The materialist theories of revolution are critically discussed in this chapter. These theories include realistic conflict theory, resource mobilization theory,social dominance theory, elite theory, system justification theory, and the Five-Stage Model of intergroup relations. On the surface, these theories place psychological science in the periphery and assume material factors to be the main drivers of revolutions. However, because the psychological interpretation of material conditions is given a central place, psychology does play an important role in materialist theories. Also, the father of materialist accounts, Karl Marx, gave importance to psychological factors through concepts such as false consciousness. Individuals experience false consciousness when they are unaware of their true group membership and collective interests. System justification theory is particularly influenced by the idea of false consciousness. Elite theory and the Five-Stage Model present a cyclical rather than linear model of historical development, suggesting that group-based inequalities tend to continue, even after revolutions.

This chapter discusses how the volume charts the 1979 Iranian Revolution by examining the complex interplay of space and time that made the revolution possible and conceptions of the global contested. What unites the multidisciplinary collection of authors is that they all treat the global, national, regional, or local as neither natural, preexisting, nor opposed to one another; instead, they assume that these scales are coproduced in specific historical contexts. Globalizing the Iranian Revolution in this manner is an enterprise in recovering the histories of the revolution non-teleologically and to think of global history as multidirectional and not emanating from a single epicenter or from “the global” to “the local.” Specifically, Global 1979 presents five discrete propositions: (1) geographic and archival margins are powerful means to decenter political struggles; (2) global guerrilla tactics politicized space before and after the revolution; (3) tracing genealogies allows us to think simultaneously, rather than linearly about causation; (4) the circulation of expertise left divisive imprints on society; (5) part of what gave the revolution meaning was imagining the world. Collectively and individually, the chapters disrupt familiar stories and interrupt hackneyed historical sequences by making us attuned to configurations of space and time obfuscated by a penchant to explain outcomes, assign responsibility, and second-guess decisions.