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Pre-capitalist Iran : a theoretical history

The Forgotten Years of Kurdish Nationalism in Iran

This book investigates the forgotten years of Kurdish nationalism in Iran, from the fall of the Kurdish republic to the advent of the Iranian revolution. An original and path-breaking investigation of the period, it sheds light not only on the historical specificity of the phenomenon of nationalism in exile, but also on the political processes and practices defining the development of Kurdish nationalism in the post-revolutionary era. Although nationalist landmarks such as the Kurdish republic in 1946 and the resurgence of the movement in the revolutionary conjuncture of 1978-79 have attracted the attention of historians and social scientists in recent years, little is known about the three decades of Kurdish nationalism in exile between these two events. This analysis draws on contemporary poststructuralist theory to question the concept of the minority in democratic and constitutional theory, arguing that it is an effect of the discursive linkage between sovereign power and the dominant ethnic-linguistic identity in the nation-state. This text will appeal to a wide academic audience ranging from the fields of Kurdish, Iranian and Middle East Studies to ethnicity, nationalism, government, and political science.

Kurds and the state in Iran : the making of Kurdish identity

In early 1946, Kurds declared an independent republic in north-west Iran. The Mahabad Republic, as it became known, was the first time that the Kurds experienced self-rule in the modern era. Although short-lived, the Republic had a formative influence on the subsequent development of Kurdish nationalist movements in Iran and the wider region. Here, Abbas Vali disputes the conventional view that the Kurdish Republic was the result of a Soviet conspiracy to dismember Iran, a side-effect of the Cold War. Instead he emphasizes the diversity of the internal Iranian and Kurdish factors that led to the formation of the Republic, arguing that the Republic represents the culmination of a new and modern Kurdish national identity. This was an identity which emerged in response to the exclusionary effects of the political and discursive processes and practices of the construction of a modern Iranian nation-state and national identity since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. With its analysis of the formation and effects of nationalism and ethnic identity, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Kurds or the development of national and state identities in the Middle East.