ABSTRACT
The vast social movements that swept across Iran in 1978-1979 and toppled the shah from power through an unprecedented combination of massive unarmed street demonstrations, a determined general strike lasting several months, and a guerrilla uprising in February 1979 have by generated a considerable body of social science literature. Some Western historians and social scientists reject the dependency argument in part because it can be so easily tied to this seemingly "crude" popular mythology. A central theoretical contribution of the present study is to indicate a solution to the problem of integrating the world-system and modes of production perspectives on underdevelopment into the dependency paradigm. To clarify these propositions theoretically, various strands in the sociologies of development and social change must be critically fashioned into a broad and flexible framework of analysis. The logic of comparative-historical method will be turned upon a single historically and culturally significant country, Iran, which experienced social change in several historical epoches.
