Endnotes
Boom & bust
Social engineering and the contradictions of modernization
in Khuzestan's oil company towns, Abadan and Masjed-Soleyman
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1] John Garner, The
Model Company Town (Amherst, MA, 1984), pp.6-7
2] Lakewood, California is a special case as
it was originally an area of orange groves, taken over by the aeronautics
industry and converted into a company town suburb for McDonald
Douglas, and eventually incorporated into the greater Los Angeles
Metropolis in 1954. See Joan Didion, "Trouble in Lakewood",
The New Yorker, (26 July 1993), pp.46-65
3] While it is true that the "paternalism" of
classic company towns, such as Pullman, came under criticism even
at the time the alternative social welfare models that replaced
the rigid paternalist company control have tended to be presented
as rational and benign in the more official literature.
4] These include the towns of Omidieh, Aqa Jari,
Haftkel, Naft-e Sefid, Gachsaran, Lali, Naft Shahr
5] Many large public industries and institutions
continue to build company towns where their employees reside. These
include the railroads, petrochemicals, ports (Mahshahr), fisheries,
aluminium, copper mines (Sarcheshmeh), Machine tools (Arak), agribusinesses
(Dezful, Haft-Tappeh, Shirin Shahr), Steel (Mobarakeh), etc.
6] Of course Iran was never a formal colony.
However, as I will attempt to demonstrate in the course of this
essay, I believe my use of a number of insightful theoretical contributions
of post-colonial theory are justified in the light of the near
hegemonic control that Britain had over Southern Iran, especially
in the first quarter of the 20th Century, and the subsequent influence
of the discursive and institutional practices of Anglo Iranian
Oil Company (AIPOC, renamed the Anglo Iranian Oil Company in 1935
(AIOC), and British Petroleum (BP) after 1954) on the technical
and bureaucratic elite of Iran, at the provincial and even national
levels.
7] Will Swearingen's analysis of the Moroccan
agriculture first under French Protectorate, and later under national
state direction shows this continuity in convincing detail. See
Will Swearingen, Moroccan Mirage:, Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions,
1912-1986 (Princeton, NJ, 1987). The independent post-colonial
state basically adopts the institutional, ideological, and practical
approaches of the Colonial government with regard to its relation
to the peasantry, landed elites, forms of property and property
relations, and the adoption of appropriate technology. The strength
of Swearingen's historical-geographic analysis lies in his acknowledging
the importance of the political shift of power to a national state,
while analyzing the important continuities. A national state elite
drives its legitimacy and survival from a very different set of
parameters and priorities than a colonial elite, being primarily
responsive to the demands and expectations of its domestic population,
rather than the metropole's. Nevertheless, there is a marked continuity
in how 'development' is conceptualized, a fact that has as much
to do with the rise and formation of modern professional elites
as with the formation and integration of a national economy into
a global capitalist system. Janet Abu-Lughod's classic study of
the process or urbanization in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial
urbanization in Morocco compliments Swearingen's, while it is also
more detailed and insightful about the material and political constraints
facing the post-independence state. See Janet Abu Lughod, Rabbat:
Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton, NJ, 1980)
Frederick Cooper throws light on this continuity
by taking the historian's approach to the concept of 'development'
itself. The 'development' concept posited that anyone, African
subjects included could formulate and implement economic improvement
and growth, given the right institutional structures and proper
education. As such it gradually replaced the racially based ideologies
that served to legitimize European rule and supremacy. Initially
formulated as a strategy to save the British and French African
colonies by making them both more productive as well as less restive
and costly, the universalist concept of 'development' eventually
served as an argument to let go of the colonies, while at the same
time it was adopted as a progressive and necessary strategy by
nationalist elites. See Frederick Cooper, "Modernizing Bureaucrats,
Backward Africans, and the Development Concept", in Frederick
Cooper and Randall Packard (eds), International Development and
the Social Sciences, Berkeley, CA, 1997), pp.64-92.
8] 'Social engineering' was a term much in vogue
in the pre-First World War era of scientific management, industrial
welfare, and liberal state. See Margaret Crawford, Building the
Workingman's Paradise (New York and London, 1995), chapter 3, pp.46-60,
and especially p.48. For further discussion see the introductory
chapter, pp. 1-10.
9] The question of whether the modern professional
intelligentsia, composed of technocrats, bureaucrats, and intellectuals
is a 'status group', as Max Weber maintained, or are a distinct
social class as Konrad and Szelenyi, and Alvin Gouldner among others
have argued, is a complex and much debated topic that I do not
wish to engage here because I find it to be a theoretical mine
field that needs to be approached with care and in some detail.
Marxists and 'Marxisant' intellectuals have also engaged this question
extensively, from Lenin theorizing the role of a professional revolutionary
vanguard acting through the party, through Gramsci's theory of
an organic intelligentsia forming a historic block with other classes
to counter the bourgeoisie's hegemony, through the later theories
of middling classes, some influenced by historical and empirical
experience, others by structuralism. See Max Weber, Economy and
Society, 2 vols (Berkeley, CA, 1978), II, pp.956-1005; George Konrad
and Ivan Szelenyi, Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New
York, 1979), and "Intellectuals and Domination in Post-Communist
Societies", in Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman (eds), Social
Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder, CO, 1991), pp. 337-72;
Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the
New Class (New York, 1979); Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (New
York, 1971); Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York,
1974); David Noble, America by Design (New York, 1977); Pat Walker
(ed), Between Labor and Capital (Boston, MA, 1979); James Weinstein,
Corporate Ideal in a Liberal State (Boston, MA, 1968); Nicos Poulantzas,
Political Power and Social Classes (London, 1973).
My own argument is rather eclectic. I find sociological
value in Gouldner's thesis of the intelligentsia as a unified,
albeit heterogeneous group. But I think it is important to base
the overall argument for the rise of a professional middle class/intelligentsia
in strong historical argument. Such historical evidence will show
since the early era of modern capitalism and nation-state formation
there has been an ever more pronounced trend toward the greater
professionalization of managerial skills in the larger sense of
overseeing the reproduction of society against various internal
threats, as well as its advancement (the strive for growth being
inherent in competitive capitalism). See Harold Perkin, The Rise
of Professional Society; England since1880 (New York and London,
1989). For the profession that primarily concerns our argument
here Benevolo traces the rise of the spatial planning profession,
as an activity that strives to modify and correct the nefarious
results of modernization and class struggle (between labor and
capital, as well as between competing capitalists) to the early
19th Century. This is the period when "circumstances had crystallized
sufficiently not only to cause the discomfort but also to provoke
the protest of the people involved". See Leonardo Benevolo,
The Origins of Modern Town Planning, (Cambridge, MA, 1967), p.32.
John Friedmann, Planning in the Public Sphere ( Princeton, NJ,
1987), pp.51-310; presents a range of various approaches planning
theory has adopted over the last two centuries. In addition to
historical evidence and theoretical arguments for considering the
emergence of a professional class I have also found great value
in linking changes in material historical conditions with shifts
in 'mentalities' and new discourse formations. Paul Rabinow's exploration
of the formation of modern social management disciplines and discourses
during the Third Republic in France also sheds light on how various
forms of scientific theories combine with explicitly political
practices, and become the means of drastic intervention and social
engineering aimed at modernizing populations, be it colonized Morocco,
or metropolitan France. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:
the Birth of the Prison (New York, 1977); Paul Rabinow, The French
Modern (Boston, MA, 1991).
10] APOC always maintained that it was a private
commercial company, with no explicit political ambitions, although
its scale, commercial dealings with the central government, and
the shear fact of it being the single largest private and foreign
industrial employer in the country inevitably made its presence
rather sensitive to the local and national society. This is the
general tone of the argument in the official history of the Company.
See Ronald Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company;
Volume 1 (Cambridge, 1982); and J.H. Bamberg, The History of the
British Petroleum Company; Volume 2 (Cambridge, 1994). The British
Government became the majority shareholder of the APOC in 1914.
This was a strategic move, as both the fledgling company was facing
financial difficulties in its early operations, and the British
Navy was speeding up its conversion to oil from coal during the
War. Despite substantial government ownership APOC continued to
be run as a private concern. Nevertheless, the claims of its political
impartiality are rather far fetched. For more balanced view see
Mostafa Elm, Oil, Power, and Principle (Syracuse, NY, 1992), and
L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics ( London,
1955). The strategic importance of oil to Britain and the Government's
relation to the industry and producing countries can be found in
Marian Kent, Oil and Empire (London, 1976); a study dealing primarily
with Iraq; S.H. Longrigg, Oil in the Middle East: Its discovery
and Development, 3rd edition (London, 1967); and Geoffrey Jones,
The State and the Emergence of British Oil Industry (London, 1981).
11] See Mostafa Elm, Oil, Power, and Principle
, and L.P. Elwell-Sutton Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics.
12] My intention here is not to equate the independent
national state with the colonial state, but rather to draw attention
to both striking continuities and similarities often found in their
style of rule and relation to the population, as well as the fundamental
imbalance of power between the local society and the central power.
These imbalances often can take the form of an internal colonial
relationship. For the discussion of this concept see Christian
Rogerson, "Internal Colonialism, Transnationalization, and
Spatial Inequality", South African Geographical Journal, 62:2
(1980), pp. 103-20; Stephen Williams, "Internal Colonialism,
Core Periphery Contrasts and Devolution: An Integrative Comment",
Area, 9:4 (1977), pp.272-79; John Lovering, The Theory of the 'Internal
Colony' and the Political Economy of Wales", Review of Radical
Political Economy, 10:3 (1978), pp. 57-67. Two classic studies
of the two oldest modern nation-states use the concept of internal
colonialism to describe the forceful integration of Britain and
France's rural and ethnic fringe and populations into the national
polity. See Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe
in British National Development, 1536-1966 (Berkeley, CA, 1975);
and Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of
Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, CA, 1976).
13] See Hossein Mahdavi, "the patterns
and problems of economic development in rentier states", in
M.A.Cook (ed), Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East
(London, 1970). The gist of Mahdavi's argument was that the relative
financial autonomy these states enjoy from their societies as a
result of their oil revenues also translates into a related political
autonomy of the state from society. Petroleum products are exported
abroad and the subsequent income comes from the world market. The
oil industry itself employs but a tiny segment of the labor force,
and consequently has negligible linkages of any kind to the other
integrated productive sectors of the national economy. Oil revenues,
like a rent, are directly transferred from the foreign purchaser
into the Treasury, and are then distributed according to the whims
and choices of the state.
The relationship of the state to society is fundamentally
distorted and uneven as a result of the origins of its financial
revenues and the special place it comes to occupy within the national
economy. According to this theory the relation between state and
society are 'normal' and 'natural' only when the source of state
income is direct taxation of the citizens' income. State revenue
in that case, would be generated from the produced wealth of the
nation itself, instead of being a 'rent' derived without significant
productive activity, but from monopoly ownership of a strategic
resource. This 'normal' relationship obligates the state to be
accountable to society and to citizens, as its role is merely the
redistribution of wealth resulting from social production. Echoing
de Tocqueville the argument goes on to argue that civil society
would democratically impose its own claims upon state expenditures
and investments through legislative and political institutions,
as they are a share of the collectively produced social wealth.
In contradistinction, in a rentier state, where
the state's financial revenues are not organically linked to national
productive economy, the state becomes the powerful, authoritarian
and paternalist distributor of seemingly windfall revenues without
being compelled to account for its decisions to society. Deprived
of an important economic aspect of its dialectical relationship
to the state, the society becomes fragmented into clientelist interest
groups, competing to obtain greater shares of the 'rent' distributed
by the state. The State, on the other hand, co-opts these groups
by selectively distributing resources among them, in exchange for
their political passivity and support. Rentier states, in other
words are inherently undemocratic, made of a passively apolitical
society and an authoritarian state.
14] Two of the most important re-assessments
of both the rentier state theory as well as oil-producing economies
and societies can be found in Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of
Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca,
NY, 1997); and Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Boom
sand Petro-States (Berkeley, CA, 1997).
15] For a discussion of Norway and its social
and geographic dealings with its oil industry see Jens Hansen, "Regional
Policy in an Oil Economy: The Case of Norway" Geoforum, 14
(1983), pp.353-61; and Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty:
Oil Boomsand Petro-States, pp. 213-21. Terry Karl argues that the
difference of Norway lies in the fact that nation-state formation
had taken place prior to the spectacular rise in oil revenues of
the late 20th Century.
16] Giacomo Lucciani probably goes further than
most in reducing the possibility of social change in societies
ruled by rentier states to the occurrence of a serious financial
crisis. Apparently his exclusive focus on Arab states allows him
to overlook the uncomfortable example of Iran. The 1979 Revolution
did occur simultaneously with high inflation, but this economic
crisis could not be taken as the cause, nor as the primary trigger
of the events that toppled the Monarchy. The continued economic
crisis of oil producing states has not brought about any political
challenges elsewhere in the Middle East, any more than it has in
other developing countries in the pattern than John Walton has
called "Bread Riots'. See Giacommo Lucciani, "Allocation
vs. Production States: A Theoretical Framework", in G. Lucciani
(ed.), The Arab State (Berkeley, CA, 1990), pp.65-84; and "The
Oil Rent, the Fiscal Crisis of the State and democratization",
in Ghassan Salame (ed.), Democracy Without Democrats? The Renewal
of Politics in the Muslim World (London, 1994), pp.130-55
Theda Skocpol in an attempt to test her comparative
theory of social revolutions to the Iranian case came to the conclusion
that it did not quite fit her model. She then used the 'rentier
state' theory to explain the dynamic of state and society relation
and further claims that 'traditional' Shi'a Islam had been able
to maintain an autonomous space away from the modernization and
the modernity that had otherwise transformed the Iranian society.
This marginalization and autonomy allowed this traditional Islam
to revolt against the Rentier State when the time came. Theda Skocpol,
Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge and New York,
1994), pp.240-58 (1982).
What is common to both these approaches is that the
motives leading to popular protest and revolt are not sought within
society itself, and all the contradictions and social protests,
including political Islam, that capitalist modernization stirs
up. Instead, the root causes of social crisis are found in ahistorical
or even external factors, such as an 'Islam' that has remained
unaffected and somehow 'pure' in spite of decades of profound social
change. Edward Said's work convincingly showed how Orientalism
tried to locate an unchanging essence in the Middle Eastern societies,
to explain their deviation from the norm, the norm being the capitalist
modernization as experienced in the Western world. See Edward Said,
Orientalism, (New York, 1979). It seems that many of the proponents
of the rentier state theory have merely 'secularized' the orientalist
discourse: instead of 'Islam' being the key cultural factor explaining
the essential un-modernity of the Middle East, an economic factor,
oil revenues, is advanced to prove the same point!
17] See Ronald Ferrier, "The Iranian Oil
Industry", in The Cambridge History of Iran, volume 7 (Cambridge,
1991), pp.639-704, 692; J.H. Bamberg, The History of the British
Petroleum Company; Volume 2 ; and Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship
and Development (London, 1978), p.177
18] Mohammad Sodagar, Roshd-e Ravabet-e Sarmayedari
dar Iran (n.p., n.d), p.322
19] Ebrahim Razaqi, Eqtesad-e Iran (Tehran,
1988), p.384
20] See Assef Bayat, Workers and Revolution
in Iran (London, 1987)
21] This was one of the first instances when
the working employees of a developing country succeeded in coordinating
independent decisions about running and managing an advanced and
strategic global industry. The complex political and psychological
impact of this experience comes across in Terisa Turner's "Iranian
Oil Workers in the 1978-79 Revolution", and in an oil worker's
first hand account of this historic strike both in Peter Nore and
Terisa Turner, Oil and Class Struggle (London,1980), pp. 272-302;
as well as in Assef Bayat's Workers and Revolution in Iran . However,
in the increasingly repressive aftermath of the Revolution, and
with the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war the persecution, emigration
or flight into exile of large numbers of technical personnel, added
to the extensive war damage and lack of proper capital investments
caused serious technical damage to oil facilities and wells. See
F.Fesharaki's "Iran's Petroleum Policy: How Does the Oil Industry
Function in Revolutionary Iran?", in Haleh Afshar (ed.), Iran,
A Revolution in Turmoil (Albany, NY,1985), pp.99-117, and Javad
Salehi-Esfahani's "The Oil Sector After the Revolution",
in Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad (eds.), Iran after the Revolution
(London, 1996), pp.150-74
22] In the period right before and some time
after the Revolution an interesting shift occurs in the published
studies and analyses of the oil industry in Iran. In the period
of political upheaval most of the research conducted or published
is focused on the political role of the oil workers, their organizations
and institutions, their various political affiliations, and their
relations to existing and competing political forces outside their
own group. The work of Ervand Abrahimian, Fred Halliday, Mansoor
Moaddell, Assef Bayat, and Farhad Khosrokhavar (although the latter's
work is about machining workers in Hamedan) fall into this category.
In the period after the Revolution gradually this focus on social
agency disappears and is replaced with purely economic and functionalist
studies of the oil 'sector'. I do not know of any accounts or analysis
of social actors, or of the social and political relations of production
within the oil industry in the period after early 1980's.
23] See Ferrier, The History of the British
Petroleum Company; Volume 1; Ludwig W. Adamec, Historical Gazeteer
of Iran; Volume 3: Abadan and Southwestern Iran (Graz, 1989); and
Mostafa Ansari, "History of Khuzistan, 1878-1925, A study
in Provincial Autonomy and Change" (PhD, University of Chicago,
1976)
24] See Ian Seccombe and Richard Lawless, Work
Camps and Company Towns: Settlement Patterns and the Gulf Oil Industry
(Durham, 1987), and "The Impact of Oil Industry on Urbanization
in the Persian Gulf Region", in H. Amirahmadi and S. el Shakhs
(eds.), Urban Development in the Muslim World (Rutgers, NJ, 1993),
pp.183-212; Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton,1982);
and L.P. Elwell-Sutton Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics.
25] The Main sources I have relied on for understanding
the comparative aspects of the company town experience in the West,
and how the practice of designing industrial towns took shape,
evolved, and was replicated in various locations are John Garner
(ed.), The Company Town ( New York, 1992); and John Garner, The
Model Company Town; Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman's
Paradise; James Allen, The Company Town in the American West (Norman,
OK,1966); ManuelCastells, The City and Grassroots (Berkeley, CA,1983),
Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power (Berkeley, CA, 1991), Peter Hall,
Cities of Tomorrow, (London,1985); Anthony Sutcliffe, The Rise
of Modern Urban Planning (New York, 1981); Gwendolyn Wright, Building
the Dream (Boston, MA, 1981)
26] See Michel Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist
Regulation (London, 1979); especially chapter 3 (pp.151-213). This
is of course the period that Fordism takes shape. One of the criticisms
leveled against regulationist school is that its view of fundamental
shifts in modes of regulation and regimes of accumulation overlooks
the basic unity and continuity of capitalist relations of production.
Capitalism has displayed the ability to adjust to successive crises
it generates, while remaining fundamentally the same. Furthermore,
capitalism's flexibility allows the survival and continuity of
various modes and relations of production within the same social
formation, as long as they are subjected to the market's hegemony.
This criticism notwithstanding, I think the period beginning at
the last quarter of the 19th Century and ending with the Second
World War does mark a fundamental historic watershed. For a brilliant
summary see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire (New York, 1987).
In the case of Khuzestan this is a period when the modern nation
state is formed in Iran, marking a definite historic break within
national and provincial history.
27] Urban conditions in 19th century industrial
cities are the topic of Frederick Engels, The Condition of the
Working Class in England (Chicago, IL, 1984) classic study of Manchester.
The fear of threatening urban crowds and the rising movement for
reform is brilliantly discussed in the case of London by Gareth
Stedman-Jones, Outcast London (New York,1984). For comparative
looks at France, Germany, and US in this period see Michelle Perrot
(ed.), A History of Private Life; Volume 4: From the Fires of Revolution
to the Great War (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1990); Hall, Cities
of Tomorrow; Sutcliffe, Towrads the Planned City; John Burnett,
A Social History of Housing; 1815-1985, 2nd edition (London, 1986),
Wright, Building the Dream; Rabinow, The French Modern; and Benevollo,
Origins of Modern Town Planning. Colonial cities at the same period
were being used as laboratories of social engineering, and their
destiny cannot be seen as separate from Metropolitan experience.
See Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial
Urbanism (Chicago, 1991); Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and
Colonial Confrontations (Berkeley, CA, 1997); Mariam Dossal, Imperial
Designs and Indian Realities (Delhi etc., 1991); Anthony King,
Colonial Urban Development (London, 1976). Dolores Hayden, The
Grand Domestic Revolution (Boston, MA, 1981), a brilliant classic,
discusses the repercussions of these social changes and the reformist
movement on gender relations and on domestic space.
28] See Crawford, Building the Workingman's
Paradise; Garner, The Model Company Town; and Wright, Building
the Dream. The idea of welfare was by no means limited to company
towns, but a cornerstone of the rising social reform movement that
affected the types of social responsibility for general welfare
that the state was willing to undertake. This led to a massive
expansion of the state sector in the major western nation states.
See Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power; Volume 2 (Cambridge
etc., 1993), p.363; for a sense of the scale of the expansion of
the bureaucracy and state functionaries in these five decades.
The theories and practical experiences of the so-called Utopian
Socialists of the early 19th Century was an important influence
on the reformers of the last years of the Century. In retrospect
Marx and Engels' critique of these early reformers as 'utopian'
seems justified. Owen, St Simon, Fourrier, or their followers had
used the vast expanses of North America for creating experimental
communities of the future. However, after the end of the American
Civil War the conquest of the rest of this continent by immigrants
and Eastern States' industrial capital begins in earnest and none
of these communities manage to survive the wave that eventually
integrates the national space and population. See Carl Guarneri,
The Utopian Alternative, (Ithaca, 1991). This was even the case
for very isolationist religious communities, such as the Mormons,
as argued by Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire (New York and Oxford,
1985), pp.74-82. Despite the disappearance of socialist urban experiences
many of their mottoes and practices, such as the ethos of hard
and collective work, the primacy of collective over the personal
interest, and the collective right to equality and welfare, reappeared
in the praxis and discourse of social reformers and especially
urban planners of the turn of the century, such as Geodes, Ebenezer
Howard, Lyautey, etc. On this connection see especially Roger-Henri
Guerrand "Private Spaces", in Perrot, A History of Private
Life, pp.359-450; Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution; Robert
Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA,
1981); Hall, Cities of Tomorrow; and Benevollo, Origins of Modern
Town Planning.
29] See footnote 9, above.
30] On this point see Çelik, Urban Forms
and Colonial Confrontations; Wright, The Politics of Design; and
Rabinow, The French Modern.
31] See Institut D'Etudes et de Recherches Sociales
(IERS), "Abadan : Morphologie et Fonction du Tissu Urbain",
Revue Geographique de L'Est, No. 4 (1964), pp.337-86, and " Abadan
: Tissu Urbain, Attitudes et Valeurs", Revue Geographique
de L'Est, No.3/4(1969), pp.361-78. The team that conducted these
brilliant and insightful studies comprised of Paul Vieille, Abolhassan
Banisadr, later the first elected president of the Islamic Republic
who had to escape into exile in 1982, and Zafardokht Ardalan. See
also Seccombe and Lawless, Work Camps and Company Towns, and "The
Impact of Oil Industry on Urbanization; Bamberg, History of the
British Petroleum Company, volume 2; Ferrier, History of the British
Petroleum Company, volume 1; and Xavier de Planhol, "Abadan",
in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.), Encyclopedia Iranica, (Los Angeles, 1990).
I came across Mark Crinson, "Abadan: Planning and Architecture
Under Anglo-Iranian Oil Company", Planning Perspectives, 12
(1997), pp.341-59; only very recently. His research and conclusions
parallel many aspects of my own, primarily because he is the first
to systematically use the BP archives for his research. On Masjed
Soleyman see the excellent essay by Kamal Athari, "Masjed
Soleyman; sherkat-shahri madaniat-yafteh", Ettelaat-e Siasi
Eqtesadi, No.47/48 (1991), pp. 65-69. There is in addition Danesh
Abbasi Shahni, Tarikh-e Masjed-Soleyman (Tehran,1995); a local
history of Masjed Soleyman, substantial parts of which are quotations
without reference to works of others, including the aforementioned
article by Kamal Athari.
32] On Khuzestan in this period see Ahmad Kasravi,
Tarikh-e Pansad-Saleh Khuzestan (Tehran, 1934), and Zendegani-ye
Man (Tehran, 1946); Ansari, History of Khuzistan; Adamec, Historical
Gazeteer of Iran; Arnold Wilson, Southwest Persia: A Political
Officer's Diary, 1907-14 (London, 1941); and Sir Henry Layard,
Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylon (London, 1971(1894))
33] For more detailed information about travel
time and distances see Haj Abdolghaffar Najmel Molk, Safarname-ye
Khuzestan (Tehran,1984 (circa 1872) ; Charles Issawi, The Economic
History of Iran, 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1971); Ahmad Kasravi, Zendegani-ye
Man ; Abrahimian, Iran Between Two Revolutions.
34] See William Strunk, "Britain, Persia,
and Shaykh Khaz'al: The Genesis of a Special Relationship",
in Roger Olson (ed.), Islamic and Middle Eastern Societies, (Brattleborough,
VT, 1987), pp.152-71; Ansari, History of Khuzistan; Wilson, Southwest
Persia; George Lenckowski, "Foreign Powers' Intervention in
Iran During World War One", in C. Bosworth and C. Hillenbrandt
(eds), Qajar Iran (Edinburgh, 1983), pp.76-92.
35] On the critical importance of time discipline
and temporal coordination in the modern social life under capitalism
see especially Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (London, 1976); and
the seminal essay by E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work Discipline,
and Industrial Capitalism", in his Customs in Common (New
York, 1993 (1967)), pp.352-403. Nigel Thrift, Spatial Formations
(London etc.,1996), pp.169-212, questions Thompson's main point
that modern time discipline is inherently linked to industrialization,
without convincingly overturning Thompson's main argument about
the fundamental modernity of the new time discipline and its links
with capitalism. This point is also demonstrated from a non-marxist
perspective by Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918
(Cambridge, MA, 1983). Without the establishment of unified and
standard units of time the complex, modern, and highly coordinated
social life is impossible. Georg Simmel made the brilliant point
in his essay on "The Metropolis and Mental Life", in
Philip Kasinitz (ed.), Metropolis; Center and Symbol of our Times
(New York, 1995 (1903)), pp. 30-45. Practically all interconnected
aspects of modern life, from traffic lights to the simultaneous
appearance of all employees at their work place every day, need
to be subjected to the global central hegemony of the Greenwich
Mean Time. This does not mean that resistance to the time regime,
or competition by alternative time disciplines (the religious time
of Muslim rituals, for example) is not exercised.
36] Wilson, Southwest Persia, p.140.
37] Shahni, Tarikh-e Masjed-Soleyman.
38] The close connection between modernity and
the transformation not only of material conditions, social imaginaires
and discourses, but also of individual bodies and souls, is the
subject of the work of Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
39] Company towns are tremendously costly affairs
to build and maintain. See Crawford, Building the Workingman's
Paradise. Information is rarely available on the topic, but Kamal
Athari, Masjed-Soleyman, p. 65-66, presents one of the rare balance
sheets on the topic: The copper mine company town of Sar Cheshmeh
in the central province of Kerman was built for 2500 households,
with a total population of 12,000 at the cost of 160 billion Rials
(in 1991 Rials). This figure exceeds the total state development
budget for the entire housing sector during the 1989-1993 five-year
plan (15.6 billion Rials), or the urban development budget for
the same period (101 billion Rials), or the public mining sector
(121.7 billion Rials).
40] On New Delhi see King, Colonial Urban Development;
Robert Grant Irving, Indian Summer (New Haven, CT, 1981); and Thomas
Metcalf, An Imperial Vision (Berkeley, CA, 1989). On Bombay see
Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities. LawrenceVale, Architecture,
Power, and National Identity (New Haven, CT, 1992); offers an important
comparative perspective by showing how the production of planned
symbolic space in various capital cities is connected to the self-perception
of nation states and their ruling political elites.
41] See Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial
Confrontations; Wright, Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism;
and Rabinow, The French Modern.
42] A classic instance is Worcester Massachusetts.
According to Margaret Crawford this is the first 'modern' (Post
paternalist) company town in the U.S., built by the Norton Company
after the fiasco of the Pullman strike. Norton Co. attempted to
create a layer of dependable skilled laborers who would consider
themselves 'middle class' through home ownership. What Crawford's
otherwise excellent account misses is the geographic isolation
of the city. Although the third largest city in Massachusetts and
located between Springfield and Boston, Worcester is not directly
placed on any major road or highway linking these other major cities.
At the time, the relative isolation of this industrial city was
a deliberate act on the part of its corporate elites and political
leaders. My gratitude to the late Professor Romeo Moruzzi for this
information. On Worcester's historic geography and the politics
of gender and industrial organization see Susan Hanson and Geraldine
Pratt, Gender, Work, and Space (London and New York, 1995). Geographic
location in isolated population centers is today, as much as before,
a key strategic ploy of capitalist corporations in the U.S. See
John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes; The Political Economy
of Place (Berkeley, CA, 1987); and Brian Palmer, Goodyear Invades
the Backcountry (New York, 1994).
43] I have taken the expression 'dual city'
from Janet Abu-Lughod, Urban Apartheid, a classic study of the
politics of place in colonial and post-colonial Rabbat. Although
I think Peter Marcuse's criticism of the concept as too reductive
is well taken but I think the particular case of these company
towns, under foreign ownership and management, with a population
seen as either homogeneously 'native' or 'European' warrants the
use of the term. See Peter Marcuse, "Dual City: A Muddy Metaphor
for a Quartered City", International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research, 13 (1989), pp.697-708
44] This pattern has been practiced in both
colonial settings as well as in company towns in the West. Boleslaw
Domanski, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (Westport,
CT, 1997) shows that this practice is equally applied in 'socialist'
company towns. On the importance of creating distinctions in modern
class society see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge and London,
1984).
45] Obviously not even all skilled personnel
or staff, let alone the tens of thousands of unskilled workers
had access to Company housing or services. Housing crisis and shortages
of amenities and services long remained a major concern of the
Company as well as the Municipality, as well as a bone of contention
between them and between the Company and the Central Government.
The rapid and substantial growth of the informal sections of Abadan
and Masjed Soleyman were the result of these shortages, and the
only practical solution for it as far as the Company was concerned.
Nevertheless, the 'ideal type' company house and services as a
realistic and achievable goal was used as an important motivation
to encourage both worker and employee loyalty as well as to stir
up competition among the employees and workers.
46] See Pierre Bourdieu, Le Sens Pratique, (Paris,1980);
and Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley, CA,1988)
47] de Planhol, Abadan.
48] As Zeynep Çelik shows in the case
of Algiers, French architects and planners working toward re-organizing
the city's space and providing housing for the population also
claimed to respect local architecture and cultural values, especially
with regard to private space, while in fact a major unrecognized
aspect of their work was to modernize the urban population and
to dominate them. See Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations.
49] On the key role of the family under capitalism
and in modern society see Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families
(Baltimore, MD, 1979): and David Harvey, Limits to Capital (Chicago,1982).
On the key role of regulating family space as a strategy to integrate
the family into market sphere see Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the
American Dream (New York, 1984), and The Grand Domestic Revolution;
and Perrot, A History of Private Life.
50] Extended family can include several generations
and several brothers. In Khuzestan the historic pattern of domestic
space for this type of household has been several rooms built around
a central courtyard. This flexible model allows new couples to
move into a separate room, or to build a new room, space permitting.
The domestic architecture of company towns, build for nuclear families,
consists of one or several rooms, all built under the same roof.
This lack of spatial flexibility implies that only the parents
and children (of limited numbers) can occupy the house. See Kaveh
Ehsani and Mohammad Reza Pourparviz, "Revolution and War in
Ramhormoz: Evaluation of an experience", Goft-o-Gu, No.25
(1999), pp. 95-120; and Grace Goodell, Elementary Structures of
Political Life (Oxford and New York, 1986).
51] For the case Sugar cane plantation in Haft
Tappeh see Ministry of Agriculture,Tarhe eskane karkonane vahedha-ye
haftgane-ye tarhe tose'e-ye neyshekar va snaye-e janebi, (Tehran,
1990). On Dezful's agribusiness towns see Goodell, Elementary Structures
of Political Life. On planned industrial townships in Iran see
Azam Khatam "Molahezat-e Ejtema-yi dar Makan-yabi va Ehdas-e
Shahrha-ye San'ati", Ettelaat Siasi-Eqtesadi, No.53/54 (1992),
pp.59-60. Khatam's research is based on fieldwork and interviews
with many residents of several company towns in Khuzestan, Arak,
and Isfahan. See also J.Varesi, Ministry of Housing and Urbanism,
Do negaresh be sakht-e do no-shahr dar shahrha-ye jadid-e Iran",
(Tehran, 1994).
52] On the historical morphology of cities on
the Iranian Plateau see Massoud Kheirabadi, Iranian Cities (Austin,
1991); and Michael Bonine, 1980. Yazd and its Hinterland, Marburger
Geographische Schriften, Heft 83 (1980), and "Morphogenesis
of Iranian Cities", Annals of Association of American Geographers,
69 (1979), pp.208-24
53] See (IERS), Abadan : Morphologie et Fonction
du Tissu Urbain, and Abadan : Tissu Urbain, Attitudes et Valeurs.
54] Shahni, , Tarikh-e Masjed-Soleyman, pp.349-50)
55] I follow Jane Jacobs' notion of public space
here, as collective space owned neither privately, nor by the state.
The importance of public space lies in the fact that it equally
'belongs' to all citizens, regardless of social distinctions of
class, race, or gender, who can use and be present within it simultaneously.
Public space can provide the physical arena for practical experience
of common urban identity, itself the basis of collective citizenship.
As such, public space is an integral part of 'civil society'. See
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York,
1961).
The public space in Khuzestan's company towns cannot be considered
as genuinely 'public', as they were owned and controlled by the
Company. If urban life in these towns broke out of the rigid straightjacket
of company control it was due to the formation of autonomous and
truly public spaces within the informal sectors of the city. On
the subversive power of un-incorporated spaces and populations
see the brilliant essay by Frederick Cooper, "Urban Space,
Industrial Time, and Wage Labor in Africa", in Frederick Cooper
(ed.), Struggle for the City (Beverly Hills, CA, 1983), pp.1-50.
56] Kamal Athari, Masjed-Soleyman, p.67
57] ibid.
58] Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad, Le
Deracinement (Paris, 1964). For example, Berbers managed to maintain
their ties to their places of origin, even when working as migrant
workers in France. These ties allowed them to create stronger solidarity
and support networks in France itself, which gave them a better
standard of living, better pay, and more security. Asghar Karimi
and Jean Pierre Digard make a similar argument for Bakhtiari nomads
in Iran, when the central state was forcefully trying to settle
the tribes in the 1930's. See their "Les Baxtyari sous influence
Occidental; Acculturation et Déculturation", in Yann
Richard (ed.), Entre L'Iran et L'Occident; Adaptation et assimilation
des idées et téchniques occidental en Iran (Paris,
1989), pp. 105-16.
59] Goodell, Elementary Structures of Political
Life.
60] See Kaveh Ehsani, . "Bohran-e Ab, Bohran-e
Abadan", Goft-o-Gu, no.27 (2000), pp.162-72.
61] Shahni, Tarikh-e Masjed-Soleyman, p.345.
62] "Special Section: The Future Without
Oil: Today's Masjed Soleyman [is] Tomorrow's Iran Without Oil",
Iran-e Farda, No.50 (1999). It seems that both positions adopted
by this important political journal (now banned) about an economy
without oil being the ideal solution for correcting the distortions
of rentier state, as well as a fearsome threat and specter of a
poverty stricken future are rather exaggerated.
63] Bernard Hourcade and Farhad Khosrokhavar, "L'Habitat
Revolutionnaire: Téheran 1979-1981", Hérodote,
No.31 (1983), pp.62-83; Asef Bayat, Street Politics (Cairo and
New York, 1998) are among the most insightful studies of urban
change in post-revolution Iran. For a detailed study of the revolution
and war-related transformations at a local provincial level in
Khuzestan see Ehsani and Pourparviz, Ramhormuz in revolution and
war.
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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. *
*
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