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This book offers a new methodological and theoretical approach to the highly sensitive and complicated issue of violence against women in contemporary Iran. Challenging the widespread notion that secularisation and modernisation are the keys to emancipating women, the author instead posits that domestic violence is deeply rooted in society and situated in the fundament of current discourses. Investigating how orthodox jurisprudence as mainstream discourse, together with social, legal and public norms, help to perpetuate the production and reproduction of physical, psychological, sexual and economical violence against women, the author presents and reflects upon narratives, experiences and th...
This study entails a theoretical reading of the Iranian modern history and follows an interdisciplinary agenda at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, economics, and politics and intends to offer a novel framework for the analysis of socio-economic development in Iran in the modern era. A brief review of Iranian modern history from the Constitutional Revolution to the Oil Nationalization Movement, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the recent Reformist and Green Movements demonstrates that Iranian people travelled full circle. This historical experience of socio-economic development revolving around the bitter question of “Why are we backward?” and its manifestation in perpetual...
This book offers a view of Iran through politics, history and literature, showing how the three angles combine. Iran, being a revolutionary society, experienced two great revolutions within the short span of just seventy years, from the 1900s to the 1970s. Both were massive revolts of the society against the state; the main objective of the first being to establish lawful government to make modernisation possible, and the second, to overthrow the absolute and arbitrary state, though this time mainly under the banner of religion and Marxism-Leninism and anti-Westernism. Neither of them succeeded in their lofty ideals for reasons that are explained and analysed within. The author also offers a...
Despite the growing significance of social movements worldwide, scholarship on the subject remains largely Western in nature, with studies written primarily by Western scholars and based on the experiences of Western cultures and societies. This book makes an important contribution to the study of social movements in non-Western societies by examining their development in Iran. With a particular focus on the recent environmental movement, the author sheds new light on the implications and significance of these movements. Drawing on in-depth original research, the case study of the environmental movement is integrated into a historical and comparative analysis. Implementing the new social mov...
A country marked by controversy, Iran’s social, cultural and political dynamics are too often reduced to a few misleading clichés. Islamism is widely considered to shape all social relations in Iranian society and, while Iranian society is indeed Islamic, this term’s multiple meanings in everyday life and practices go far beyond the naïve and monolithic idea we are used to. The Thousand and One Borders of Iran analyses travel as a social practice, exploring how diasporas, margins and so-called peripheries are central in the construction of a national identity and thus revealing the complexities of Iranian history and society. Written by a leading anthropologist, it draws upon fieldwork...
Baron Rosen’s Babi/Baha’i archives presents private letters and diplomatic correspondence from the nineteenth century, preserved among the prominent Russian scholar Baron Victor Rosen’s materials in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg branch. The materials cast light on the first studies of the Babi and Baha’i Faiths, new religious phenomena which, in Baron Rosen’s time, were emerging in Persia. Iran has always been a strategic concern of Russia’s geopolitical interests and the traditional importance which has been given to Persia has manifested itself in hundreds of documents and writings collected by the pre-revolutionary Russian diplomats and scholar...
Rather than a centralized state, Iran in the nineteenth century was a delicate balance between tribal groups, urban merchant communities, religious elites, and an autocratic monarchy. While Russia gained an increasingly dominant political role in Iran over the course of this century, Russian influence was often challenged by banditry on the roads, riots in the cities, and the seeming arbitrariness of the Shah. Iran and Russian Imperialism develops a comprehensive picture of Russia’s historical entanglements with one of its most important neighbours in Asia. It recounts how the Russian Empire strived to gain political influence at the Persian court, promote Russian trade, and secure the eno...
The word motreb finds its roots in the Arabic verb taraba, meaning ‘to make happy.’ Originally denoting all musicians in Iran, motrebi came to be associated, pejoratively, with the cheerful vulgarity of the lowbrow entertainer. In Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment, GJ Breyley and Sasan Fatemi examine the historically overlooked motrebi milieu, with its marginalized characters, from luti to gardan koloft and mashti, as well as the tenacity of motreb who continued their careers against all odds. They then turn to losanjelesi, the most pervasive form of Iranian popular music that developed as motrebi declined, and related musical forms in Iran and its diasporic popular cultural centre...
Critical approaches to the study of topics related to Persian literature and Iranian culture have evolved in recent decades. The essays included in this volume collectively demonstrate the most recent creative approaches to the study of the Persian language, literature, and culture, and the way these methodologies have progressed academic debate. Topics covered include; culture, cognition, history, the social context of literary criticism, the problematics of literary modernity, and the issues of writing literary history. More specifically, authors explore the nuances of these topics; literature and life, poetry and nature, culture and literature, women and literature, freedom of literature,...
This book re-examines privacy in a world where genome sequencing is cheap, databases can be large, and access rights are hidden.