Historical Sociology of Indigenous Modernity: A Comparative Study of Abbas Milani (1949- ) and Mohammad Tavakoli Targhi (1957- )

Subject Areas : Political Developments in Iran

Mohammad Jalal  Makhani ¹ (PhD Candidate in Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran)
Saeid  Makhani ² (Ph.D. (Political Science- political thought) Education / University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran)

Received: 2023-02-04 Accepted : 2023-04-25 Published : 2023-12-20

Keywords: Mohammad Tavakoli Targhi, Iran, historical sociology, modernity, Indigenous modernity, Abbas Milani,

Abstract :

Indigenous modernity in the historical sociology of Iran has always been one of the important and focal issues and different definitions and descriptions of this concept have been presented. The abundance of such descriptions has made these concepts, to a large extent, turn into abstract and undefined categories. In the following article, the authors try to provide a comparative and critical plan of the content of the works of two scholars in the field, Abbas Milani (1328-H.) and Mohammad Tawakli Targhi (1336-H.), while examining the category of indigenous modernity; Milani and Tavakoli Targhi are among those who believe in indigenous modernization in Iran. For this reason, we will review various aspects of their thought in the following lines by reading their texts so that we can at least explain the evolution of this concept to these two authors and answer this question: How these two thinkers consider the result of modernity as a native continuity in line with Iran's historical-cultural developments and not as an imported development from the western world.