This thesis retrieves theworking and everyday life experiences of oil workers in 1973-83, and explorestheir cultural, religious and political ideas and activities during the socialtransformations... Show moreThis thesis retrieves theworking and everyday life experiences of oil workers in 1973-83, and explorestheir cultural, religious and political ideas and activities during the socialtransformations of this period that ends with the the Iranian Revolution andthe Iran-Iraq War. It analyses the historical process of class formation in theIranian oil industry and argues that a number of developments such as theexpansion of the oil industry, internal migration and the changing ideologicallandscape of the 1960s re-formed the working class in the oil industry indramatic ways, which helps to understand the mass participation of oil workersin the revolution.Looking at the oil strikes, the thesis argues that they played not only acrucial role in the downfall of the monarchy but that they also made anessential contribution to the emergence of the institutions that underpinnedthe post-revolutionary state, which in turn was challenged by the oil workersshowras (councils) in 1979-82. It is argued that although the showras wereideologically diverse and had a great democratic potential, they wereeventually repressed and integrated into the corporatist arrangements of thepopulist post-revolutionary state that consolidated its power after the startof the Iran-Iraq War. Show less
Oil is mostly seen as a natural resource and not as a commodity, the production of which involves organisation of social relations of production. This study maps this tightly woven relations... Show moreOil is mostly seen as a natural resource and not as a commodity, the production of which involves organisation of social relations of production. This study maps this tightly woven relations between the workers, the oil company(ies) and the state in the Iranian oil industry focusing on the period between 1951 and 1973, when the management of oil was completely transferred to the National Iranian Oil Company. Through an archival study, the 1951 nationalisation of oil, the organization of labour relations in the industry, the working and living conditions of the workers, and labour activism in the period is scrutinized. The various social class positions oil employees occupied and the specific relation the industry had with the state and thus embeddedness of the economy in social relations is discussed. Show less
The formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century is studied as a tangled global-local social history. The analysis seeks to... Show moreThe formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century is studied as a tangled global-local social history. The analysis seeks to situate the oil complex in Iran within the interlinked contexts of the global transformations of World War One, the social and political-economic tumults of the interwar period, the changing geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and Anglo Iranian relations, the consequences of the 1921 coup d’état in Iran, the local transformations of the oil rich province of Khuzestan, and the urban histories of the oil mining town of Masjed Soleyman and especially the refinery and port city of Abadan. As petroleum was becoming the primary raw material of Fordism and the second industrial revolution the accumulation of capital in oil required the dismantling of existing social structures and the reassembly of resources, technical expertise, and populations in modern built environments designed for oil capitalism. The urban social history of these oil cities shed light on the contentious processes that led to the making of an industrial oil working class, as well as the formation of modern state institutions in Iran, and the Anglo Persian Oil Company Show less