Ajam Podcast #6: Social Welfare in Iran

Ajam Media Collective Podcast

In this episode, Rustin is joined by Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of[ A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017)](https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520280823). Kevan challenges commonly-held notions about the ideological rigidity of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He charts the development of social programs during the Pahlavi period, their continuation throughout the 1979 Revolution, and expansion during the Iran-Iraq War and Reconstruction Era. Additionally, Dr. Harris talks about the current challenges facing healthcare, social security, and other aid programs since 2009, from bureaucratic fragmentation and parallelism, austerity and sanctions, to a lack of a democratic structure for coherent policy making. Rustin closes out the episode with "Dummy Honar," a track from Kamyar's very own music project, [Yavaran](https://soundcloud.com/yavaran).