Pahlavi II

The present study aimed to etiology of land reform and its consequences based on social anomie approach by scrutinizing historical events and documents. To this aim, with a descriptive-analytical method, explain the social and economic consequences of land reforms. The main question is: ‘What was the nature of land reform and what its socio-economic consequences are?’ The main hypothesis is that farmers lost their social law (solidarity) and economic independence (self-sufficiency) after land reform. The results indicated that the reforms were not internal and were carried out under pressure from the government and abroad. The wandering of farmers after land reforms led to anomie, i.e., the lack of functioning norms and caused a fragmentation of society. Farmers in the socioeconomic realm were out of balance and suffered from socioeconomic mess. The liberation of a rural community from solidarity and the problem of a self-sustaining economy made farmers face many crises. Social crisis and economic poverty threw society into anomalies. Social crisis and economic poverty threw society into anomalies. As a result, self-sufficient farmers and villagers, with high correlations with the pre-land-reforms, consequently divided the land and villagers migration to the cities, were caught up in social anomie.

Japan was an important and influential trade partner of Iran during the Pahlavi II era. However, no studies have been conducted on the effects of this country and its trade relations with Iran. The present study attempts to deal with the ups and downs in Japan’s trade relations with Iran during that era and evaluate its political impacts based on available documents. Furthermore, the discussions also include the types of cargo, their amount, their value and the dimensions of the trade between the two countries. According to the results of the study, the ideological affiliation of Iran and Japan to the Western bloc was effective in the development of trade relations between the two countries. Thus, Japan became the main importer of Iran’s oil and Iran employed Japanese experts for its economical and industrial activities. Therefore, several contracts were signed between the two nations. Nevertheless, the trade balance was in Japan's favor. The Iranian government’s efforts to balance the scales were successful in a few instances; however it failed in the long run. In conclusion, Japan became Iran’s third trade partner in this era.

In 19th century Iran, through the publication of travelogues, the expansion of capitalism, and familiarity with the governance methods of Western countries, a system of knowledge or grand discourse emerged that represented Iran's backwardness and illness. Within this system of knowledge (episteme), various discourses aimed at remedying this illness were formed, one of the vital being the discourse of modernist nationalism which served as a counter-discourse to the "Anti-autocratic Constitutionalist" discourse and sought to justify its propositions in response to it, was extensively exploited by the Pahlavi court and managed to become the dominant discourse of the court for a long time. The present study employs the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, focusing on the question of ‘What the semantic network of modernist nationalism discourse was and what function it aimed to achieve?’ The semantic coordinates of this discourse are examined. The results indicated that the most significant signifier of the modernist nationalism discourse was "Iranian nationalism," which, by outlining a semantic network composed of various elements such as superficial and top-down modernization, centralization (establishment of a dominant state), the necessity of reviving the monarchy and kingship, secularism and opposition to Islamism, and the strengthening of militarism, aimed to consolidate the power of the Pahlavi regime by providing a solution for Iran's backwardness.  

The introduction of modernity into Iranian society has been the source of profound social, cultural, and political transformations. The question of the consequences of modernity on Iranian society remains an unfinished concern. In this context, cinema has played a significant role as one of the main carriers of modernity in transferring Western values to Iranian society. From the moment cinema entered Iran, it served nationalism, modernity, and Westernization. Undoubtedly, when cinema entered the country, Iranian society was not one in a vacuum but was filled with a glorious history and deep-rooted Islamic and Iranian traditions. During the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, Iranian cinema, supported by the Pahlavi regime, became a tool for advancing the modernization of Iranian society. The detrimental consequences of authoritative modernization and the use of cinema as a modernization tool left profound negative impacts on the structure of Islamic-Iranian identity. In this regard, the present research aims to dissect the role of cinema as a tool for modernization during the Pahlavi II era (1940-1978 AD/1320-1357 SH) using documentary methods and interviews. The central question of this research is how cinema was employed by the Pahlavi government to advance modernism in Iran. In response, it can be said that the political elites of the Pahlavi regime consciously used the power of cinema as a tool to transfer Western culture, weaken Islamic-Iranian traditions, present a modern image of Iranian society, blur public-private boundaries, promote ideology, and gain political legitimacy while constructing a unified nation-state.