War of Clubs: Struggle for Space in Abadan and the 1946 Oil Strike

TY - CHAP

T1 - War of Clubs: Struggle for Space in Abadan and the 1946 Oil Strike

AU - Elling, Rasmus Christian

PY - 2016/3/8

Y1 - 2016/3/8

N2 - This chapter challenges simplistic representations of the intercommunal violence that took place during the 1946 oil strike in Abadan, in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, as rooted either in primordial ethnic hatred or in an imperialist plot. The chapter reconstructs in detail several days of tensions and clashes, and places them within a historical context of coercive industrial urban development, labor activism, ethnic mobilization and global politics. Using oil company records, national archives and personal accounts, the focus of the analysis is the socio-spatial unit of the club as a place for socialization, a site of strife in the life of an oil city, and as a key political space with significance in the evolution of the modern Iranian nation state.

AB - This chapter challenges simplistic representations of the intercommunal violence that took place during the 1946 oil strike in Abadan, in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, as rooted either in primordial ethnic hatred or in an imperialist plot. The chapter reconstructs in detail several days of tensions and clashes, and places them within a historical context of coercive industrial urban development, labor activism, ethnic mobilization and global politics. Using oil company records, national archives and personal accounts, the focus of the analysis is the socio-spatial unit of the club as a place for socialization, a site of strife in the life of an oil city, and as a key political space with significance in the evolution of the modern Iranian nation state.

UR - http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24893&bottom_ref=subject

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9780804795845

SN - 9780804797528

SP - 189

EP - 210

BT - Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East

A2 - Fuccaro, Nelida

PB - Stanford University Press

ER -