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Class Analysis and the Dialectics of Modernization in the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

James A. Bill
James A. Bill
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
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Extract

Class analysis stands as one of the ancient and classic theoretical approaches to the study of politics and society. Stratification by class has been traditionally utilized by scholars and statesmen to explain patterns of political conflict and processes of social change. In modern American political science, however, this approach has yet to receive the attention and application that have marked traditional formal-legal and contemporary structural-functional analysis. The sharp reaction that developed against the former took the immediate shape of the group and elite approaches which to a large degree continue to displace or disguise class analysis.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , October 1972 , pp. 417 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

page 417 note 1 The outstanding contributions include Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (rev. Eng. ed.; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959);Google ScholarOssowski, Stanislaw, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, translated from the Polish by Sheila Patterson (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963);Google ScholarGordon, Milton M., Social Class in American Sociology (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1958);Google Scholar and Bottomore's, T. B. two studies, Elites and Society (New York, Basic Books, 1964)Google Scholar and Classes in Modern Society (New York, Pantheon Books, 1966).Google Scholar

page 417 note 2 Stimulating examples are Lenski, Gerhard, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1966);Google Scholar and Moore, Barrington Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, Beacon Press, 1966).Google Scholar

page 417 note 3 Among the writings of this category, the following provide especially fresh and novel insights: Fallers, Lloyd A., ‘Social Stratification and Economic Processes in Africa’, in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin (eds.), Class, Status, and Power (2nd ed., New York, The Free Press, 1966), pp. 141–9;Google ScholarSklar, Richard L., ‘Political Science and National Integration - A Radical Approach’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 5 (05 1967), pp. 1–11;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGrundy, Kenneth W., ‘The “Class Struggle” in Africa: An Examination of Conflicting Theories’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 2 (11 1964), pp. 379–393;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHardgrave, Robert L. Jr, ‘Caste: Fission and Fusion’, Economic and Political Weekly (07 1968), pp. 1065–70;Google ScholarEberhard, Wolfram, ‘Social Mobility and Stratification in China’, in Bendix, and Lipset, (eds.), Class, Status, and Power, pp. 171–82;Google ScholarBill, James A., The Politics of Iran: Groups, Classes, and Modernization (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1972);Google ScholarHalpern, Manfred, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 41–112;Google Scholar and the articles by Adams, Richard N. and Anthony, Leeds in Heath, Dwight B. and Adams, Richard N. (eds.), Contemporary Cultures and Societies of Latin America (New York, Random House, 1965), pp. 257–87, 379–404.Google Scholar

page 418 note 1 Laqueur's, Walter Z.The Middle East in Transition: Studies in Contemporary History (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1958)Google Scholar contains three dozen articles prepared by scholars representing many different fields and disciplines. Twenty-eight of the articles include sections of explicit class analysis.

page 418 note 2 A partial exception is Berque, Jacques, ‘L'Idée de Classes dans L'Histoire Contemporaine des Arabes’, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, vol. 38 (1965), pp. 169–84.Google Scholar

page 419 note 1 Marx, Karl, Capital, translated by Untermann, Ernest (Chicago, Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1909), vol. 3, pp. 1031–2.Google Scholar

page 419 note 2 See, for example, Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York, International Publishers, n.d.), esp. p. 109.Google Scholar

page 419 note 3 See Ossowski, Class Structure, pp. 69–88.Google Scholar

page 419 note 4 Wittfogel, Karl, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1957), p. 380.Google Scholar

page 420 note 1 See, for example, the articles on India and China reproduced in Christman, Henry M. (ed.), The American Journalism of Marx and Engels (New York, New American Library, 1966), pp. 83–109, 185–210.Google Scholar

page 420 note 2 See Gordon, L. A. and Fridman, L. A., ‘Distinctive Aspects of the Working Class in the Economically Underdeveloped Countries of Asia and Africa’, Soviet Sociology, vol. 2 (Winter 1963), pp. 46–63;Google Scholar and Rutkevich, M. N., ‘Elimination of Class Differences and the Place of Non-Manual Workers in the Social Structure of Soviet Society’, Soviet Sociology, vol. 3 (Fall 1964), pp. 3–13.Google Scholar

page 421 note 1 Bennigsen, A., ‘Sultan Galiev: the USSR and the Colonial Revolution’, in Laqueur, (ed.), The Middle East in Transition, p. 401.Google Scholar

page 421 note 2 Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict, p. 76.Google Scholar

page 421 note 3 Ibid.p. 204.Google Scholar For Dahrendorf's most explicit statements on the class concept, see also pp. 138, 148–52, 173, 238, 247.

page 421 note 4 Wesolowski, W., ‘Some Notes on the Functional Theory of Stratification’, in Bendix, and Lipset, (eds.), Class, Status, and Power, p. 69.Google Scholar

page 422 note 1 Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict, p. 238.Google Scholar

page 422 note 2 Ibid.p. 181.Google Scholar

page 422 note 3 For Dahrendorf's position on classes as species of groups, see ibid.pp. 26, 152, 171, 213, 306.Google Scholar

page 422 note 4 See Dahrendorf, , ‘Recent Changes in the Class Structure of European Societies’, Daedalus, vol. 113 (Winter 1964), pp. 225–270.Google Scholar

page 422 note 5 Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict, pp. 166–7.Google Scholar

page 422 note 6 Ibid.p. 64.Google Scholar

page 423 note 1 See, for example, the Nomos I volume of essays on authority. Friedrich, Carl J. (ed.), Authority (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1958).Google Scholar

page 423 note 2 Parsons, Talcott, ‘On the Concept of Political Power’, in Bendix, and Lipset, (eds.), Class, Status, and Power, p. 249.Google Scholar

page 423 note 3 Reissman, , Class in American Society (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1959), p. 58.Google Scholar

page 423 note 4 After presenting all three dimensions, both Milton M. Gordon and Kurt Mayer underplay and ignore the power dimension. See Gordon, Social Class in American Sociology;Google Scholar and Mayer, , ‘The Theory of Social Classes’, in Transactions of the Second World Congress of Sociology (London, International Sociological Association, 1954), vol. 2, pp. 321–35.Google Scholar

page 423 note 5 See Eisenstadt, , ‘Changes in Patterns of Stratification Attendant on Attainment of Political Independence’, Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology (London, International Sociological Association, 1956), pp. 32–41;Google ScholarLipset, and Zetterberg, , ‘A Theory of Social Mobility’, in Bendix, and Lipset, (eds.), Class, Status, and Power, pp. 561–73;Google ScholarLenski, Power and Privilege; Halpern, The Politics of Social Change;Google Scholar and Adams, , The Second Sowing: Power and Secondary Development in Latin America (San Francisco, Chandler Publishing Co., 1967).Google Scholar

page 424 note 1 This definition of power is slightly broader than those provided by scholars who have chosen to reword Max Weber's original definition. As such, it most closely approximates the definitions used by Peter Blau, Herbert Simon, Kurt Mayer, and A. F. K. Organski. For a fIne collection of leading theoretical analyses of the power concept, see Bell, Roderick, Edwards, David V., and Wagner, R. Harrison (eds.), Political Power: A Reader in Theory and Research (New York, The Free Press, 1969).Google Scholar

page 424 note 2 von Grunebaum, Gustave E., Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation (2nd ed., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 212.Google Scholar

page 424 note 3 Halpern, The Politics of Social Change, p. 46.Google Scholar

page 424 note 4 Peter Blau stresses the importance of this dimension of power relationships. He also investigates other key facets of such ‘exchange transactions’. See Blau, , Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York, John Wiley, 1964).Google Scholar

page 424 note 5 See Bachrach, Peter and Baratz's, Morton S. interesting discussion of the ‘nondecisionmaking process’ in ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, vol. 16 (12 1962), pp. 947–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 425 note 1 For a discussion of these kinds of relationships, which are of crucial significance in the personal and collective interaction that occurs in the Islamic Middle East, see Bill, James A., ‘The Plasticity of Informal Politics: The Case of Iran’, Paper. Prepared for Delivery at the Conference on the Structure of Power in Islamic Iran, University of California, Los Angeles, 26–28 06 1969.Google Scholar

page 425 note 2 Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam, p. 177.Google Scholar

page 426 note 1 For Almond's own account of this scheme, see Almond, Gabriel and Coleman, James S. (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 33–8.Google Scholar

page 426 note 2 See Weiner, , The Politics of Scarcity: Public Pressures and Political Response in India (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962).Google Scholar

page 426 note 3 Riggs, , ‘The Theory of Developing Polities’, World Politics, vol. 16 (10, 1963), pp. 147–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 426 note 4 p.154.Google ScholarIbid.

page 426 note 5 Binder, , Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1962). Professor Binder, however, also stresses such interpersonal interaction as bargaining, legitimizing, consulting, and lobbying.Google Scholar

page 426 note 6 Social cliques and informal groups of various types are referred to as equipos (teams) in Mexico, panelinhas (little saucepans) in Brazil, nkiguenas (discussions) in Kenya, and batsu (cliques) in Japan. In Mexican-American communities of the south-western United States such groups are termed palomillas or ‘little pigeons’, as the members tend to flock together.Google Scholar

page 427 note 1 'Alī, , ‘Farmân to Mâlik-i Ashtar, Governor of Egypt’, in Sukhanān-i 'Alī — The Words of 'Alî, translated from the Arabic by Fâzil, Javād (Tehran, 1966), p. 242.Google Scholar

page 427 note 2 Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam, p. 170.Google Scholar

page 427 note 3 Lenski, Power and Privilege, p. 285.Google Scholar For Lenski's diagram, on which Fig. I is based, see ibid.p. 284.Google Scholar

page 428 note 1 See Levy, Reuben, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge University Press, 1957), p. 65.Google Scholar

page 429 note 1 For an excellent analysis of the role of the bourgeoisie as a class in Islamic society, see Goitein, S. D., Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1966), pp. 217–41.Google Scholar

page 430 note 1 The inspiration and theoretical framework that have shaped this analysis come from Manfred Halpern. For Halpern's general theoretical approach to the study of modernization, see Violence and the Dialectics of Modernization (Princeton, Princeton University Press, forthcoming). Halpern was also the first to point to the flexibility based upon balanced tension that infused Islamic society.Google Scholar

page 431 note 1 Patai, , Golden River to Golden Road: Society, Culture, and Change in the Middle East (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962), pp. 278–9.Google Scholar

page 431 note 2 For documentation of how this pattern operates in important Middle Eastern administrative settings, see Minorsky, V., Tadhkirat al-Mulūk (London, Luzac and Co., 1943);Google Scholar and Gibb, H. A. R. and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West: I (2 parts: London: Oxford University Press, 1950).Google Scholar These two sources contain descriptions of the offices and relationships that marked the Safavid and Ottoman administrative systems. The Tadhkirat al-Mulūk is a Safavid administrative manual.

page 431 note 3 See, for example, the results of recent research by Garthwaite, G. R. in ‘Pastoral Nomadism and Tribal Power’, paper prepared for delivery at the Conference on the Structure of Power in Islamic Iran, University of California, Los Angeles, 26–28 06 1969.Google Scholar

page 432 note 1 For a perceptive analysis of the manner in which new urban groups have fostered class fluidity in West Africa, see Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa’, in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E. (eds.), Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York, The Free Press, 1963), pp. 665–70.Google Scholar

page 433 note 1 Those scholars of Middle Eastern society who have stressed the appearance and importance of a new middle class include Morroe Berger, Manfred Halpern, Raphael Patai, Roger Le Tourneau, Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Charles Issawi, P. M. Holt, and T. Cuyler Young.Google Scholar

page 433 note 2 See, for example, Bakhash, Alfred, Kayhan (Tehran), 27 02 1963.Google Scholar

page 433 note 3 Those who question the existence of a new middle class in the Middle East do so by stressing the divisions that exist within this class. In so doing they assume that class analysis disregards group activity. The most provocative presentation of this viewpoint is Perlmutter, Amos, ‘Egypt and the Myth of the New Middle Class: A Comparative Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 10 (10 1967), pp. 46–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar