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The Breakaway Boss: Semiperipheral Innovations and the Rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad

Journal of World-Systems Research

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Title The Breakaway Boss: Semiperipheral Innovations and the Rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad
 
Creator Harris, Kevan
 
Description Within a year of becoming president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad had already confused much of the world. Explanations of his political ascent in a semi-peripheral country rely largely on the concept of charismatic authority. This is a non-explanation, however, as the charismatic historical figure who seemingly holds creative command over the social world also has to be created. Instead, I argue that Ahmadinezhad’s trajectory from an Islamist engineering student to the presidency of a post-revolutionary state highlights three mechanisms of social-political innovation that are bounded by space and time: the situated overlap of social capital, the paradox of vertical clientage, and the breakaway of the machine boss. These mechanisms are usually misread as timeless signifiers of national backwardness or as charismatic dei ex machina. By showing these mechanisms at work through biography, we can challenge scholarly and popular explanations of social change that implicitly rehash modernization theory.
 
Publisher University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
 
Date 2015-08-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/13
10.5195/jwsr.2015.13
 
Source Journal of World-Systems Research; Vol. 21 No. 2 (2015): Special Issue: World-System Biographies; 417-447
1076-156X
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/13/593
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Kevan Harris
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0