Reasons to Revolt: Iranian Oil Workers in the 1970s

2013 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 195-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peyman Jafari

AbstractOil workers played a pivotal role during the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979. Involving tens of thousands of workers, oil strikes paralyzed the state and paved the way for the Shah's downfall. Various accounts of these strikes, however, ignore the subjectivity and agency of the oil workers by focusing exclusively on the role of political agitation. Addressing this deficit, this article explores the oil workers' experiences in and out of the workplace in the 1970s in order to contextualize their participation in the revolution. After analyzing the oil strikes and their goals, the article makes two arguments: First, oil workers were conscious of the considerable power they had to disrupt the economic and political routine of the country. Second, the demands of the oil strikes reflected grievances that, while reflecting sentiments in the wider society, were embedded in their own specific conditions and experiences.

2021 ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Orlin Zagorov

This article is the author's reflections on the problems of humanism, morality, and traditional culture in connection with the concept of a Moral State put forward by Professor S.N. Baburin. The role of the spirituality of the Slavic peoples and their contribution to the strengthening of European cultural identity is considered. The author argues the importance of the conclusion that the virtue of the state as its internal quality in itself turns the state into a guarantor of virtue as a universal value and the validity of the thesis that the values of both Orthodox Christianity and Slavic spirituality represent a solid foundation of a Moral State. The author sees in the Moral State a mechanism for the harmonious combination of the spirit of the revolution with the revolution of the spirit.


Author(s):  
Jaime Rodríguez Matos

This chapter examines the role of Christianity in the work of José Lezama Lima as it relates to his engagement with Revolutionary politics. The chapter shows the multiple temporalities that the State wields, and contrasts this thinking on temporality with the Christian apocalyptic vision held by Lezama. The chapter is concerned with highlighting the manner in which Lezama unworks Christianity from within. Yet its aim is not to prove yet again that there is a Christian matrix at the heart of modern revolutionary politics. Rather, it shows the way in which the mixed temporalities of the Revolution, already a deconstruction of the idea of the One, still poses a challenge for contemporary radical thought: how to think through the idea that political change is possible precisely because no politics is absolutely grounded. That Lezama illuminates the difficult question of the lack of political foundations from within the Christian matrix indicates that the problem at hand cannot be reduced to an ever more elusive and radical purge of the theological from the political.


Author(s):  
Sahar Khamis

This chapter analyzes the role of new media, especially Internet-based communication, in accelerating the process of political transformation and democratization in Egypt. It analyzes the Egyptian media landscape before, during and after the 2011 revolution which toppled the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. In the pre-revolutionary phase, the eclectic and paradoxical political and communication landscapes in Egypt, and the role that new media played in paving the way for the revolution, is discussed. During the 2011 revolution, the role of new media, especially social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, is highlighted in terms of the multiple roles they play as catalysts for change, avenues for civic engagement, and platforms for citizen journalism. In the post-revolutionary phase, the multiple changes and challenges exhibiting themselves after the revolution are analyzed, especially the divisiveness between different players in the Egyptian political arena and how it is reflected in the communication landscape.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-246
Author(s):  
Holly Snape

This paper draws on empirical research undertaken in mainland China spanning five years to examine the role of a quiet, incremental, and holistic approach adopted by grassroots ngos as they attempt to carve out greater governance and service provision roles for themselves and influence the state. In light of this approach, it also questions the way we conceptualize the autonomy of ngos and the search for contestation between ngos and the state which clouds our view of more subtle yet powerful interaction. It goes on to suggest that by adjusting the lens through which we interpret the transformation of the state-society relationship, we may be able to form a clearer understanding of the wave-like development of civil society in China as the space for social organizing expands and contracts on an upward trajectory.


Early China ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 113-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rakita Goldin

This article discusses the several previously unknown Confucian texts discovered in 1993 in a Warring States tomb at Guodian, near Jingmen, Hubei Province. I believe that these works should be understood as doctrinal material deriving from a single tradition of Confucianism and datable to around 300 B.C. Of the surviving literature from the same period, they are closer to the Xunzi than to any other text, and anticipate several characteristic themes in Xunzi's philosophy. These are: the notion of human nature (xing 性),and the controversy over whether the source of morality is internar or “external”; the role of learning (xue 學)and habitual practice (xi 習) in moral development; the content and origin of ritual (li 禮), by which human beings accord with the Way; the conception of the ruler as the mind (xin 心) of the state; and the psychological utility of music (yue 樂) in inculcating proper values.It is especially important for scholars to take note of these connections with Xunzi, in view of the emerging trend to associate the Guodian manuscripts with Zisi, the famous grandson of Confucius, whom Xunzi bitterly criticized.


Author(s):  
Orlando Coutinho ◽  
◽  

The way in which an unknown virus has moved from a local to a global case, taking on a pandemic outline, has caused significant changes in the lives of all human beings. Firstly, for that reason, it is unknown, then because behind the ignorance comes mistrust and fear. Nowadays, these ingredients are - in the political-social space - substance for the biggest factors of action and decision of the actors of the power. Have we been in a war context, as some have said? Was confinement, global and so prolonged, really necessary? Was decreeing a state of emergency essential? Were the exception measures proportional? And are they reversible? This article aims, in the way of the ideas of several authors that thinking about the political philosophical role of health contexts, of exception state, and of political control of the State, in face of public health issues and not only, understand the “state of the art” in the way of governing western democracies, in the firstly, but flying over other geographies and systems as the virus has assumed global contours. And, by means of the concrete measures, politically adopted, by the different political actors, what real impacts they had on the life and the institutions working, and on the psychology of the persons individually or socially considered.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Svetlana Khubulova

Abstract. The article is devoted to the problem of the state of theatre life in the Terek region in 1917-1920, which is little studied in the regional historiography. The author introduces into the scientific circulation a corpus of new archival documents, which makes it possible to reconstruct the main activities of local theaters, to consider the influence of Moscow touring groups on the theatrical repertoire and audience preferences in the Terek region. The author dwelled on the difficulties experienced by theater companies in the difficult conditions of the revolution, the Civil War and the post-war devastation. The analysis of the documents allowed us to identify new forms of theatrical art, including workers, amateur and national theatrical societies, which fit well into the concept of educating the “new” Soviet person. In the conditions of the most fierce ideological battles, theaters were given the task of introducing the broad masses to art, who had previously been far from it and preferred simpler forms of leisure. In this regard, the repertoire of theaters was represented not only by classical works but also by revolutionary plays of mediocre quality. By trial and error, the theater acquired a new repertoire in a new environment, a spectator who was to educate and instill a good taste for highly artistic theatrical productions. The role of M. Bulgakov in the development of the proletarian theater is also interesting: the plays written by him had ideological fullness and in quality were much higher than those that were present in the repertoire of local theaters. Thanks to the writer’s efforts, the Ossetian Youth Studio was founded in Vladikavkaz, which became the basis of the future professional theater.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Andriej B. Nikolaev
Keyword(s):  

This article focuses the role of the IV State Duma in the decisive days of the February revolution in Russia (February 27 – March 3, 1917). The author suggests that the State Duma was the center of the revolution and the headquarters of the uprising. Attention is being given to relationships between the Temporary Committee of the State Duma (VKGD) and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers ‘and Soldiers’ Deputies. According to the article, many issues of the revolution have been solved within the framework of the Duma-Soviet cooperation. At the same time, VKGD had priority, material superiority to solve military, food, militia and other issues. The author proves that VKGD was the first Provisional Government of Revolutionary Russia.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans

Abstract This article offers an analysis of Videograms of a Revolution (1992) by Harun Farocki and Andrej Ujica and The Pixelated Revolution (2011) by Rabih Mroue, which both reflect on the role of amateur recordings in a revolution. While the first deals with the abundant footage of the mass protests in 1989 Romania, revealing how images became operative in the unfolding of the revolution, the second shows that mobile phone videos disseminated by the Syrian protesters in 2011 respond to the desire of immediacy with the blurry, fragmentary images taken in the heart of the events. One of the most significant results of this new situation is the way image production steers the comportment of people involved in the events. Ordinary participants become actors performing certain roles, while the events themselves are being seen as cinematic. This increased theatricality of mass protests can thus be seen as an instance of blurring the lines between video and photography on the one hand and performance, theatre and cinema on the other.


Author(s):  
Yevheniya Shyshkina ◽  
Yaroslav Motenko

In the paper, the historiography of the problem is examined. The critique of the privet paper money which was circulating in the Ukrainian lands in 1917–1921 is conducted. The characteristics of such critique are shown and its distinctions from the critique of the state paper money are identified. The external signs of the bonds’ obverse and reverse are analyzed. The heraldic, emblematic, iconographic, sphragistics, neographic, filigree, ornamental, chronological and metrological elements of the Ukrainian privet paper money appearance are investigated and the role of these features is identified. The emblems, seals, imprints, signatures, series, numbers, dates are pointed out to be the most informative signs of the privet paper money. So, in the article, the great significance of the sphragistics, neographic and chronological data is underlined. By means of the text analysis, the issuers of bonds are identified. Thecritique of the bonds’ external features also showed the reasons for emission, the emitters’ guarantees and the scale of the privet paper money circulation.


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