From Peasant To Farmer

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 37 (2005), 327–349.
Printed in the United States of America

DOI: 10.1017.S0020743805373028
Amir Ismail Ajami
F R O M P E A S A N T T O FA R M E R : A S T U D Y O F
A G R A R IA N T R A N S F O R M A T IO N IN A N IR A N IA N
V IL L A G E , 1 9 6 7 – 2 0 0 2
Iranian agriculture and rural society have undergone profound socioeconomic and po-
litical changes over the past four decades. While recognizing the significant impact
of urbanization, economic development, and integration of the rural economy in the
market, this paper contends that the land-reform program of the 1960s and the 1979
revolution represent the primary turning points in the rural transformation. Land re-
form, through intense state intervention, dramatically changed the traditional landlord-
sharecropping system (nizam-i arbab-rayati).1 Peasant uprisings, the forcible occupation
of large estates, and the agrarian policies of the postrevolutionary regime have led to
the demise of the urban agricultural bourgeoisie and the empowerment of the peasants.
There has been a disintegration of large-scale public and private agricultural production
systems, including agribusinesses, farm corporations, and the agricultural production
cooperatives developed under the shah’s regime.2
This paper contextualizes these macrosocietal changes by tracing the patterns of
socioeconomic transformation of one village community over a thirty-five–year period,
providing a longitudinal study within the general conceptual framework of agrarian
transition theory. In its classical model, first outlined by Lenin, this theory postulates
that the penetration of capitalism into the countryside would result in the concentra-
tion of landholdings by rich peasants and absentee urban landlords, while poorer farm-
ers would be dispossessed and converted into a class of landless rural proletarian wage
laborers.3 An alternative model advanced by Y. Hayami and M. Kikuchi focuses on peas-
ant stratification, not inevitable polarization, where there is increasing differentiation in
a continuous spectrum ranging from landless laborers to noncultivating landlords.4 Yet
despite the debate on the agrarian transition theory and its applicability to rural transfor-
mation in developing countries,5 this conceptual framework provides a starting point to
identify the relevant issues, processes, and tendencies in village agrarian transformation.
Using a case study, I show that the structural changes in the pattern of land ownership,
coupled with the integration of the village economy into the market, will propel its
transition to capitalist agriculture and differentiation of its peasantry. Changes in the
system of agricultural production, diversification of occupational structure, and shifts in
Amir Ismail Ajami is Associate Director of International Programs, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. 85721-0136, USA: e-mail: aajami@ag.arizona.edu.
© 2005 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/05 $12.00

328 Amir Ismail Ajami
social stratification are indicators of the village transition. This case study of agrarian
transformation in a local context provides empirical evidence, illuminating some of the
controversial aspects of agrarian transition theory, including the polarization paradigm.
As significant, this in-depth focus on one village is a reflection of the broader socio-
economic trends occurring in rural Iran over the past four decades. Despite the emer-
gence of a considerable body of literature on Iranian land reform and state policies on
agriculture since 1960s, there is little analysis of the impact of these policies on rural
transformation and the changing socioeconomic conditions of the Iranian peasantry.
The focus of this study is one village, Shishdangi (a pseudonym used for this set-
tlement). I first investigated Shishdangi in 19676 and restudied it in field work in 1999
and 2002. The village is located in Fars Province near the town of Marvdasht, about
45 kilometers northwest of Shiraz. At the time of the 1967 study, the village had a
population of 784 individuals who lived in 140 households residing in 118 houses, all
entirely enclosed within a high earthen wall, or qalah. The villagers made their living
mostly through farming and raising livestock; only 13 percent of the heads of households
were employed in nonagricultural activities. Agricultural production depended heavily
on irrigation, the water being supplied by both the Sivand River and twenty-seven
irrigation pumps tapping groundwater. The cropping pattern, mainly wheat, barley, and
sugar beets, had changed little over the previous decades, except that the cultivation of
melons had increased considerably. The village arable lands consisted of approximately
1,215 hectares, more than 40 percent of which was laid fallow annually. All land in
1967 belonged to two absentee landowners who lived in Shiraz, each owning half of the
village.
After more than thirty years, I returned to study Shishdangi to examine how the village
had responded to the changing socioeconomic and political conditions over this period,
particularly since the 1979 revolution. As will be described in this paper, far-reaching
changes indeed have taken place over the past thirty years in the village’s socioeconomic
structure, especially in terms of land ownership, systems of agricultural production, and
stratification of the peasants. The regional setting of the village has also seen dramatic
changes in this period, particularly as a result of rapid urbanization. With the quadrupling
of the population of the regional center, Marvdasht, from 25,498 in 1966 to 103,030 in
1996,7 and the development of better transportation facilities, the village’s population
now has much more contact with that center, influencing economic diversification and
change in the village.
M ETHODOLOGY
This study is a comparative analysis of data collected by my 1967 baseline study

and a restudy of the village in 1999 and 2002.8 The design thus, provides a historical
perspective in exploring the village’s transformation within the conceptual framework of
agrarian transition theory. Changes in the system of agricultural production, occupational
structure, and social stratification reflect the extent of the village’s transition to capitalist
agriculture. A few other village and rural studies provide comparisons to help determine
how the patterns described here represent the broader socioeconomic changes in rural
Iran.
From Peasant to Farmer 329
TABLE 1 Population, land use, crop density, and outputs of crops: Shishdangi
(1967–2001)
% Change
1967 2001 1967–2001
Population 784 1,335a 70

Mean household size 5.6 4.9 −12
Arable land (hectares) 1,215 1,113b −8
Per capita arable land (hectares) 1.58 .83 −47
Crop density (area under cultivation/arable land) .5 1.10c 120
Number of water pumps 27 60 122
Number of tractors 3 16 433
Fertilizer (kilograms/hectare) 92 550d 498
Output of crops (tons/hectare)
Wheat 1.9 5.7 200
Barley 1.6 4.1 156
Sugar beet 24.5 49.7 103
a The village population is for 1996, as given by the 1996 Census.

b The decline in the village’s arable land is largely the result of land sales to the town of Marvdasht for urban
development and expansion of the village, especially of housing, into farmland.
c Crop density of 1.10 is due to double cropping.
d This figure is estimated based on the average amount of fertilizer applied by the sample farmers on their
crops: wheat, 400 kilograms; barley, 400 kilograms; corn, 900 kilograms; sugar beet, 600 kilograms; and
tomato, 1,000 kilograms per hectare.
Source: Field studies, 1967, 2002; 1996 Census: Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi nufus va-maskan shahristan-i
marvdasht, 1375 (Tehran: Markaz-i Amar-i Iran, 1997).
One principal reason for the selection of Shishdangi in 1967 for field research was
its plural agrarian structure. This included the coexistence of four different types of
agricultural-production systems in the village: (1) a peasant production system (nizam-i
dihqani); (2) pump-owner tenant farmers (nizam-i tulumbah kari); (3) a large private
capitalist farm (nizam-i sarmayi dari); and (4) the remnant of the landlord-sharecropping
system (nizam-i arbabi). The 1967 baseline study provides a set of socioeconomic
data on the village population, landownership, its four production systems, and social
stratification. In the initial phase of the restudy in 1999, information was gathered
on the village’s land ownership, irrigation, agricultural and livestock production, and
population characteristics. During summer 2002, a random sample of 39 households
was selected for interviews from a listing of the total 176 landowning households.
In addition, 39 landless households were randomly selected for interviews from a
listing of 143 such households. In total, seventy-eight interviews were conducted by the
author with the heads of the sample households. The information obtained from these
interviews, the key informants, and personal observations constitute the bulk of data
used in the restudy.
Between 1967 and 2001 major changes occurred in the village’s population, per capita
arable land, crop density, and agricultural productivity (Table 1). There was a substantial
decline in per capita arable land (by 47%), resulting from the combination of a high
population-growth rate and a slight decrease in the village’s arable land. Substantial
increases occurred in crop yields (wheat by 200%, barley by 156%, and sugar beet by
102%), which correspond to average annual growth rates of 3.2 percent, 2.8 percent,
and 2.1 percent, respectively. The changes in Shishdangi reflect corresponding trends
throughout Iran in the agricultural sector, as overall per capita arable land has declined by
an estimated 24 percent,9 and increased crop yields were reported of roughly 76 percent
for wheat, 63 percent for barley, and 42 percent for sugar beet over the 1961–93 period.10
In light of changes in the pattern of land ownership, three distinct periods can be
discerned in Shishdangi’s transformation: (1) the village under landlord domination;
(2) land reform, the rise of peasant proprietorship, and the development of capitalist
farming; and (3) revolution, the demise of capitalist farming, and the transformation of
the peasants. This paper will explore and analyze the dynamics and consequences of the
socioeconomic changes in the village agrarian transition under each of the three periods,
with a special focus on the postrevolutionary era.
T H E V IL L A G E U N D E R L A N D L O R D D O M IN AT IO N
There is little information on the historical development of Shishdangi for the period
under landlord domination, which roughly ended by the mid-1960s. In 1935, a sugar-
beet refinery was founded in Marvdasht, and as far as the villagers recall, the entire
village (Shish-dang)11 was owned by one large absentee landowner, who lived in Shiraz.
The land was leased out to a mustajir, an intermediary between the landowner and the
peasants in the management of crop production. The village land was divided into a
number of fields, each of which was worked cooperatively by a team (harasah) of some
four to six sharecroppers. These harasah, similar to what elsewhere has been called
a bunah, sahra, or bunku, function as a cooperative organization of farming whereby
peasants are organized in working teams, each cultivating the fields jointly under a
sarbunah on a crop-sharing basis with the landlord.12 The mustajir provided land, water,
and seed to each harasah while the peasants supplied labor and draft animals. The
cultivation of crops was limited to wheat, barley, and rice, the peasants receiving one-
third of the wheat and barley and one-half of the rice harvest as their annual share of the
crops. Shortly after the initiation of sugar-beet cultivation in the village, the landlord sold
the village to two landowners, each of whom bought one-half of the village land, along
with the water rights from the Sivand River. The new landowners, hereafter referred to
by the fictitious names Haj Arbab and Aqa Muhandis, also lived in Shiraz, and they
continued leasing the land to the peasants. They dominated the village’s agriculture and
controlled its administration because they appointed the village headman (kadkhuda).
The peasants were physically tied to the village, as well, since their homes in the qalah
were owned by the landowners. Furthermore, because cultivation rights (nasaq) were
tied to membership in the harasah, if a peasant left his harasah, he would also lose
his cultivation rights to the village farmland. The sharecroppers depended totally on the
landowners for their livelihood.
With the development of pump irrigation by the late 1950s, a new system of agricul-
tural production, locally known as tulumbah kari (pump-owner tenant farmer), emerged
in the village. Tulumbah kari involves the transfer of land-use rights (usufruct) from
the landowner to the peasant, who digs a well, installs water pumps to irrigate the
land, and provides other production inputs for the cultivation of the land. This system of
production spread very quickly in the village, and by 1967 some 340 hectares (28% of the
total arable land) were cultivated by thirteen pump-owner tenant farmers. Furthermore,
another new agricultural system, capitalist farming, began to develop in the village in
the late 1950s when Aqa Muhandis’s eldest son took over the management of his family
estates from the mustajir. He proceeded to dig four wells and water-pump installations,
introduced tractors, and dismissed the sharecroppers. Consequently, some forty-eight
sharecroppers lost their cultivation rights to the capitalist farm and joined the ranks of
the wage laborers (khwushnishin), a lower socioeconomic status than the sharecropper
in the village’s social hierarchy.
Before these changes, Shishdangi’s social structure was nearly homogenous, largely
dominated by absentee land ownership and sharecropping arrangements. Most house-
holds were sharecroppers at the same level in the village’s social hierarchy and lacking
any appreciable internal socio-economic differentiation. The village exemplifies the
pre–land reform agrarian structure in Iran, characterized by (1) the predominance of
an absentee landlord–sharecropping system; (2) low capital investment in agriculture,
leading to low productivity and poverty of the peasants; and (3) a pattern of landlords’
domination over the social and economic institutions of the countryside.13
L A N D R E F O R M , T H E R IS E O F P E A S A N T P R O P R IE T O R S H IP, A N D
T H E D E V E L O P M E N T O F C A P ITA L IS T FA R M IN G
Iran launched a sweeping land reform in 1962, which was implemented in three phases
over a decade under the shah’s “White Revolution.” While the shah’s regime’s interest
in land reform is believed to have been primarily political14 —dismantling the power base
of the landowning class—the implementation of the reform contributed to a dramatic
decline in absentee land ownership and the sharecropping system, leading to a substantial
increase in peasant proprietorship.15 All together, as a result of land reform, some
6 million to 7 million hectares of agricultural land (between 52% and 62% of the total)
was transferred to the occupant sharecroppers and tenant farmers.16 However, not all rural
households benefited from the land reform. Due mainly to the scarcity of agricultural
land, some 35 percent of the households who did not hold cultivation rights (nasaq)
were mostly employed in agriculture as wage laborers (khwushnishins) and were not
included among the beneficiaries of the land-reform program.
In 1965, the half of the village that belonged to Haj Arbab was cultivated under
sharecropping arrangements, subject to land redistribution under the second phase of
the land-reform program. Consequently, one-third of this half, along with the water rights
from the Sivand River, were transferred to the thirty-four occupying sharecroppers—on
average, about 4.7 hectares each. The other half of the village (Aqa Muhandis’ farm),
which was worked by wage laborers, was exempt from redistribution.17 Implementation
of the land reform gave rise to the development of the peasant production system,18
the decline of absentee land ownership and sharecropping arrangements, and further
consolidation of capitalist farming in the village (Table 2).
The implementation of land reform reinforced the trends toward development of cap-
italist agriculture. Haj Arbab redistributed more than 30 percent of his estates in 1965,
discontinuing sharecropping arrangements and transforming his remaining land into
capitalist farming by investing in water-pump irrigation and farm mechanization, and by
hiring wage laborers and a farm supervisor. Aqa Muhandis further expanded his capitalist
TABLE 2 Number and size of holdings by production system: Shishdangi (before and
after land reform)
Before Land Reform: 1962 After Land Reform: 1967
Mean Total Mean Total

Number of Size of Area of % of Number of Size of Area of % of
Holdings Holdings Holdings Village Holdings Holdings Holdings Village
Production System (Total) (hectares) (hectares) Farmland (Total) (hectares) (hectares) Farmland
Capitalist farm 1 — 500 41.1 1 — 500 41.1

Landlord–sharecropping 34 11 375 30.9 — — — —
Remnant of the — — — — 1 — 218 17.9
share-cropping system
Peasant proprietor — — — — 34 4.7 157 13.0
Pump-owner tenant 13 26.1 340 28.0 13 26.1 340 28.0
farmer
Total 48 25.3 1,215 100.0 49 24.8 1,215 100.0
— not applicable
Source: Data extracted from Ajami, Shishdangi, chapter 5, tables 1, 6, 10; chapter 6, tables 2, 4.
farming by adopting new agricultural technologies and increasing crop diversification,

including leasing 30 hectares of the farm to a contractor for melon cultivation under a
50–50 profit-sharing arrangement (generally referred to as nisfah kari).19 A substantial
number of sharecroppers lost their cultivation rights as a result of further develop-
ment in capitalist farming, joining the new majority landless khwushnishin class. This
transformation did not lead to rural polarization as postulated in the classical transition
model, principally because of two tendencies in the village agrarian structure. First, the
thirty-four newly emerged peasant proprietors organized themselves into three groups,
each proceeding to dig a shallow well and install a water pump. The peasants initially
began working the land cooperatively, forming new harasah units. Second, most of
the pump-owner tenant farmers acquired ownership of the land previously rented from
the two landlords, expanding their farming operations by installing additional water
pumps and diversifying into melon cultivation. Thus, the development of relatively
large-scale capitalist agriculture alongside the emerging smallholders and pump-owner
tenant farmers has given rise to contradictory tendencies in the village’s transition to
capitalist agriculture. These trends, corroborated by other case studies, continued to
dominate the village agrarian structure until the 1979 revolution. For example, Hosein
Mahdavi shows changes that occurred in two villages in the Qazvin area over a thirty-
five–year period—one transforming into a modern commercial enterprise, and the other
into a small-holding community.20 Javad Safi-Nejad, on the basis of his field research
on a sharecropping village near Tehran, demonstrates the development of a bimodal
agrarian system after the implementation of the second phase of land reform in 1965.
The landlord had to lease 210 hectares of his 318 hectares to sixty former sharecroppers
under a fixed rent arrangement. He then set about farming his 108 hectares by employing
wage laborers, introducing mechanization, digging a deep well, and installing pumping
equipment. He now managed his farm as a commercial enterprise.21 At the macro-level,
Abdolali Lahsaeizadeh’s study indicates that land reform contributed to the development
of both peasant capitalist farming and large-scale agricultural enterprises, representing

6.5 percent and 15 percent of arable lands in Iran, respectively, by 1975.22
The Shishdangi data show the development of a dualistic agrarian structure, the
demise of sharecropping, the disintegration of the bunah system, and deterioration
in the socioeconomic conditions of the khwushnishins,23 which reflects the broader
socioeconomic trends occurring in rural Iran at this time.24 While there seems to be little
disagreement on these changes, the positive effects of land distribution on agricultural
production and the income of the peasant beneficiaries is controversial. Most studies
contend that the land-reform program did not succeed in improving the living conditions
of the majority of the peasants and, in fact, was a major contributing factor to Iran’s
agricultural stagnation.25 A careful scrutiny of the macroeconomic data on agriculture by
Fatemeh Moghadam, however, does not support this contention.26 Positive production
growth rates of 3–4 percent annually were reported for the post–land-reform period.27
Although estimates of Iranian agricultural production growth rates should be treated with
some caution due to certain deficiencies in the data, these rates were largely maintained
because more land was brought into cultivation and there continued to be increases in
yields of major crops in the post-reform period.28
R E V O L U T IO N , T H E D E M IS E O F C A P ITA L IS T FA R M IN G , A N D
T R A N S F O R M AT IO N O F T H E P E A S A N T R Y
As the 1977–79 revolutionary upheavals gathered momentum in the urban centers, they
eventually reached the rural areas, leading to peasant radicalization and land seizure
in the countryside. Current scholarship suggests that the peasants’ participation in pre-
revolution antiregime demonstrations and political activities was by and large limited.29
However, villagers who commuted daily to city jobs and those who migrated and became
part of the urban subproletariat were often willing participants in the urban uprisings
as well as active agitators in the village.30 Therefore, what is apparent is that when
the power of the central government was weakened, the peasantry gradually joined the
protest movement, primarily for land takeovers.31 As an illustration of peasants’ delayed
participation, Morio Ono, who was in Kheirabad, a village in the Marvdasht region, in
November 1978, observed: “when I am in Kheirabad, I don’t feel the anti–Shah protest
or the intense anti-government unrest which I witness in the city.”32 However, some three
months later, an eyewitness report by his friend who visited the village in mid-January
1979 informed him that “in Kheirabad the villagers used to support the Shah, but recently
60 percent of them have changed their position to pro–[Ayatollah] Khomeini.”33
In the case of Shishdangi, interviews with the two landlords and the village’s key
informants suggest that peasants were mostly in the “wait-and-see” mode during the
revolutionary upheavals, except for a few activists who began agitating against the
Aqa Muhandis capitalist farm about three months before the collapse of the regime in
February 1979. In fact, peasants’ protests against the village’s two landlords occurred at
different times, depending largely on the nature of their past relations with the landlords.
Those who had been evicted by Aqa Muhandis in the early 1960s when he transformed
his estate into capitalist farming were the ones who began their uprising prior to the
revolution. In contrast, the peasant sharecroppers who were the beneficiaries of land
redistribution by Haj Arbab under the 1962 land-reform program did not join the land-
takeover movement until almost a year and a half later.
The earliest uprising was organized by two brothers whose father had been evicted
by Aqa Muhandis when the capitalist farm was developed. They mobilized the former
sharecroppers against the landowner by seizing the farm piece by piece. The peasants
first took over about 14 hectares of land, then they moved to stop the landlord’s delivery
of sugar beets to the Marvdasht processing plant. Their next move was to occupy another
130 hectares of the capitalist farm’s fallow land, which they collectively ploughed and
planted with sugar beets. Finally, immediately after the revolution, the peasants seized
the remaining fields, occupied the landlord’s five water pumps, and expelled his farm’s
supervisor from the village. They then subdivided the farm among themselves and
began working the fields by initially setting up the former harasah system. Despite the
landowner’s protest and frequent appeals to the local authorities, the peasants continued
farming the occupied fields without paying any rent or a share of the crops to the
landowner, except for the 1978–79 grain crops planted by the landowner. Almost a
year and a half after the revolution, the peasants who were the beneficiaries of the land
reform in the other half of the village began to agitate against Haj Arbab, the other
landowner. They began by disrupting his farming operations, including the irrigation
and fertilizing of the fields. Haj Arbab appealed to the Marvdasht governor’s office, local
gendarmes, and the Islamic Guards to prevent the peasants’ aggressions on his estate. He
argued that, since more than 30 percent of his estate had been distributed to the peasant
sharecroppers in 1965 under the land-reform program, the peasants had no legitimate
claim. His complaints were to no avail, however, and the peasants continued to disrupt
his farming activities. Finally, in January 1981 they took over his land, two water pumps,
a tractor, and other farm machinery.34 They subdivided the farm into six units and began
to work the fields under the customary harasah system. The landowner appealed to
the qadi-i shar in Marvdasht, requesting the eviction of the peasants. They refused to
evacuate the land but agreed to the qadi’s ruling, which stipulated the division of the
1980–81 crops between them and the landowner, as well as subsequent payments of
annual rent to the landowner. Yet peasants continued to pay annual rent for the occupied
land only until 1986, after which they refused to make any further rent payments.
The dispute over the occupied lands between different peasant groups and the two
landowners has passed through various phases since the 1979 revolution. First, in ad-
dressing the petition of the landless agricultural workers for a portion of the village farm-
land, the local members of the “Sevener Commission”35 (hayat-i haft nafarah) visited
Shishdangi in 1981. A decision was made by the commission to transfer 120 hectares
of the capitalist farm (Aqa Muhandis) to twenty-three farmworkers (5.2 hectares per
worker) and 30 hectares of the estate of the other landowner, Haj Arbab, to nine workers
(3.3 hectares per worker). Since the legal status of these lands was in dispute, no land
titles were issued; instead, the agricultural workers were granted temporary cultivation
rights.
In the meantime, both the peasants and the two landowners remained unwilling to settle
their disputes. The peasants hoped that the revolutionary government might eventually
transfer the ownership of the occupied lands to them, while the landowners expected to
gain the return of their estates through the courts. This climate of uncertainty drastically
changed in October 1986 when the Islamic Parliament approved a land-reform law
whose primary purpose was to legalize the transfer of the occupied lands to the peasant
squatters.36 Following the passage of the law, newly emerging political pressures forced
the Sevener Commission, the landowners, and the squatters to seek a quick resolution
to the legal status of the occupied lands. Thus, in 1988 the owners of the capitalist farm,
Aqa Muhandis and his brother, agreed to transfer, free of charge, about 250 hectares
to the fifty-five peasant squatters. The peasants agreed to return the remaining
140 hectares—70 hectares each—to the two brothers. Based on this agreement, land
titles were accordingly issued to the landowners and the peasants. As for the legal status
of some 120 hectares that were temporarily transferred to twenty-three agricultural
workers in 1981, the two brothers also agreed to grant free ownership of the land to
them. It took the other landowner, Haj Arbab, until 1999 to resolve his dispute with the
peasants who had occupied his land, even though an appeals court had issued a verdict
in 1989 for eviction of the squatters from the land. The settlement finally reached
between the two parties involved a no-charge transfer of some 130 hectares out of Haj
Arbab’s total holding of 218 hectares to the forty-four peasant squatters. The remaining
88 hectares were to be returned by the peasants to the landowner, however, as the two
parties failed to agree on the specifics regarding which tract of village land was to be
returned to the landowner, the agreement still had not been implemented by summer
2002. Thus, the insecurity and disputes over landownership rights, coupled with intense
hostility between the landlords and the peasants following the revolution, have continued
to dominate economic life in Shishdangi to the present.37
The revolution’s impact38 is clearly evident in the present pattern of land ownership
in the village as contrasted to 1966-67 (Table 3). As the data indicate, absentee land
ownership has substantially declined, from a total of 59.1 percent of the village farm-
lands (41.2% capitalist farm plus 17.9% arbabi estate) in 1967 to 20.6 percent in 2001.
Parallelling this change is a significant increase in smallholdings, from 13 percent in
1967 to 33.2 percent of the cultivated land in 2001. Moreover, as some former small-
holders occupied additional land during the land-takeover movement, a new category of
landholders (medium farmers), who own 5–10 hectares, has emerged in the village. This
radical redistribution of land has, however, resulted in a 70 percent decline in the average
size of holdings, from 24.8 hectares in 1967 to 7.5 hectares in 2001. Even though it has
led to a notable decrease in the scale of landlessness among village households, from
64.4 percent of the total households in 1967 to 49 percent in 2001, the absolute number
of landless households has increased from 85 to 143 because of population growth. The
substantial rise in the absolute number of landless households reinforces the fact that
even radical land-redistribution measures under a revolutionary regime cannot by itself
resolve the issue of landlessness in the countryside where land scarcity is coupled with
a rapid population growth rate.
T H E D E M IS E O F C A P ITA L IS T FA R M IN G
The impact of revolutionary changes besides the peasants’ land seizures and land redis-
tribution includes the disintegration of capitalist farming in the village. As mentioned,
the two capitalist farms were seized and parceled out among former sharecroppers, farm-
workers, and its two landowners. In 1988, when Aqa Muhandis and his brother regained
a portion of their farm, they contracted their total 140 hectares to three local farmers,
TABLE 3 Number and area of holdings by production system: Shishdangi

(pre- and post-revolution)
Number of
Mean Size
Holdings Area of Holdings
of Holdings
Production System Total % Hectares % (hectares)
Prerevolution: agricultural year 1966–67

Peasant proprietor 34 69.3 157 13.0 4.7
Pump-owner tenant farmer 13 26.5 340 28.0 26.1
Remnant of the sharecropping system 1 2.1 218 17.9 —
Capitalist farm 1 2.1 500 41.1 —
Total 49 100.0 1,215 100.0 24.8
Postrevolution: agricultural year 2000–01

Small farmer (less than 5 hectares) 91 60.7 370 33.2 4.0
Medium farmer (5–10 hectares) 45 30.0 316 28.4 7.0
Large farmer (10–25 hectares) 11 7.3 187 16.8 17.0
Capitalist estatesa (70–100 hectares) 3 2.0 240 21.6 80.0
Total 150 100.0 1,113b 100.0 7.4
— not applicable
a Capitalist estates include the estates of two former owners of the capitalist farm, who currently own
70 hectares each, and a former tulumbah kar who owns and operates a highly capitalized 100 hectare farm.
b The decline in the village agricultural land from 1,215 hectares in 1967 to 1,113 hectares in 2001 is largely
the result of land sales to the city of Marvdasht for urban development and the expansion of the village
boundaries into farmlands.
Source: 1966–67 data from Ajami, Shishdangi, chapter 5, tables 1, 6, 10, 19, 20; 2000–2001 data from 2002
field study.
who were each to work the land for a three-year period. Farming operations during
the period consisted mainly of an annual cultivation of roughly 70 hectares of wheat
and 35 hectares of corn, while the remaining 35 hectares were left fallow. This simple
cropping pattern is in sharp contrast to the pre-revolution period, when this capitalist
farm was characterized as a highly diversified and productive agricultural enterprise. The
other large estate—that is, the remnant of the nizam-i arbabi, which was also developed
into capitalist farming by its owner, Haj Arbab, after the 1965 land redistribution—has
totally disintegrated and ceased to operate as an agricultural enterprise.
In 2002, continued land disputes, economic insecurity, and vacillating state agrarian
policies were cited by the three urban landowners, Haj Arbab, Aqa Muhandis, and
his brother, as primary reasons for their hesitation to commit capital investment and
management to what has remained of their estates since the revolution. This insecurity
of land tenure and government indecisiveness on the role of the private sector also are
often postulated in the literature as the main causes in the deterioration of private capital
formation in agriculture in post-revolutionary Iran.39
It seems clear that these socioeconomic changes have led to a dramatic interruption
in the village agrarian transition to capitalism, as is evident in a quadrupling of the
number of peasant smallholders, reinstatement of the sharecropping system by one of
the former large landowners, and the fact that there was less investment in agriculture
by urban merchants and former large landowners. The local-level changes were strongly
reinforced by post-revolutionary political instability, social turmoil, and the new regime’s
antagonism toward large capitalist agricultural enterprises. Taken as a whole, the
Shishdangi evidence suggests that agrarian transition to capitalism can follow a number
of different paths, depending on the configuration of local-level conditions and on
external sociopolitical forces. As Benjamin White argues, “[T]here is no universal or
all-purpose ‘agrarian question’ awaiting investigation, nor is there any universal form of
‘agrarian differentiation’ (agrarian transition).”40
T R A N S F O R M AT IO N O F T H E P E A S A N T R Y
The increased access to land and water resources by a larger number of villagers coupled
with the impact of rapid urbanization in the Marvdasht region and further integration
of the village economy into the market (see later) have largely contributed to the ac-
celeration of the socioeconomic transformation of the peasants in Shishdangi. This is
mainly reflected in (1) changes in the agricultural production system; (2) diversification
of occupational structure; and (3) shifts in social stratification. Each transformation will
be discussed in detail.
Changes in the Agricultural Production System

An analysis of the production system in Shishdangi over the post-revolutionary period
reveals a fundamental change: a transition from peasants whose livelihood depended
largely on subsistence agriculture to farmers who practice intensive agriculture within a
market economy.41 As part of this transition, we will see the emergence of a small number
of petty capitalist farmers. The peasant production system, which depended heavily on
family labor and farming for domestic consumption, has made a drastic shift to mainly
mechanized and commercial agriculture. Plowing, planting, weeding, and harvesting
of grains are now highly mechanized, even on small farms. The rapid expansion of
farm mechanization has substantially reduced the need for household labor, except in
tomato weeding and harvesting, as well as in managing the irrigation system, which
have remained labor intensive. The peasant household that used to produce a significant
part of its own subsistence (roughly 60% in 1967) now sells almost all of its output
to the market (Table 4). Even a family’s daily bread is now acquired from bakeries in
Marvdasht—in sharp contrast with 1967, when nearly all village households baked their
own bread.42 A comparison of 1967 and 2001 production-system data (Table 4) indicates
a substantial increase, due primarily to the 1979–81 land takeovers, in the number of
smallholders (from 34 to 91), as well as the emergence of forty-five medium farmers by
2002.
The data also show a considerable rise in crop diversification, yields, and the increase
in the percentage of output sold into the market by small and medium farmers. The
dramatic rise in yields is primarily the result of the adoption of Green Revolution tech-
nologies, especially fertilizers and high-yielding seed varieties, and increased investment
in irrigation pumps.43 It should be stressed that the development of transportation and
TABLE 4 Mean size of holdings, output per hectare, crop density, hired labor, and
percent of output sold, by production system:a Shishdangi (pre- and post-revolution)
Output
Output per Hectare
Mean Hired Sold into
Number of Size of Sugar Labor the
Holdings Holdings Wheat Barley Beet Corn Tomato Crop (Man Market
Production System (Total) (hectares) (tons) (tons) (tons) (tons) (tons) Densityb Days) (%)
Prerevolution: agricultural year 1966–67

Peasant proprietor 34 4.7 1.6 1.5 21.3 — — 0.79 18 39
(less than 5 hectares)
Pump-owner tenant farmer 13 26.1 2.2 1.3 27.5 — —c 0.71 510 75
(10–25 hectares)
Remnant of the 1 218 1.4 1.3 20.0 — — 0.51 2,260 90
share-cropping system
Capitalist farm 1 500 2.2 2.1 28.5 — —c 0.50 8,752 96
Total 49 24.8 — — — — — — — —
Postrevolution: agricultural year 2000–01

Small farmer (less 91 4.0 4.9 4.0 43.0 7.1 40.0 1.08 15 95
than 5 hectares)
Medium farmer 45 7.0 4.7 4.4 57.0 7.7 35.0 1.19 47 95
(5–10 hectares)
Large farmer 11 17.0 6.2 4.0 49.2 8.5 60.0 1.20 340 96
(10–25 hectares)
Large capitalist estates 3 80 6.8 — — 9.2 80.0 1.10 2,843 98
(70–100 hectares)
Total 150 7.4 — — — — — — — —
— not applicable
a Data are based on information gathered from sample households in both the 1967 and 2002 studies.
b Crop density: area under cultivation/arable land.
c Melon cultivation was a second cash crop, next to sugar beet, on pump-owner tenant farmers’ farms and the
capitalist farm in 1966–67.

Source: 1966–67 data from Ajami, Shishdangi, chapter 5, tables 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 17, 20; 2000–2001 data
from 2002 field study.
market networks in the Marvdasht region, as mentioned earlier, has brought the village
more into the urban economy, which has contributed considerably to this transition.
Peasant agriculture has also changed with regard to animal husbandry. Most villagers
have moved to new housing outside the old confinement of the qalah, and so they have
largely given up the practice of raising a few sheep and goats. In 1967, each household
had an average of twenty head of sheep and goats and one cow, but by 2002, sheep raising
and milk production had been largely taken over by a few relatively specialized farmers.
A further indicator of peasant transformation is reflected in new patterns of household
consumption that have appeared gradually over the past thirty years, including the
adoption of new types of housing, clothes, food items, televisions, refrigerators, and
telephones.44
Considering the fundamental changes that have taken place in peasant production
and consumption patterns since 1967, it can be argued that the concept of a peasant
mode of production is no longer applicable to the village’s small landholders.45 With
this transformation in mind, the village households currently engaged in small-scale
agriculture are more correctly referred to as farmers, not peasants or peasant farmers.
The emerging production system in Shishdangi is a shift from peasant labor–intensive
agriculture to mechanized commercial agriculture, and from large urban (absentee)
landlord capitalist farming to small and petty capitalist farmers.
A striking feature of the transformation in the mode of production is the emergence
of a small number of petty capitalist farmers in the village. The changes actually began
in the 1960s when a few pump-owner tenant farmers increased the number of fields
under sugar-beet cultivation and introduced melons into their cropping pattern. This
trend has continued, particularly since the early 1990s, when some farmers began to
diversify into milk production and increase tomato cultivation in their fields. The new
developments, which required increased investment and hiring wage labor, have resulted
in sharp distinctions between “ordinary” smallholders and the emerging petty capitalist
farmers.46 Reinhold Loeffler observed a similar development in Sisakht, a village in
the Boir Ahmad region, where the farmers installed drip irrigation in their vineyards
in 2002, drastically increasing their grape production and shipping to markets all over
Iran.47 Also, the farmers in Kheirabad, in the Marvdasht region, abolished their cooper-
ative arrangements for land and water use a year after the revolution and proceeded to
build chicken farms, dig wells, install irrigation pumps, and expand cash crops in their
fields.48
The question of how these patterns of emerging capitalist farmers may be typical
of rural Iran can be answered only in tentative terms because of the limited amount
of comparable field research. We can reasonably argue that conditions conducive to
the development of capitalist farmers are prevailing in most villages, especially those in
proximity to urban centers. This argument can be supported by the fact that the number of
rural entrepreneurs in agriculture—that is, capitalist farmers—increased by 255 percent
between the 1976 census and the 1996 census.49 Furthermore, the size of holdings of
about 50 percent of commercial farms enumerated in the 1993 Agricultural Census was
less than 50 hectares, which can be assumed to be operated mostly by local capitalist
farmers.50
The development of petty capitalist farming in Shishdangi is primarily associated
with two groups. The first consists mainly of a small number of relatively well-off
pump-owner tenant farmers who have extended their farming into the production of
high-value crops, primarily tomatoes. These farmers, whose tomato fields in 2000–2001
covered 2–5 hectares of their holdings, are referred to hereafter as “cultivators.” The
second group is made up of those farmers who have diversified into milk production,
holding some eight to thirty-three dairy cows; hereafter referred to as “cultivator/milk
producers.”51 A total of seventeen farmers (11.6 %) can be identified as petty capitalist
farmers—nine cultivators and eight cultivator/milk producers. The landholding size of
cultivators ranges from 10 to 25 hectares, while among the “cultivator/milk producers”
the landholding size is from 3 to 10 hectares.
Table 5 shows a sample of six petty capitalist farmers (three cultivators and three
cultivator/milk producers). The three cultivators had diversified their cropping pattern
by planting 4 to 4.7 hectares of tomatoes and sugar beets in 2000–2001. They used
Green Revolution technologies, widespread farm mechanization, and wage labor, and
sold nearly all of their output to the market in 2000–2001. The three farmers who have
diversified into dairy come from the ranks of small and medium farmers. Although
TABLE5 Size of holdings, area under cultivation of main crops, number of dairy cows,
number of hired laborers, capital costs and revenues in a sample of petty capitalist
farmers: Shishdangi (agricultural year 2000–2001)
Area under
Cultivation of Dairies
Main Crops Revenuesb
Mean Milk Hired Capital
Sample Size of Cash Number production Labor Costsa Total
Farmer Holding Grain Crops of Milk (kilograms/ (man (in millions (in millions Crops Dairyc
Number (hectares) (hectares) (hectares) Cows Cow/day) days) of rials) of rials) (%) (%)
1 22 19.0 4.2 — — 780d 123.4 300.8 100 —

2 22 28.0 4.0 — — 360 140.0 412.8 100 —
3 24 25.5 4.7 2 18 480 153.3 331.4 92.8 7.2
4 7 7.0 0.8 8 15 300 36.2 174.4 44.3 55.7
5 — — — 30 20 300 157.5 399.5 — 100
6 4.5 9.0 — 33 25 600 268.7 495.2 14.2 85.8
— not applicable
a Capital costs exclude land and include investment in wells; water pumps; farm machinery; dairy herds;
construction of barns, silos, and milk parlors; milking machines; milk storage tanks; and trucks for milk
delivery.
b Revenues are calculated on the basis of average prices paid to farmers: wheat, 1,225 rials; corn, 900 rials;
feed corn, 130 rials; barley, 850 rials; sugar beets, 250 rials; tomatoes, 550 rials; and milk, 1,450 rials per
kilogram.
c Dairy revenues include milk production plus sales of calves and culls.
d The owner does not work on the farm, which is managed by a full-time hired farm supervisor.
Source: 2002 field study.
corn and barley were used for animal feed, almost all of the wheat crop and milk
were sold to the market. The development of petty capitalist farming in Shishdangi
has been influenced mainly by increased access to landholdings, a growing demand for
commercial crops by agroindustries developed recently in the Marvdasht region, and
state policies of highly subsidized inputs and favorable guaranteed prices, especially for
milk.
This transformation has been reinforced by a rising number of land transactions in
the village. Since the early 1990s, approximately 33 landholders (22% of the total)
have sold all or part of their holdings, amounting to 156 hectares (12.8% of the total
arable land). About two-thirds of the land was sold to the city of Marvdasht to construct
housing, as well as to three small agricultural-processing plants. The remaining one-
third, approximately 55 hectares, has changed hands among the farmers.
This rise of petty capitalist farmers does not mean the agrarian transition to capitalist
agriculture accompanied by rural polarization—as postulated in the classical model—
has taken root in the village. Rather, it should be interpreted as revealing an emerging
tendency toward the development of farmer capitalism, which calls for further studies.
Diversification of Occupational Structure

The peasant transformation is further manifested in the diversification of village occupa-
tional structure, primarily as a result of increased access to urban jobs. The proportion of
TABLE 6 Distribution of employed male population age 10 years or older according to

main occupational categories: Shishdangi (1967 and 2002)
1967 2002
(in total village (in 33% sample of
population) population)
Main Occupational Categories Total % Total %
Agriculture 203 86.8 67 45.9

Farm laborersa 156 66.7 12 8.2
Farmers and livestock breeders 47 20.1 55 37.7
Nonagriculture 31 13.2 79 54.1
Laborers 13 5.5 14 9.6
Drivers 9 3.8 17 11.7
Mechanics and metalworkers — — 28 19.2
Shopkeepers 4 1.7 4 2.7
Shughl-i azadb 2 0.9 9 6.2
Artisansc 1 0.4 5 3.4
Other 2 0.9 2 1.3
Total 234 100.0 146 100.0
— not applicable
a Although most farm laborers were seasonally employed and often worked in off-farm jobs, mainly in
construction, they identified farm labor as their main occupation.

b Shughl-i azad literally means “free work,” but it is commonly used by the villagers to refer to individuals
engaged in trade, petty entrepreneurial activities, moneylending, smuggling, service work, or other similar
activities.
c Artisan includes carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, tailors, and barbers.
Source: Ajami, Shishdangi, chapter 4, table 5; 2002 field study.
the male population ten years or older engaged in agriculture has dramatically decreased,
from 86.8 percent in 1967 to 45.9 percent by 2002,52 while the share of the nonagri-
cultural occupations, especially in transportation, mechanics, and shughl-i azad (petty
trading, moneylending, and other similar activities) has sharply increased (Table 6). The
decline in agricultural occupation in Shishdangi is similar to the overall trend in rural
Iran, as the percentage of the population age 10 and older engaged in agriculture has
declined from 76.6 percent in 1956 to 49 percent in 1996.53 The reduction in agricultural
employment in Shishdangi has come about particularly as a result of a phenomenal
drop in the percentage of farm laborers, from 66.7 percent in 1967 to 7 percent of the
village labor force by 2002. This can be partly accounted for by the disintegration of
the two large capitalist farms, which together employed some twenty-four permanent
workers and a larger number of seasonally hired laborers before the 1979 revolution.
Moreover, the rise in family-operated small holdings, widespread use of farm machinery,
and increased access to urban jobs has contributed to this change. Similarly, Loeffler
notes that, even for prerevolutionary Iran, “the occupational structure of Sisakht has be-
come totally transformed. Whereas in 1966 virtually all Sisakhti gained their livelihood
exclusively from the land, already ten years later only 44 percent of households did
so any longer. Today the members of young generations are either students or have an
income from salaries, business, craft, or wage labor. . . . Agriculture, which now largely
means horticulture, has become a sideline, producing, however, . . . substantial additional

income.”54
Accompanying the occupational changes, the primary source of income for the heads
of households, which previously depended heavily on agriculture (78.8% in 1967),
had declined to 50 percent by 2002—while the nonagricultural income increased from
21.2 percent to 50 percent during the same period. The analysis of farm-household
data also suggests that even though most farmers have managed to keep their farms,
a large number of household members (41.3%) now commute daily to jobs in nearby
towns, mostly in Marvdasht (70%). These urban jobs have provided additional sources of
household income, some of which has been spent on the family farm. It can therefore be
postulated that occupational diversification and changes in the production system have
acted through concurrent processes to accelerate peasant transformation in the village.
Shifts in Social Stratification

The changes in the production system, along with increased access to nonfarm occu-
pations, resulted in relatively large-scale shifts in the village’s social stratification by
2002. It contributed to a substantial increase of small holders and the rise of medium
farmers. Among the latter are former peasant proprietors who enlarged their holdings
by occupying additional land during the 1979–80 land takeovers. By 2002, small and
medium farmers together constituted 45.2 percent of all the households and owned
61.6 percent of the cultivated area (Tables 4 and 7). This pattern is in sharp contrast to
the 1967 situation, when peasant proprietors made up 25.8 percent of the households
and owned about 13 percent of the farmland. It should, however, be pointed out that
the peasants’ upward movement in the village’s stratification was not affected merely
by an increased access to land. It was also significantly influenced by the adoption of
improved agricultural technologies and expanded participation in the market economy.
These changes, as discussed earlier, have contributed greatly to the peasants’ transition
to small farmers, with far-reaching implications in their mode of production, social
status, and way of life.55
The changing village stratification is further characterized by the emergence of petty
capitalist farmers. While only 11.6 percent of the landholding households fall into this
category, they exert considerable influence in the village’s socioeconomic structure
by controlling larger landholdings or dairy herds, providing them with substantially
higher incomes than other villagers. Yet the petty capitalist farmers who have invested
heavily in tube-well irrigation, dairies, and farm machinery do not appear to have
created or accelerated social polarization in Shishdangi. The limited land transactions,
resistance of small farmers, and state policies supporting smallholders have so far
prevented concentration of landownership by only a few individuals. A similar pattern
was observed by Nicholas Hopkins, who investigated capitalist farmers in rural Egypt,
where smallholders continue to function as petty commodity producers in a highly
differentiated market economy.56
The shift in village stratification is also seen in the sharp decline in the proportion
of landless khwushnishin households and the increased diversification of their occupa-
tions. This stratum, as is the case in most villages in Iran, is composed of two distinct
social categories: the agricultural and nonagricultural laborers and the village petty
TABLE 7 Mean annual household income, literacy rate, and mean household size by
socioeconomic status: Shishdangi (pre- and post-revolution)
Mean Annual
Household Income
in Constant 2001
Number of
Pricesa Mean
Households
(in thousands Literacy Household
Socioeconomic Status Total % of rials) Rateb % Size
Prerevolution: 1967
Peasant proprietor 34 25.8 6,156 35 6.2
Pump-owner tenant farmer 13 9.8 23,850 61 7.7
Khwashnishin: farm and nonfarm 80 60.6 4,824 27 5.2
laborers
Petty bourgeoisie 5 3.8 n.a. n.a. n.a.
Total 132 100.0 n.a 37 5.6
Postrevolution: 2001
Small farmer 87 29.8 14,800 70.6 5.1
Medium farmer 45 15.4 28,400 74.2 5.1
Petty capitalist farmerc 17 5.8 171,700 80 5.3
Farm and nonfarm laborer 99 33.9 12,000 80.6 4.7
Petty bourgeoisie 44 15.1 n.a. 79.4 4.8
Total 292 100.0 n.a. 73 4.9
n.a. not available

a The 1967 income data are expressed in terms of 2001 constant prices by multiplying the current prices by
180 (2001 consumer price index 18,004/1967 index 100).

b Literacy rate is calculated for the population aged 10 years or older.
c Petty capitalist farmers include eight dairy owners with more than eight milk cows.
Source: The pre-revolution data are from Ajami, Shishdangi, chapter 7, tables 1, 5; the post-revolution data
are based on the 2002 field study, Consumer Price Index, International Monetary Fund, International Financial
Statistics Database.
bourgeoisie.57 The latter includes shopkeepers, small traders, moneylenders, artisans,

and peddlers. The khwushnishin population, especially its laborer segment, has declined
significantly, from 60.6 percent of all households in 1967 to 33.9 percent in 2002,
whereas the petty bourgeoisie component had nearly quadrupled over the same period.
The upward mobility of the khwushnishin is clearly reflected in the higher literacy rate
as well as in their adoption of new types of housing and consumer goods (Table 7).
The sample household survey indicates that by 2002, some 97 percent of khwushnishin
households had a refrigerator, and 85 percent had a television set, whereas in 1967 only
27 percent had just a radio. The khwushnishin vision of their life conditions also appears
to have changed, as revealed in personal interviews.58
Finally, a comparison of 1967 and 2001 data (Table 7) points out two opposite
trends in the village’s stratification. First, there has been a pronounced increase in
income inequalities, as indicated by the growing income gaps between various social
strata over the past thirty-five years. For example, the ratio of rich-to-poor farmers’
income, which in 1967 was 3.9 (pump-owner tenant farmers-to-peasant proprietors),
had tripled to 11.6 (petty capitalist farmers-to-small farmers) by 2001. Second, however,
the sharp differences in literacy rates and mean household sizes that existed in 1967
between various social strata has almost totally disappeared. This trend reflects the
widespread diffusion of education and family planning across all socioeconomic classes
in Shishdangi over the past thirty-five years. However, the widening income-inequality
gap between rich and poor farmers, despite land redistribution and land takeovers by the
latter, cannot readily be explained. One possible reason for this growing disparity might
be that the adoption of Green Revolution technologies and better farm-management
skills are more predominant among the petty capitalist farmers than the small and
medium farmers.
C O N C L U S IO N
This study has examined a village transformation in Iran within the conceptual frame-
work of agrarian transition theory. It is postulated that structural changes in the pattern
of the landownership system, coupled with the integration of the village economy
into the market, would propel its transition to capitalist agriculture and differentiation
of its peasantry. We maintain that changes in the system of agricultural production,
diversification of occupational structure, and shifts in social stratification reflect this
transition. Three distinct periods are discerned in Shishdangi’s transition: (1) the village
under urban domination; (2) land reform and the rise of peasant proprietorship; and (3)
the post-revolutionary transformation. The data on the first two periods illustrate the
dynamics and implications of landlord domination and land redistribution, including the
dual development of the peasant production system and capitalist agriculture. They also
provide the context necessary for understanding the post-revolutionary transformation.
The evidence from this study shows significant differences in peasant responses to the
1978–79 revolutionary upheavals, as well as the persistence of hostility and disputes
over landownership between peasants and landlords.
The most significant changes during the post-revolutionary period have been the
transformation of the peasant, as perceived in its conventional sense, into a farmer,
including the emergence of a small but significant number of petty capitalist farmers.
These two interrelated changes have had far-reaching implications in the village’s so-
cioeconomic structure, which can be expected to contribute to the development of farmer
capitalism in the future. Peasant transformation was further manifested by a sharp decline
in the proportion of Shishdangi’s active population engaged in agriculture and, hence,
the substantial increase in the number of households whose primary source of income
depended on nonagricultural occupations and who worked outside the village. Finally,
changes culminated in relatively large-scale shifts in the village’s social stratification.
The substantial increase of small holders and the rise of medium farmers reflect the extent
of this shift. Also, the declining khwushnishin population, coupled with the increased
diversification in their occupations and higher literacy rates, is an indication of upward
mobility for the khwushnishins.
The disruptions and changes in Shishdangi support the notion that the agrarian transi-
tion to capitalist agriculture does not proceed through a unilinear evolutionary process, as
postulated in the classical model. Contradictory tendencies in the transition, particularly
the 1979–80 revolutionary turmoil, led to disruptions in the development of capitalist
agriculture. A sharp diversion from large-scale capitalist farming to mostly small and
medium commercial agriculture developed, promoted by the post-revolutionary regime.

The small holders and middle peasantry also have emerged as capitalist farmers in many
villages in Iran. A similar pattern of agrarian transition in post–Nasser Egypt is examined
by Hopkins, who calls the change a “blocked” transition: “now even if we agree that
agrarian transition in something approaching its classic form has not happened—it has
been ‘blocked’ by the continued importance of the household economy of the petty
commodity producers—we still must recognize it has happened to some extent. The
capitalist mode of production is present in rural Egypt.”59
This study of Shishdangi also shows that the village’s transformation, while increasing
sharply the degree of differentiation among the peasantry, has not resulted in rural
polarization. Rather, it has contributed to an increasing social stratification both among
and between the landholding and khwushnishin population. The pattern of agrarian
transition in other Iranian villages, as discussed earlier is similar to what has been
found in Shishdangi. This suggests that we can reasonably argue that the underlying
trends in Shishdangi would largely represent overall changes in rural Iran. A comparable
transformation is observed by Robert Netting, who, on reviewing the results of village
studies in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Pakistan, concludes that there is
“some evidence that stratification reflects the process of change in traditional, on-going
communities of intensive cultivators more closely than does polarization.”60
The patterns and transformations that have been documented in this study of one
village should provide insights for future developments in the rural sector and society of
Iran. The khwushnishin population should continue to decline, perpetuating the current
rapid urbanization, for unemployed farmworkers mostly migrate to urban centers to
look for employment. The capitalist farmers should continue to expand their capital
accumulation, mainly through land purchases and by renting land from smallholders.
This may well lead to increased sociopolitical tensions within Iran’s rural society,
as well as with the agrarian policies of the post-revolutionary state, which is mostly
committed to smallholders’ patronage. Finally, rural society in Iran is continuing to
urbanize as transportation and marketing networks improve. The Iranian peasant—now
the Iranian farmer—is becoming more and more integrated into a wider (urban) society.
The reduction of the divide between rural and urban society has far-reaching implications
for the future of the Iranian economy and society—as well as for Iranian politics.
NOTES
Author’s note: Special thanks are due to Ahmad Behpoor for his valuable assistance in the field survey. I
thank Sohrab Behdad, Michael E. Bonine, Mohsen A Fardi, Roger Fox, Mansoor Moaddel, Vahid Nowshirvani,
Frank W. Young, and four anonymous referees for their constructive comments.
1 The current literature on Iran’s 1960s land reform is highly controversial. For a review of different
perspectives, see A. K. S. Lambton, The Persian Land Reform, 1962–1966 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969);
Eric J. Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–68 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Khosrow
Khosravi, Masalah-i dihqani va-masalah-i arzi dar Iran (The Peasant Question and Land Question in Iran)
(Tehran: Payvand, 1980); Afsaneh Najmabadi, Land Reform and Social Change in Iran (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1987); Asghar Schirazi, Islamic Development Policy: The Agrarian Question in Iran
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993); Fatemeh E. Moghadam, From Land Reform to Revolution:
The Political Economy of Agricultural Development in Iran, 1962–1979 (London: Tauris Academic Studies,
1996); Mohammad G. Majd, Resistance to the Shah: Landowners and Ulama in Iran (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2000); Hosein Azimi, “Tawzi-i zamin va-daramad dar astana-yi islahat-i arzi” (Distribution
of Land and Income on the Eve of Land Reform), in Masail-i arzi va-dihqani (The Agrarian and Peasant
Questions), Kitab-i Agah (Tehran: Muassisa-yi Intisharat-i Agah, 1982), 75–94; Ahmad Ashraf, “State and
Agrarian Relations before and after the Iranian Revolution, 1960–1990,” in Peasant and Politics in the
Modern Middle East, ed. Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury (Miami: Florida International University Press,
1991), 277–311; and Ismail Ajami, “Islahat-i arzi va-tahavvul-i nizam-i zirai-yi Iran” (Land Reform and
Transformation of the Agricultural Production System in Iran), Majallah-i tahqiqat-i iqtisadi 8 (1972): 135–
51.
2 For discussions of some of the revolutionary changes, see, among others, Bank Markazi Iran (hereafter,
BMI), Barrisi-yi tahavvulat-i iqtisadi-yi kishvar bad az inqilab (A Survey of National Economic Changes after
the Revolution) (Tehran, n.d. [ca. 1984]), esp. 28–68; Ahmad Ashraf, “Dihqanan, zamin va inqilab” (Peasants,
Land and Revolution), in The Agrarian and Peasant Questions, 6–49; Adnan Mazarei, Jr., “The Iranian
Economy under the Islamic Republic: Institutional Change and Macroeconomic Performance (1979–1990),”
Cambridge Journal of Economics 20 (1996): 289–314; Schirazi, Islamic Development Policy; Sohrab Behdad,
“Winners and Losers of the Iranian Revolution: A Study in Income Distributions,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 21 (1989): 327–58; Farhad Kazemi, Poverty and Revolution in Iran (New York: New
York University Press, 1980); Mansoor Moaddel, “Class Struggle in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 317–43; Bahaal-din Najafi, Darbarah-i iqtisad-i kishavarzi-yi
Iran (On the Agricultural Economics of Iran) (Tehran: Shirkat-i Intisharat-i Ilmi va-Farhangi, 1997). For an
annotated bibliography on pre–post-revolutionary rural studies, see Mohamad J. S. Mazanderani, “Mururi
tahlili bar sayr-i tahqiqat-i rustai va-ashayiri dar Iran” (An Analytical Review of Rural and Tribal Studies in
Iran), Iqtisad-i kishavarzi va-tawsiah 6 (1994): 151–79.
3 V. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, vol. 3 of Collected Works (London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1960); idem, The Agrarian Question and the “Critics of Marx” (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1976).
4 Y. Hayami and M. Kikuchi, Asian Village Economy at the Crossroads (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press,
1981), 60–65.
5 See, among others, Teodore Shanin, “Polarization and Cyclical Mobility: The Russian Debate on the
Differentiation of the Peasantry,” in Rural Development: Theories of Peasant Economy and Agrarian Change,
ed. John Hariss (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1982), 223–45; Robert M. Netting, Smallholders,
Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1993): 214–21; and David Goodman and Michael Redclift, From Peasant to Proletarian:
Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982).
6 Ismail Ajami, Shishdangi: pazhuhishi dar zaminah-yi jamahshinasi-yi rustai (Shishdangi: A Study in
Rural Sociology) (Shiraz: Pahlavi University, 1969).

7 Markaz-i Amar-i Iran (hereafter, MAI), Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi nufus va-maskan—shahristan-i
marvdasht, 1345 (1966 Census) (Tehran: MAI, 1969); idem, Sarshumari-yi Umumi-yi Nufus va maskan—
shahristan-i marvdasht, 1375 (1996 Census) (Tehran: MAI, 1997).
8 For studies that use similar methodologies, see, among others, Reinhold Loeffler, Islam in Practice:
Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); Morio Ono,
Kheirabad Namah: bist-panj sal ba rustai yan-i Iran (Kheirabad Namah: Twenty-five Years with Iranian
Villagers), trans. Hashem Rajab-Zadeh (Tehran: Intisharat-i Danishgah-i Tehran, 1998); and Hosein Mahdavi,
“Tahavvulat-i si sala-yi yik dih dar dasht-i qazvin” (Thirty-Year Transformations in One Village in Qazvin),
in The Agrarian and Peasant Questions, 50–74.
9 This is calculated on the basis of the data on the rural population provided in the 1956 and 1996 censuses
and on the arable land area reported in the First National Census of Agriculture, 1961, and 1993 Agricultural
Census.
10 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) provides data on the yield (kilograms
per hectare) of the major crops for 1961–78: 802 of wheat, 800 of barley, 2,914 of rice, 939 of cotton, and
19,202 of sugar beets in 1961–65; 896 of wheat, 891 of barley, 3,355 of rice, 1,198 of cotton, and 21,082
of sugar beets in 1966–70; 884 of wheat, 753 of barley, 3,455 of rice, 1,650 of cotton, and 24,243 of sugar
beets in 1971–75; and 1,011 of wheat, 841 of barley, 3,315 of rice, 1,598 of cotton, and 25,314 for sugar beets
in 1977–78 (Production Yearbook [Geneva: United Nations, 1971–79], Table 7:14); see also the 1961 First
National Census of Agriculture and the 1993 National Census of Agriculture.
11 A dang is one-sixth of a real-estate property or a village. In traditional Iranian agriculture, a village would
be divided into six dangs, and the ownership of an entire village was referred to as a shish-dang (six dangs).
12 For further discussion, see Javad Safi-Nezhad, Bunah: nizamha-i ziraati sunnati dar Iran (Bunah:
Traditional Farming Systems in Iran) (Tehran: Muassisa-yi Intisharat-i Amir Kabir, 1989); Hushang Elyasian,
“Bunah bandi dar dasht-i qazvin: nimunah-yi az nizam-i kar kishavarzi-yi dastihjami dar Iran” (The Structure
of Bunah in Qazvin: An Example of Agricultural Work Team in Iran), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsiah 2
(1994): 143–50; and Eckart Ehlers, “The Iranian Village: A Socio-economic Microcosm,” in Agricultural
Development in the Middle East, ed. P. Beaumont and K. McLachlan (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1985),
151–70.
13 For a discussion of urban landlord domination, see, among others, Paul Ward English, City, and Village
in Iran: Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966); Javad
Safi-Nezhad, Talibabad: nimunih-i jami az barrisi-i yik dih (Talibabad: A Comprehensive Example of the
Study of One Village) (Tehran: Muassisa-yi Mutaliat va Tahqiqat-i Ijtimai, 1967); Morio Ono and Mehdi Talib,
Munugrafi-yi Ibrahim Abad (A Monograph of Ibrahim Abad) (Tehran: Muassisa-yi Mutaliat va-Tahqiqat-i
Ijtimai, 1967); and Michael E. Bonine, Yazd and Its Hinterland: A Central Place System of Urban Dominance
in the Central Iranian Plateau (Marburg: Geographischen Instituts der Universität Marburg), Marburger
Geographische Schriften 82 (1980), chap. 3.
14 For a survey of debates on 1960s land-reform politics, see Keith McLachlan, The Neglected Garden: The
Politics and Ecology of Agriculture in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), 105–52; Ashraf, “State and Agrarian
Relations”; Majd, Resistance to the Shah, 88–163; and Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, 123–37.
15 See, among others, Azimi, “Distribution of Land and Income,” 88–89; Mohammad Javad Amid, Agricul-
ture, Poverty and Reform in Iran (London: Routledge, 1990), 88–110; Cyrus Salmanzadeh and Gwyn E. Jones,
“An Approach to the Micro Analysis of the Land Reform Program in Southwestern Iran,” Land Economics 55
(1979): 108–27; and Ismail Ajami, “Land Reform and Modernization of Farming Structure in Iran,” Oxford
Agrarian Studies 2 (1973): 120–31.
16 Ashraf, “State and Agrarian Relations,” 305–306.
17 Under the provisions of Article 3, Part 2, of the Land Reform Law, mechanized lands—that is, those
that were at least ploughed by mechanical means and cultivated by wage laborers—were exempt from
redistribution.
18 For a discussion of peasant production system (nizam-i dihqani), see Gholam Reza Heydari, “Yikparchigi
arazi tawsiah-yi kishavarzi dar Iran” (Land Consolidation and Agricultural Development in Iran), Iqtisad-i
Kishavarzi va-Tawsiah 4 (1996): 145–203; and Ismail Ajami, “Naqsh-i nizam-i bahrih bardari-yi dihqani
dar tawsiah-yi kishavarzi” (The Role of Peasant Production System in Agricultural Development], Namah-i
Ulum-i Ijtimai 2 (1976): 189–99.
19 This type of sharecropping, which advanced rapidly in the villages surrounding urban centers during the
1960s–70s, is also referred to as saifi kari, qumi kari, and muqasimah kari in different regions of Iran: see Safi-
Nezhad, Talibabad, 123–24; Najmabadi, Land Reform, 112–14; and Mahdavi, “Thirty-year Transformations,”
55–56.
20 Mahdavi, “Thirty-year Transformations,” 59–64.
21 Safi-Nezhad, Talibabad, 203–206.
22 Abdolali Lahsaeizadeh, Contemporary Rural Iran (Avebury, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing, 1993), 179, 183.
23 For details, see Ajami, Shishdangi, 59–96.
24 For further discussion of dualistic agrarian structure, see Amid, Agriculture, Poverty and Reform, 111–
34. On the disintegration of the Bunah system, see Eric J. Hooglund, “Rural Socioeconomic Organization in
Transition: The Case of Iran’s Bonehs,” in Continuity and Change in Modern Iran, ed. Michael E. Bonine
and Nikki Keddie (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981); S. Amini, “The Origin, Function
and Disappearance of Collective Production Units (Haraseh) in Rural Areas of Iran,” Der Tropenlandwrit 48
(1983): 47–61; and Amir Ismail Ajami, “Bunah dar sakht-i ijtimai rustai-yi Iran” (The Bunah System in Iran’s
Rural Society), Iran Namah 13 (1995): 503–22.
25 See, among others, Majd, Resistance to the Shah, 344–46; and Hooglund, Land and Revolution, 81–98.
26 Moghadam, From Land Reform to Revolution, 88–92.
27 Massoud Karshenas, Oil, State, and Industrialization in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 153.
28 The total area of agricultural land increased from 11.3 million hectares reported in the 1961 Agricultural
Census to 16.1 million hectares in the 1971 Agricultural Census.

29 See Ashraf, “State and Agrarian Relations,” 290–91; and Ervand Abrahamian and Farhad Kazemi, “The
Non-Revolutionary Peasantry in Modern Iran,” Iranian Studies 11 (1978): 250–304.

30 See Eric Hooglund, “Rural Participation in the Revolution,” MERIP Reports 87 (1980): 3–6.
31 For a survey of modes of revolutionary mobilization, see Ahmad Ashraf and Ali Banuazizi, “The
State, Classes, and Modes of Mobilization in the Iranian Revolution,” State, Culture, and Society 1, 3 (1985):
3–41; and Gil Azar, “Mubarizat-i dihqani dar Iran” (Peasant Struggles in Iran), Dunya (October 1980): 74–77.
32 Ono, Kheirabad Namah, 114; my translation.
33 Ibid., 117; my translation.
34 For a similar land expropriation in a village in the Marvdasht region, see Mary Hooglund, “One Village
in the Revolution,” MERIP Reports 87 (1980): 7–12.

35 The Sevener Commissions were formed to carry out the post-revolutionary Land Reform Law. They were
composed of two representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, one from the Ministry of the Interior, one
from Jihad-i Sazandigi, one from the Islamic Court, and one from the village council concerned: see Schirazi,
Islamic Development Policy, 161–63.
36 For details of the 1986 Land Reform Law, see ibid., 186–95.
37 Despite the existing hostility, a few villagers told me in private conversations that the majority of the
farmers are willing to return the 70–80 hectares of land to the landowner, Haj Arbab, and get their document
“sanad.” They believed that, “since the land seizure, as the illicit ‘harām’ land has been mixed with our
legitimate ‘halāl’ property, smoking, drug addiction, and fatal car accidents have been on the rise among our
youth.”
38 For an overall review of the revolution’s impact on the villages, see Mansur Vosooghi, Jamahshinasi-yi
rustai (Rural Sociology) (Tehran: Intisharat-i Kayhan, 1987), 229–89; and Mostafa Azkia, “Rural Society
and Revolution in Iran,” in Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution, ed. Eric Hooglund (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 2002), 96–119.
39 On the decline of domestic capital formation in agriculture, see Kambiz H. Kiyani and Mohamad R.
Alizadeh, “Barrisi-yi avamil muasir bar sarmayi guzari-yi bakhsh-i khususi dar kishavarzi-i Iran” (A Study
on the Factors Affecting Private Sector Investment in Iranian Agriculture), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsiah
8 (2000): 45–73; and Ahmad Mojtahed and Hadi S. Esfahani, “Agricultural Policy and Performance in Iran:
The Post-Revolutionary Experience,” World Development 17 (1989): 839–60.
40 Benjamin White, “Problems in the Empirical Analysis of Agrarian Differentiation,” in Agrarian Trans-
formation: Local Processes and the State in South East Asia, ed. Gillan Hart, Andrew Turton, and Benjamin
White (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 17.
41 For a discussion of a similar trend in Egyptian agriculture, see Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten
Westergaard, “Introduction: Directions of Change in Rural Egypt,” in Directions of Change in Rural

Egypt, ed. Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press,
1998).
42 Since urban bread is highly subsidized by the government, it is to the village producers’ economic
advantage to sell their wheat harvest to the market and buy family bread from urban bakeries.
43 As an illustration, the number of water pumps increased from twenty-seven in 1967 to sixty by 2002,
and the average amount of fertilizer used per irrigated hectare increased from 92 to 550 kilograms over this
period.
44 The 2002 sample household survey shows that all of the small and medium farm households except one
now have a refrigerator, television, and telephone, whereas in 1967, 39 percent of peasant households had just
a radio.
45 For a discussion of a similar trend in peasant transformation, see Caglar Keyder, “Paths of Rural Trans-
formation in Turkey,” Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (1983): 34–50.

46 For a discussion of theoretical perspectives, see, among others, John Hariss, Capitalism and Peasant
Farming: Agrarian Structure and Ideology in Northern Tamil Nadu (Bombay: Oxford University Press,
1982); and Luis Llamli, “Small Modern Farmers: Neither Peasants nor Fully-Fledged Capitalists,” Journal of
Peasant Studies 15 (1988): 350–72.
47 Reinhold Loeffler, “Change and Continuity in Sisakht,” paper presented at the Fifth Biennial Conference
on Iranian Studies, 28–30 May 2004, Bethesda, Md.

48 Ono, Kheirabad Namah, 133–36.
49 Sohrab Behdad and Farhad Nomani, “Workers, Peasants, and Peddlers: A Study of Labor Stratification
in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” International Journal of Meddle East Studies 34 (2002): 667–90.

50 Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi kishavarzi kull-i kishvar, 1372 (National Census of Agriculture, 1993) (Tehran:
MAI, 1998).
51 For an empirical study of integrated crop/dairy farming in Fars Province, see Javad Torkamani and
Mahmood A. Borazjani, “Muqayisa-yi ulguha-yi bihinah-i vahidha-yi zirai va-damdari-yi infiradi va-talfiqi”
(A Comparative Study of Crop Farms with Integrated Crop/Dairy Farms), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsiah 7
(1999): 61–76.
52 It is interesting to note that this trend is much stronger in Shishdangi when compared with the other
rural areas in the Marvdasht region, where the share of male employment in agricultural and nonagricultural
occupations were 55.6 percent and 44.4 percent, respectively, in 1996: see Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi nufus
va-maskan shahristan-i marvdasht, 1375 (National Census of Population and Housing—Marvdasht Region,
1996) (Tehran: MAI, 1997), 29.
53 Sarshumari-yi nufus va-maskan kull-i kishvar, 1335 (National Census of Population and Housing, 1956)
(Tehran: Vizarat-i Kishvar, 1956); Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi nufus va-maskan kull-i kishvar, 1375 (National
Census of Population and Housing, 1996) (Tehran: MAI, 1997).
54 Loeffler, “Change and Continuity,” 7.
55 For a discussion of similar trends in a village northwest of Shiraz, see Eric Hooglund, “Letter from an
Iranian Village,” Journal of Palestinian Studies 27 (1997): 76–84.

56 Nicholas S. Hopkins, “The Agrarian Transition and the Household in Rural Egypt,” in Household
Economies and Their Transformations, Monographs in Economic Anthropology, no. 3, ed. Morgan D.
Maclachlan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 155–72.
57 Azkia, “Rural Society and Revolution in Iran,” 101–103.
58 In the 1967 study, khwushnishins often expressed their overall life conditions as being destitute and
powerless. They did not express such a negative outlook on life during interviews conducted in 2002.
59 Hopkins, “Agrarian Transition,” 157.
60 Netting, Smallholders, Householders, 216.

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 37 (2005), 327–349.

Printed in the United States of America

Amir Ismail Ajami

© 2005 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/05 $12.00

This study is a comparative analysis of data collected by my 1967 baseline study

Population 784 1,335a 70

a The village population is for 1996, as given by the 1996 Census.

Mean Total Mean Total

Capitalist farm 1 — 500 41.1 1 — 500 41.1

farming by adopting new agricultural technologies and increasing crop diversification,

of both peasant capitalist farming and large-scale agricultural enterprises, representing

TABLE 3 Number and area of holdings by production system: Shishdangi

Prerevolution: agricultural year 1966–67

Postrevolution: agricultural year 2000–01

Changes in the Agricultural Production System

Prerevolution: agricultural year 1966–67

Postrevolution: agricultural year 2000–01

capitalist farm in 1966–67.

1 22 19.0 4.2 — — 780d 123.4 300.8 100 —

Source: 2002 field study.

Diversification of Occupational Structure

TABLE 6 Distribution of employed male population age 10 years or older according to

Agriculture 203 86.8 67 45.9

construction, they identified farm labor as their main occupation.

Source: Ajami, Shishdangi, chapter 4, table 5; 2002 field study.

means horticulture, has become a sideline, producing, however, . . . substantial additional

Shifts in Social Stratification

n.a. not available

180 (2001 consumer price index 18,004/1967 index 100).

bourgeoisie.57 The latter includes shopkeepers, small traders, moneylenders, artisans,

medium commercial agriculture developed, promoted by the post-revolutionary regime.

Rural Sociology) (Shiraz: Pahlavi University, 1969).

Census to 16.1 million hectares in the 1971 Agricultural Census.

Non-Revolutionary Peasantry in Modern Iran,” Iranian Studies 11 (1978): 250–304.

in the Revolution,” MERIP Reports 87 (1980): 7–12.

Westergaard, “Introduction: Directions of Change in Rural Egypt,” in Directions of Change in Rural

formation in Turkey,” Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (1983): 34–50.

on Iranian Studies, 28–30 May 2004, Bethesda, Md.

in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” International Journal of Meddle East Studies 34 (2002): 667–90.

Iranian Village,” Journal of Palestinian Studies 27 (1997): 76–84.

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