of its remaining oil wells in 1980-81, the city
has been faced
with a chronic decline. The government transferred most of oil
facilities to the
army on the theory that replacing one gargantuan institution
with another will prevent the disintegration of the city, as
it had
happened in
small oil towns
like Naft-e Sefid and Haftgel. More than half of the 2600 Company
housing units were transferred to the army [61].
But, according
to all signs
this strategy
has been hardly successful, and Masjed Soleyman failed to become
a military company town. Instead, the city found a special
place in the
regional
life of the Bakhtiari tribes. In a twist of historical irony,
the city that
not so long ago was one of the most industrial cities of Iran
and the Middle East, today limps along mostly thanks to the
presence
of nomadic
tribesmen.
The gradual
metamorphosis of the city, from a migrant, industrial and
class based space into an ethnic and tribal one can be easily
detected
in the
dominant dress
code on the streets, made of the distinctive Bakhtiari tribal
cloths, and in the proliferation of spontaneous housing
constructions in
hitherto forbidden
and inaccessible areas. The absence of capital, like blood
circulating in
veins,
can be easily noticed in the dilapidated conditions of
the city, and especially in the company neighborhoods. Many
of
the skilled
personnel
and workers
have migrated elsewhere and play an important role in the
strategically important
provincial industries, such as sugar cane, the Abadan refinery,
ports, steel mills, and oil facilities.
The intellectually
influential journal "Iran-e Farda", which in its initial
issues used to propagate an economy without
oil, and
considered the period of 1952-3 when Iran's oil was boycotted
by Britain during
the oil nationalization crisis and movement as a model
of independent and balanced national development dedicated
a
special recent
issue to Masjed Soleyman [62].
The basic theme of this issue was a grim and dire warning
about the inevitability of the end of oil production and
revenues
as resources run out, and the subsequent
social dislocations and pathologies that will result if
appropriate care is not taken to deal with this eventuality.
From this
important journal's
viewpoint, delinquency, unemployment, addiction, and depression
are the main characteristics of an abandoned and oil-less
Masjed Soleyman, and by extension
the future of Iran itself. Even in their decline Khuzestan's
oil towns continue to capture the collective national and
intellectual imaginary in significant
ways.
But perhaps the most important change in Masjed
Soleyman has taken place in the local structure of land ownership.
In 1956
more than
half of city
residents
were renters and less than a tenth of the city's housing
stock was privately owned. Currently, these ratios have
been almost
reversed and most of
city dwellings are owned privately. The turning point
on
this issue was the exhaustion of
the local oil resources, as well as the 1979 Revolution.
The collapse of the Monarchy led to important changes
in property
relations
and
land ownership
in all urban, and to a lesser extent rural areas [63].
The populist-socialist and the conservative-traditionalist
factions
of the Islamic regime
battled for years over their conflicting notions of
property rights, with the
former faction favoring widespread confiscation and
distribution of rural and urban
land among people, and the latter defending the sanctity
of ownership under Islam. True to form Ayatollah Khomeini
played
the middle
of the road on this
sensitive topic.
The end result was the confiscation
(often arbitrary) of the properties of the 'direct associates
of the former regime',
on the grounds of being illicit wealth, without affecting
general property relations
at all. These remained protected under Islamic law.
At this level, the redistribution of land became a political
process,
rather
than a universal legal one, and
therefore remained a limited, coercive, and often
arbitrary occurrence, subject to manipulation and abuse. On
the
other
hand, due to
the weakness of the new
regime, in place strict zoning laws, defining public
land, and permitted construction or cultivation areas
were overstepped
wholesale by a politicized population,
hungry for land.
By 1980 the metropolitan area of
Tehran and most other cities had expanded manifold, as hitherto
public
land
was
occupied and converted to
housing on a massive scale. In rural areas a similar
process happened to significant areas of state owned
and public
lands (nearly a
million hectares altogether)
which were occupied and de-facto expropriated.
This appropriation was based on the Islamic stipulation that
any
barren
land
'revived' and maintained
for at least three years by labor shall become
the possession (and not the 'property', that final status being
the
privilege of the
Divine) of the laborer/cultivator.
In Masjed Soleyman
most existing constructed areas were under the monopoly ownership
or possession
of the Oil
Company in
1979. IN
1979-80, when
this sudden takeover of the mostly unbuilt and
barren areas of the city happened
on a wide
scale the landscape of the city radically altered.
In Masjed Soleyman the shifts in ownership ratios
were far
more striking
than other
urban areas
(see table
1). The barren spaces and empty areas that under
Company dominion separated neighborhoods and
inhabited places
are today filled
with densely built
hovels and houses, and ad-hoc constructions which
have transformed the hitherto
fragmented and dispersed geography of the city.
Masjed Soleyman has become an interconnected,
very 'long' and spread out sprawl!
Table 1. Population and Housing in Masjed Soleyman
Sources: Ministry of Interior,
National Census of Population and Housing (Tehran, various
years); Kamal
Athari,
''Masjed Soleyman; sherkat-shahri madaniat-yafteh'',
Ettelaat-e
Siasi Eqtesadi,
No.47/48
(1991),
pp. 65-69; "Ministry of Housing and
Urbanism, Rahnamaye Jamiyat-e Shahrha-ye
Iran, 1335-70
(Tehran, 1989)
The city's population, which had a very rapid
rate of annual growth of 3.7% in the waning
years of
maximum oil production,
between
1956-66, witnessed a rapid decline to 1.8%
in the next decade (1966-76). But
the
following decade,
1976-86, the years of war and revolution,
of the end of oil production and related
jobs,
which were
years
of de-facto
economic depression
and accelerated
emigration from the city, the city population's
growth rate
reached 3.1%. One of the main causes of
this expansion was the immigration
from adjacent
rural and tribal areas. A major motive
for this movement of population was the opportunity
to
squat and permanently
occupy
urban land.
Struggle over possession of land and the
housing question have always been strong
motives in
shaping the geography
and identity
of company
towns.
But the manner, content, and result of
this struggle continuously underwent
modification and reformulation in different historical
junctures, according to the balance of
power
between the
main actors involved,
namely the
Oil Company
(whether
owned by the British, made of a consortium
of
several multinationals together with
the central state,
or nationalized and wholly
state owned), the central
state, and the resident population. This
ongoing struggle meant that the geography
of the city,
as well as its
identity, its
culture, and the social
and political
aspirations and abilities of its component
parts were continuously changing and
being overhauled.
 The importance of Abadan and Masjed Soleyman
in the history of modernization, contemporary
urbanization,
and modernity
in Iran
are undeniable,
even if history has not been especially
kind to these
cities and their population.
Perhaps
there is some truth to the stark warning
of the journal 'Iran-e Farda' that
today's Masjed
Soleyman
offers
an image of the
whole country's
future without oil.
But, precisely
for the same reason, the story of these cities
cannot
and
should not be
limited to
the fate
and the narrative
of oil
revenues alone. Instead, the crisis-ridden
and troubled history and geography
of these company
towns must
be rescued from
oblivion, as
every detail
of their story holds precious lessons for the society's present dilemmas >>> Endnotes
>>> Page
1
About
Kaveh Ehsani is a member of the editorial
board of Goft-o-Gu quarterly (Tehran). This paper
first appeared in the International
Review of Social History (IRSH 48:2003, pp.361-399). Earlier
versions of this paper were presented to Middle East Studies
Association, 1998, Chicago; and at the conference on 'Iran:
Social History from Below', at the International Institute
for Social History, Amsterdam, in 2001. A written version in
Persian was first published in Goft-o-Gu (No.25, 1999).
He would like to thank Touraj Atabaki, Norma Moruzzi, Setenyi
Shami, Morad Saghafi, Ahmad Maydari, and Kaveh Bayat for their
intellectual influence, comments, and friendship. *
*
|
