What's new in Iranian Studies?
Or: My reading list for 2024, of work that I missed and probably should know already (and now you do, too)
Every since working as a Postdoc, I have little time nor incentive to read organically. During my PhD, working on the PhD meant: Reading. Or writing, and then noticing that clearly more reading was necessary. Or reading because I scheduled reading hours, not to be disrupted by anything else.
I have long since moved on and am not working on a project like a dissertation that compels me to read. So every now and then, I make a reading list, just to see what is out there and to have a little bit to read. And since this Substack is still in the experimental phase, why not share this reading list? After all, I used to share literature I found compelling on Social Media all the time.
This time, I was focussed on politics in Iran, and these are some texts on my reading list which look very promising:
Moghadam, V. M. (2024). The gendered politics of Iran-U.S. relations: sanctions, the JCPOA and women’s security. Third World Quarterly, 45(7), 1199–1218.
For starters, Moghadam is one of the O.G.’s of scholarship on feminism in the Middle East. I am fairly certain I read her work during my undergraduate years (although memory might be hazy). So seeing that she published something on sanctions in Iran, and their reading from a feminist-IR perspective, is always good reason to have a look. A first look confirms this: Its a good read and summary of how sanctions impact welfare and security of women. Even if you support sanctions against Iran, here you will find plenty of arguments to their limitations and moral implications.
Nikpour, G. (2024). The Incarcerated Modern: Prisons and Public Life in Iran. Stanford University Press.
Now this one I am a tad excited about. Prisons are always insightful prisms into their respective societies, unveiling the political structures shaping them. In Iran, with its history of repression against social movements, be it under the Shah or the IRI, prisons are especially interesting. So to see a contemporary book published that covers a century of incarceration and the politics surrounding it just sounds like a great read.
Siavoshi, S. (2024). Afghans in Iran: the state and the working of immigration policies. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 51(1), 209-223.
I genuinely think few political realms tell you more about contemporary Iranian politics than migration. The protests in 2022 exhibited a degree of intersectional awareness that seem impossible without both internal and external migration creating exchanges between activists and political actors who might not have know about one another two decades ago. So this paper, which provides an overview of Iran’s policy towards Afghan migrants changed over time, and to what extent this was related to questions of control and societal actors, promises quite a few insights into those questions.
Rivetti, P. (2024). Researching social movements in authoritarian states: preparing and conducting fieldwork in Iran and Turkey. In Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Social Movements (pp. 91-101). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Speaking of O.G.’s: Hard not to recommend a chapter from Paola Rivetti, whose work on protest movements in Iran informed alot of my own research and whose publications on methodology I keep recommending to PhD students working on entirely different case studies.
Kadivar, M. A., Ketchley, N., Sotoudeh-Sherbaf, A., & Barrie, C. (2024). Online calls for protest and offline mobilization in autocracies: evidence from the 2017 Dey Protests in Iran. European Sociological Review.
This paper is both interesting and boring. It shows something very unsurprising: That calls for protest on Social Media make it likely that people go to a protest. But the 2017 protests are a curious example for this as they were a rather spontaneous matter. And this paper actually shows the kind of local mobilization that made them possible, and tests this with what looks like solid methodology. I might have to look a bit deeper into it to know how useful it is, but for now, an interesting read!
Sarhaddi, R. (2024). Legitimation of governments by renaming of everyday things and places: a comparison of the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic in Iran. Social Semiotics, 34(2), 180–200.
If I were to rank this list, this article would be the one I am least certain I will read this year. That is because the basic premise is rather on the nose: The IRI changed names and symbols which originate from the Pahlavi era, a political system that it overcame a full 45 years ago. Why would it not? And at the same time, the question of (re-)naming practices is a highly contentious one, with the state imposing its own narrative on populations that might resist due to different reasons, inclusing minorities using names in their local languages. So anything raising this topic might be worth a read.