Endorsements

This book traces the patterns of capital accumulation and changes in class and state formation emanating from it in Iran during the global neoliberal era. This analysis proceeds from a relational methodology based on the philosophy of internal relations that problematises the dualism of local/global and national/international. In the first place, this relationality implies that there are inner connections between the nature of contemporary development in Iran, the form of the state, the ongoing socio-political transformations in the society and the geopolitical tensions with the West. At the same time, it stresses that these issues should be explored in terms of their internal relations to the motions and tendencies of neoliberal global capitalism and resulting geopolitics. Accordingly, the book demonstrates that Iranian neoliberalisation as a result of global and local shaping factors has brought about new contested class dynamics that have fundamentally reconstructed the Iranian ruling class and aggressively shaped/reshaped the working class and the poor. It also analyses how the same process has generated a fresh, pivotal impetus that has transformed the state institutions and directly contributed to Iran's volatile foreign policy, particularly opposing approaches regarding the nuclear programme, relations with the global centres of power (the United States, the European Union, China and Russia) and regional policy. This centrality to class analysis and emphasis on framing Iran inside global class politics and economic processes makes the book an original and transformative contribution to the critical research on the political economy of Iran.