Iran has one of the highest rates of road traffic accidents worldwide and according to a recent UNICEF report, the current rate of road accidents in Iran is 20 times more than the world average. Using extensive interviews with a variety of Iranians from a range of backgrounds, this book explores their dangerous driving habits and the explanations for their disregard for traffic laws. It argues that Iranians' driving behaviour is an indicator of how they have historically related to each other and to their society at large, and how they have maintained a form of social order through law, culture and religion. By considering how ordinary Iranians experience the traffic problem in their cities and how they describe traffic rules, laws, authorities and the rights of other citizens, Driving Culture in Iran provides an original and valuable insight into Iranian legal, social and political culture.
In Urban and Visual Culture in Contemporary Iran, Pedram Dibazar argues that everyday life in Iran is a rich domain of social existence and cultural production. Regular patterns of day-to-day practice in Iran are imbued with forms of expressivity that are unmarked and inconspicuous, but have remarkable critical value for a cultural study of contemporary society. Blended into the rhythms of everyday life are nonconformist modes of presence, subtle in their visibility and non-confrontational in their resistance to the established societal norms and structures. This volume is about such everyday tactics and creativity as lived in space, visualised in cultural forms and communicated through media. Through its analysis of familiar everyday experiences, Urban and Visual Culture in Contemporary Iran covers a wide range of ordinary practices-such as walking, driving, shopping and doing or watching sports-and spatial conditions-such as streets, cars, rooftops, shopping centres and stadiums. It also explores a variety of cultural formations, including film, photography, architecture, literature, visual arts, television and digital media. This book offers new ways of thinking about visual and urban cultures by highlighting a politics of everyday life that is conditioned on concerns over visibility and presence.
The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.
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 socio-political instability and violence is the subject matter of this study. Michel Foucault’s conceived relation between the production of truth and production of wealth captures the essence of hypothesis offered in this study. Foucault (1980: 93–94) maintains that “In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must produce wealth; indeed we must produce truth in order to produce wealth in the first place.” Based on a hybrid methodology combining hermeneutics of understanding and hermeneutics of suspicion, this monograph proposes that the failure to produce wealth has had particular roots in the failure in the production of truth and trust. At the heart of the proposed theoretical model is the following formula: the Iranian subject’s confused preference structure culminates in the formation of unstable coalitions which in turn leads to institutional failure, creating a chaotic social order and a turbulent history as experienced by the Iranian nation in the modern era. As such, the society oscillates between the chaotic states of socio-political anarchy emanating from irreconcilable differences between and within social assemblages and their affiliated hybrid forms of regimes of truth in the springs of freedom and repressive states of order in the winters of discontent. Each time, after the experience of chaos, the order is restored based on the emergence of a final arbiter (Iranian leviathan) as the evolved coping strategy for achieving conflict resolution. This highly volatile truth cycle produces the experience of socio-economic backwardness and violence. The explanatory power of the theoretical framework offered in the study exploring the relation between the production of truth, trust, and wealth is demonstrated via providing historical examples from strong events of Iranian modern history. The significant policy implications of the model are explored. This monograph will appeal to researchers, scholars, graduate students, policy makers and anyone interested in the Middle Eastern politics, Iran, development studies and political economy.
This book examines the sociolinguistics of some of Iran’s languages at home and in the diaspora. The first part of the book examines the politics of minority languages and the presence of hegemonic discourses which favour Persian (Farsi) in Iran, exploring issues such as language maintenance and shift, linguistic ideologies and practices among Azerbaijani and Kurdish-speaking communities. The authors then go on to examine Iranians’ linguistic ideologies, practices and (trans)national identity construction in the diaspora, investigating both the challenges of maintaining a home language and the strategies and linguistic repertoires employed when constructing a diasporic identity away from home. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of minority languages and communities, diaspora and migration studies, and language policy and planning.
"This edited volume presents diverse case studies about the implications of civic ecology practices worldwide. It answers how civic ecology practices emerge, the role the practices play in the ability of communities and individuals to address social-ecological stresses, and given climate-associated disturbances, what strategies can be used to expand impacts of community driven practices to foster large-scale resilience and sustainability"--
Honor killing is mainly practiced in South Asian, Middle East and Arab countries but it has global ramifications as citizens migrate to Western European countries and North America. Honor killings and honor related crimes often diminish women’s dignity and the achievements of feminist movements, along with other citizens along the gender spectrum. The socio-psychological issues of honor killings influence further study into gender and sexuality, diversity, culture and population, criminology, and law. A comparative study of the laws of various countries related to honor killing may help showcase the descent of caste and religious prejudices across generations. Criminological Analyses on Global Honor Killing analyzes the impact of honor-based crimes around the world. The book explores the ideology behind honor killing as well as the role of patriarchal societies in enhancing the crime. It also covers socio-cultural based influences while further understanding the complexity of family dynamics, class conflicts, and immigration in relation to this crime. This book covers topics such as criminology, feminism, and sociology, and is a useful resource for criminologists, historians, policymakers, government officials, theologists, feminists, academicians, and researchers.
The world's legal professions have undergone dramatic changes in the 30 years since publication of the landmark three-volume Lawyers in Society, which launched comparative sociological studies of lawyers. This is the first of two volumes in which scholars from a wide range of disciplines, countries and cultures document and analyse those changes. The present volume presents reports on 46 countries, with broad coverage of North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and former communist countries. These national reports address: the impact of globalisation and neoliberalism on national legal professions (the relationship of lawyers and their professional associations to the state and tensions between state and citizenship); changes in lawyer demography (rapidly growing numbers and the profession's efforts to retain control, the entry of women and obstacles to full gender equality, ethnic diversity); legal education (the proliferation of institutions and pedagogic innovation); the regulation of lawyers; structures of production (especially the growth of large firms and the impact of technology and paraprofessionals); the distribution of lawyers across roles; and access to justice (state-funded legal aid and pro-bono services). The juxtaposition of the reports reveals the dramatic transformations of professional rationales, labour markets, and working practices and the multiple contingencies of the role of lawyers in societies experiencing increasing juridification within a new geopolitical order.
The field of socio-legal research has encountered three fundamental challenges over the last three decades – it has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to legal doctrine, for failing to develop a sound theoretical foundation and for not keeping pace with the effects of the increasing globalization and internationalization of law, state and society. This book examines these three challenges from a methodological standpoint. It addresses the first two by demonstrating that legal sociology has much to say about justice as a kind of social experience and has always engaged theoretically with forms of normativity, albeit on its own empirical terms rather than on legal theory’s analytical terms. The book then explores the third challenge, a result of the changing nature of society, by highlighting the move from the industrial relations of early modernity to the post-industrial conditions of late modernity, an age dominated by information technology. It poses the question whether socio-legal research has sufficiently reassessed its own theoretical premises regarding the relationship between law, state and society, so as to grasp the new social and cultural forms of organization specific to the twenty-first century’s global societies.
"A sympathetic and evocative portrait of the Iranian people, their habits, customs and histories ... Essential reading." - Dr. Stephanie Cronin, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford The eyes of the world are on Iran, from nuclear issues to women's rights to Iran's perspective on Palestine. Yet a strictly political view does not allow for an accurate or complete outlook on this important and facinating country. In Among the Iranians, Greek-born author Sofia A. Koutlaki shares the lessons she's learned firsthand as a foreigner living in Tehran. Through memorable anecdotes and in-depth explanations of Iranian customers, Koutlaki presentd a side of Iran that foreigners rarely see. The author's insight challenges readers to dispel their previous notions and judgements to see Iran at its heart - warm, inviting and rich with tradition. Among the Iranians is also an indispensable practical guide, offering insight about Iranian dress, etiquette and even food.
