عنوان

The refractory transformation :

Number

TLets496777

Title Proper

The refractory transformation :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Matin, Kamran

Title Proper by Another Author

the international relations of the Iranian Revolution

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2009

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2009

Text of Note

The academic discipline of International Relations (IR) remains largely distinguished by its paradigmatic self-definition contra sociological studies. Historical sociological approaches within IR have challenged this disciplinary insularity through highlighting the social determination of the historical modalities of international relations. Yet they generally remain uncritical of social theory's own tendency to de-conceptualise 'the international' as contingent. The present thesis is largely addressed to this theoretical omission. It argues that 'the international' is heavily constitutive of 'the social'. It empirically substantiatest his claim through a reinterpretation of the Iranian Revolution critically drawing on Leon Trotsky's theory of 'uneven and combined development' (U&CD). The thesis proceeds via a series of critical engagements with the sociological categories through which Iran's political history has traditionally been analysed. These include 'Asiatic mode of production', 'bourgeois revolution', 'Bonapartism', nationalism', 'rentier state' and 'political Islam'. In each case it is shown that the 'internalist' constitution of the category in question a priori omits an 'external' co/over-determination of the specific aspect or conjuncture concerned. The causality of this under-theorised international dimension is concretely manifest in the various hybrid patterns of development whose contradictions ultimately fuelled the socio-historical dynamics culminating in the 1979 revolution. The thesis therefore demonstrates that international relations have reached more deeply into the historical production of the revolution than the explicit record of Iran's foreign relations, the main focus of the conventional accounts, would suggest.

Matin, Kamran

University of Sussex

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y