Reflections on different aspects of Reza Shah’s absolute/modern state; a Durkheimian structural perspective

Modern state as a critical institution and, of course, a social phenomenon didn’t emerge acci-dentally in Iran, but rather originated from a complex set of intellectual and concrete conditions. With execution and operationalization of various action plans under the process of moderniza-tion in political and societal area, Reza Shah’s new state sought to initiate structural transfor-mations and establishment of a new division of labor in the society that was required for state-building. Following these action plans, the military power of government seriously enforced and local governors, who enjoyed considerable authority in Qajar period, eliminated completely so as to develop a centralized governance of modern state as a united authority structure. As a re-sult of such incorporation of previously fragmented social institutions, a kind of modern state in an authoritative and absolute sense existed in Iran and consequently redefined the Iranian identi-ty in a distinctive form that was predominantly based on nation-state ideology. Accordingly, by using a descriptive-analytic method, this article tries to find a convincing answer for the ques-tion that: how could we explain the raise of modern state in Iran by application of Durkheim’s theory Division of labor. Therefore, the hypothesis implies that given the increasing qualita-tive/quantitative extension of social arena and development of professional-occupational fields, as well as transformation of social structures toward a partial integration in global system politi-cally and economically, new institutions with differentiated functions appeared that facilitated the very modern state-building in Iran at the time of Reza Shah’s rule