Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike

Cronin, Stephanie

doi:10.1080/00263206.2010.504555

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…By 1927, some 10,000 workers were employed in the refinery area. 72 This rapid and unchecked growth only served to exacerbate tensions between the company and its employees, as well as between the Iranian and Indian workers. As the Iranian workforce grew in numbers, they began to dominate the demonstrations and even established a union.…”

Section: The Oil City Of Abadanmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This sentiment or, as Stephanie Cronin calls it, a "nationalist subaltern discourse" allowed the workers to place their hardships "within a framework conditioned by concepts of natural justice, of the duties of a benevolent ruler, and a sense of national community, and, in particular, utilized heavily gendered concepts of honor and shame." 79 For example, the oil company's maltreatment of its workforce was likened to the violation of Iran by the British Empire. 80 …”

Section: The Oil City Of Abadanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Urban area and hinterland: The case of Abadan (1910–1946)

Zagagi

2016

The Journal of the Middle East and Africa

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On the eve of July 14, 1946, an unprecedented violent outburst erupted in the oil city of Abadan in southwestern Iran between local Arab tribesmen, members of the recently founded "Arab Tribal Union," and members of the formidable Tudeh-affiliated union, the Council of Federated Trade Unions of Iranian Workers and Toilers. Although seemingly the result of recent happenings, this incident was, in fact, the culmination of several processes which had originated at the turn of the twentieth century in Iran and particularly in Abadan. What were the causes of tension and rivalry between these two unions? Why were Arab tribesmen, the majority of whom lived in Abadan's hinterland, organized in a trade union? How did Arab sheikhs come to be union leaders? What were the relations between the city and its hinterland and what influences did the oil industry and the Iranian authorities have on the urban and tribal communities? These are the main questions this article tries to address.

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Section: The Oil City Of Abadanmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: The Oil City Of Abadanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban area and hinterland: The case of Abadan (1910–1946)

Zagagi

2016

The Journal of the Middle East and Africa

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“…Its racially segmented wage system and segregated housing policies were only changed as a result of the collective resistance of outraged Saudi and Italian workers in the late 1940s and 1950s, who appropriated the American suburb as a new symbol of Saudi modernity (Vitalis, 2009;Seccombe, 2010). In Abadan, labor protests in the 1920s led to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's management viewing 'the bazaar' and 'town' as threatening and unruly, and hence to the commissioning of a new plan for streets and housing for the emergent local working class (Ehsani, 2003: 371;Cronin, 2010). Meanwhile, in port cities, especially Kuwait, Manama and Dubai, merchants repeatedly mobilized to call for councils and legislative bodies to monitor the expanding budgets of royal families and to regulate spending on public projects such as roads (Tétreault, 2000;Davidson, 2007;Fuccaro, 2009).…”

Section: Uneven Urbanism Across the Longue Duréementioning

confidence: 99%

The Forever Frontier of Urbanism: Historicizing Persian Gulf Cities

Boodrookas¹,

Keshavarzian²

2018

Int J Urban Regional Res

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In recent years, Persian Gulf cities have become symbols of the most spectacular forms of the ‘globalization of urbanization’. Current scholarship has sought to situate these cities in transnational processes and linkages with conceptualizations of ‘the global city’ and the mechanisms of ‘worlding’. This article builds on but moves beyond this line of analysis by turning to the histories of this region and its built environment to explore the longue‐durée influence of capital and empire operating across multiple scales. From this perspective, the glittering high‐rises and manmade islands are contemporary manifestations of a century of urban forms and logics of social control emanating from company towns, the struggles of state building, and the circulation and fixing of capital. To grasp how the Persian Gulf region has been remade as a frontier for accumulation, the analysis in this article blurs the boundaries between metropole and periphery, reconceptualizing the region not as an eclectic sideshow, but as a central site for global shifts in urbanism, capitalism and architecture in the twentieth century.

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“…The mass oil strikes of 1978-79 were not unprecedented in Iranian history. The first general strike in Iran took place in Abadan in 1929, proclaiming the arrival of the working class as a new political actor and the potency of a new form of protest, the industrial strike (Cronin, 2010). This potency was displayed again during the strikes of 1946, 1949, and 1951-53.…”

Section: Oil Strikes: Fueling the Revolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linkages of oil and politics: oil strikes and dual power in the Iranian revolution

Jafari

2018

Labor History

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Looking at the oil strikes during the Iranian revolution , this article challenges dominant narratives of the relationship between oil and politics and the processes that shaped the outcome of the revolution. The main arguments of the article are developed in a critical dialogue with Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy. Firstly, the article argues that the scale of the oil strikes and their central role in the creation of organs of revolutionary power call into question the generalization about the material characteristics of oil that supposedly prevented mobilization. Secondly, the article argues that the fact that oil workers were able to organize mass strikes, but failed to create an independent organization, calls for an explanatory approach that combines material factors with the role of consciousness, ideology and organization. This leads to a rereading of the Iranian revolution that highlights the essential role of the oil strikes in the emergence of dual power in early 1979, and the contingency of their outcome. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike

Cited by 8 publications

References 6 publications

Urban area and hinterland: The case of Abadan (1910–1946)

Urban area and hinterland: The case of Abadan (1910–1946)

The Forever Frontier of Urbanism: Historicizing Persian Gulf Cities

Linkages of oil and politics: oil strikes and dual power in the Iranian revolution

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