Download or read book Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran written by Danny Postel and published by Paradigm. This book was released on 2006 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iran depicted in the headlines is a rogue state ruled by ever-more-defiant Islamic fundamentalists. Yet inside the borders, an unheralded transformation of a wholly different political bent is occurring. A "liberal renaissance," as one Iranian thinker terms it, is emerging in Iran, and in this pamphlet, Danny Postel charts the contours of the intellectual upheaval. Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran examines the conflicted positions of the Left toward Iran since 1979, and, in particular, critically reconsiders Foucault's connection to the Iranian Revolution. Postel explores the various elements of the subtle liberal revolution and proposes a host of potential implications of this transformation for Western liberalism. He examines the appeal of Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin among Iranian intellectuals and ponders how their ideas appear back to us when refracted through a Persian prism. Postel closes with a thought-provoking conversation with eminent Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo. A provocative and incisive polemic highly relevant to our times, Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran will be of interest to anyone who wants to get beyond alarmist rhetoric and truly understand contemporary Iran.
Download or read book Sectarianization written by Nader Hashemi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, 'sectarianism' has become a catch-all explanation for the region's troubles. The turmoil is attributed to 'ancient sectarian differences', putatively primordial forces that make violent conflict intractable. In media and policy discussions, sectarianism has come to possess trans-historical causal power. This book trenchantly challenges the lazy use of 'sectarianism' as a magic-bullet explanation for the region's ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Through multiple case studies -- including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait -- this book maps the dynamics of sectarianisation, exploring not only how but also why it has taken hold. The contributors examine the constellation of forces -- from those within societies to external factors such as the Saudi-Iran rivalry -- that drive the sectarianisation process and explore how the region's politics can be de-sectarianised. Featuring leading scholars -- and including historians, anthropologists, political scientists and international relations theorists -- this book will redefine the terms of debate on one of the most critical issues in international affairs today.
Download or read book The People Reloaded written by Nader Hashemi and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive collection of essays and documents on the movement behind Iran's mass protests Since June of 2009, the Islamic Republic of Iran has seen the most dramatic political upheaval in its three decades of rule. What began as a series of mass protests over the official results of a presidential election—engendering the slogan “Where is My Vote?”—has grown into something much larger, indeed the largest political protest since the 1979 revolution. The Green Movement has been described as “an Iranian intifada,” a “great emancipatory event,” a “grassroots civil rights movement a century in the making,” and “something quite extraordinary, perhaps even a social revolution.” What are the movement’s aims—are they revolutionary, reformist, or something else altogether? Does it have a chance of fundamentally changing Iranian politics or removing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office? This momentous anthology explores these critical questions and others by assembling the key statements, communiqués, manifestos, interviews, and debates to have emerged from this vibrant social movement—many of which are translated and published here for the first time. This indispensable volume is the first to bring together the leading voices and key players in Iran’s Green Movement, providing an intellectual and political road map to this turning point in Iran’s history and a vital resource for the study of Iran, social movements, and the future of the Middle East.
Download or read book Hidden Liberalism written by Hussein Banai and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compared to rival ideologies, liberalism has fared rather poorly in modern Iran. This is all the more remarkable given the essentially liberal substance of various social and political struggles – for liberal legality, individual rights and freedoms, and pluralism – in the century-long period since the demise of the Qajar dynasty and the subsequent transformation of the country into a modern nation-state. The deeply felt but largely invisible purchase of liberal political ideas in Iran challenges us to think more expansively about the trajectory of various intellectual developments since the emergence of a movement for reform and constitutionalism in the late nineteenth century. It complicates parsimonious accounts of Shi'ism, secularism, socialism, nationalism, and royalism as defining or representative ideologies of particular eras. Hidden Liberalism offers a critical examination of the reasons behind liberalism's invisible yet influential status, and its attendant ethical quandaries, in Iranian political and intellectual discourses.
Download or read book The Syria Dilemma written by Nader Hashemi and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current conflict in Syria has killed more than 80,000 people and displaced four million, yet most observers predict that the worst is still to come. And for two years, the international community has failed to take action. World leaders have repeatedly resolved not to let atrocities happen in plain view, but the legacy of the bloody and costly intervention in Iraq has left policymakers with little appetite for more military operations. So we find ourselves in the grip of a double burden: the urge to stop the bleeding in Syria, and the fear that attempting to do so would be Iraq redux. What should be done about the apparently intractable Syrian conflict? This book focuses on the ethical and political dilemmas at the heart of the debate about Syria and the possibility of humanitarian intervention in today's world. The contributors--Syria experts, international relations theorists, human rights activists, and scholars of humanitarian intervention--don't always agree, but together they represent the best political thinking on the issue. The Syria Dilemma includes original pieces from Michael Ignatieff, Mary Kaldor, Radwan Ziadeh, Thomas Pierret, Afra Jalabi, and others. Contributors: Asli Bâli, Richard Falk, Tom Farer, Charles Glass, Shadi Hamid, Nader Hashemi, Christopher Hill, Michael Ignatieff, Afra Jalabi, Rafif Jouejati, Mary Kaldor, MarcLynch, Vali Nasr, Thomas Pierret, Danny Postel, Aziz Rana, Christoph Reuter, Kenneth Roth, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Fareed Zakaria, Radwan Ziadeh, Stephen Zunes
Download or read book Strategic Interests in the Middle East written by Jack Covarrubias and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a cultural centre for Islamic interests across the world and as a focus point for increasing levels of economic and security interdependence, the Middle East remains a stage on which international politics will be played for the foreseeable future. This comprehensive study looks at the important international and regional actors and their interaction with, and reaction to, US foreign policy toward the region. The volume elucidates the trends in great power interest and interaction in the Middle East and studies the impact of the United States as the region's foremost military power. It highlights the changing nature of actors' relationships with the US and each other as their interests and policies evolve in response to changes in the region. Scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and the interested public will find this volume a useful guide and an ideal companion work for courses on the Middle East, US foreign policy and international security issues.
Download or read book The Ground Between written by Veena Das and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The guiding inspiration of this book is the attraction and distance that mark the relation between anthropology and philosophy. This theme is explored through encounters between individual anthropologists and particular regions of philosophy. Several of the most basic concepts of the discipline—including notions of ethics, politics, temporality, self and other, and the nature of human life—are products of a dialogue, both implicit and explicit, between anthropology and philosophy. These philosophical undercurrents in anthropology also speak to the question of what it is to experience our being in a world marked by radical difference and otherness. In The Ground Between, twelve leading anthropologists offer intimate reflections on the influence of particular philosophers on their way of seeing the world, and on what ethnography has taught them about philosophy. Ethnographies of the mundane and the everyday raise fundamental issues that the contributors grapple with in both their lives and their thinking. With directness and honesty, they relate particular philosophers to matters such as how to respond to the suffering of the other, how concepts arise in the give and take of everyday life, and how to be attuned to the world through the senses. Their essays challenge the idea that philosophy is solely the province of professional philosophers, and suggest that certain modalities of being in the world might be construed as ways of doing philosophy. Contributors. João Biehl, Steven C. Caton, Vincent Crapanzano, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, Michael M. J. Fischer, Ghassan Hage, Clara Han, Michael Jackson, Arthur Kleinman, Michael Puett, Bhrigupati Singh
Download or read book The People Reloaded written by Nader Hashemi and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2010 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since June 2009, the Islamic Republic of Iran has seen the most dramatic political upheaval in three decades of rule. What began as a series of mass protests over the official results of a presidential election - engendering the slogan 'Where is My Vote?' - has grown into something much larger, indeed the largest political protest since the 1979 Revolution. This momentous anthology explores these critical questions through key statements, communiques, manifestos and the debates which have emerged from this vibrant social movement.
Download or read book Ethnic Identity and the State in Iran written by A. Saleh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-17 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the Islamic Republic has employed various strategies to mitigate the worst excesses of inter-ethnic tension while still securing a Shi'a dominated "Persian hegemony," the systematic neglect of ethnic groups by both the Islamic Republic and its predecessor regime has resulted in the politicization of ethnic identity in Iran.
Download or read book The Radicality of Love written by Srećko Horvat and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would happen if we could stroll through the revolutionary history of the 20th century and, without any fear of the possible responses, ask the main protagonists - from Lenin to Che Guevara, from Alexandra Kollontai to Ulrike Meinhof - seemingly naïve questions about love? Although all important political and social changes of the 20th century included heated debates on the role of love, it seems that in the 21st century of new technologies of the self (Grindr, Tinder, online dating, etc.) we are faced with a hyperinflation of sex, not love. By going back to the sexual revolution of the October Revolution and its subsequent repression, to Che's dilemma between love and revolutionary commitment and to the period of '68 (from communes to terrorism) and its commodification in late capitalism, the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat gives a possible answer to the question of why it is that the most radical revolutionaries like Lenin or Che were scared of the radicality of love. What is so radical about a seemingly conservative notion of love and why is it anything but conservative? This short book is a modest contribution to the current upheavals around the world - from Tahrir to Taksim, from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong, from Athens to Sarajevo - in which the question of love is curiously, surprisingly, absent.
Download or read book Sexual Politics in Modern Iran written by Janet Afary and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-09 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the history of Iran's sexual revolution from the nineteenth century to today. The resilience of the Iranian people forms the basis of this sexual revolution, one that is promoting reforms in marriage and family laws, and demanding more egalitarian gender and sexual relations.
Download or read book American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26 1 written by Muhammad Aziz and published by International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). This book was released on 2009-11-02 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is a double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and meta-physics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam. Submissions are subject to a blind peer review process.
Download or read book A Foreign Policy for the Left written by Michael Walzer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Something that has been needed for decades: a leftist foreign policy with a clear moral basis Foreign policy, for leftists, used to be relatively simple. They were for the breakdown of capitalism and its replacement with a centrally planned economy. They were for the workers against the moneyed interests and for colonized peoples against imperial (Western) powers. But these easy substitutes for thought are becoming increasingly difficult. Neo-liberal capitalism is triumphant, and the workers' movement is in radical decline. National liberation movements have produced new oppressions. A reflexive anti-imperialist politics can turn leftists into apologists for morally abhorrent groups. In Michael Walzer's view, the left can no longer (in fact, could never) take automatic positions but must proceed from clearly articulated moral principles. In this book, adapted from essays published in Dissent, Walzer asks how leftists should think about the international scene--about humanitarian intervention and world government, about global inequality and religious extremism--in light of a coherent set of underlying political values.
Download or read book Drugs Deviancy and Democracy in Iran written by Janne Bjerre Christensen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, the government of the Islamic Republic initiated a stringent anti-drug campaign that included fining addicts, imprisonment, physical punishment and even the death penalty. Despite these measures, drug use was, and is still, commonplace. Based on her most recent fieldwork, Janne Bjerre Christensen explores the mounting problems of drug use in Iran, how treatment became legalized in 1998, how local NGOs offer methadone treatment in Tehran and face continuous political challenges in doing so, and how drug use is critically discussed in Iranian media and cinema. Drugs, Deviancy and Democracy in Iran is thus a unique account of Iran's recent social and political history, drawing important conclusions about the complexity of state power, and the growing impact of civil society, vital for all those interested in Iran's history, politics and society.
Download or read book Foucault in Iran 1978 1979 written by Johann Beukes and published by AOSIS. This book was released on 2020-12-31 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1978 Michel Foucault went to Iran as a distinguished intellectual – but novice political journalist – controversially reporting on the unfolding revolution, undeniably compromising and wounding his reputation in the European intellectual community. Given the revolution’s bloody aftermath and its violent theocratic development, is Foucault’s Iranian expedition simply to be understood as a critical error in judgement, with disastrous consequences for his legacy? What exactly did Foucault hope to achieve in Iran in 1978-1979, explicitly supporting the cause of the revolting masses and effectively isolating himself from the European intellectual community and the Western liberal tradition? The book investigates this open nerve in the Foucault scholarship by interpreting Foucault's primary texts from this period, commenting on the various positions in the scholarship over the past three decades, and eventually proposes that Foucault's 'mistake', resulting from his 'self-consciousness' and 'uncertainty', was indeed a highly philosophical endeavour, but was completely misinterpreted by his contemporaries and even his most noteworthy biographers. The issue of Foucault's involvement in Iran is still a relatively unexplored theme in Foucault research and one that is actually bypassed by the majority of Foucault scholars, since the general view is that it was a breathtaking mistake, comparable to Heidegger's flirtation with National Socialism. This book will provide value and advance knowledge in this area, firstly, by presenting the three concepts that are in my opinion key to understand Foucault's involvement in the Iranian revolution (Otherness, Present history and Political spirituality). Secondly, by providing a thorough overview of what really happened in Iran after Foucault arrived in Tehran in September 1978 (and what really happened was not conforming to the West's idea of progression, but an Iranian idea of progression, on its own terms). Thirdly, by disseminating Foucault's reports back to France, in a detailed and forensic fashion. Fourthly, by providing a solid overview of the interpretations on this issue (however reluctant and scarce) from the scholarship over the past three decades. Fifthly, by presenting Foucault's involvement in the Iranian revolution not as a mistake or a critical error in judgement, but as a deeply philosophical position that actually corresponds to many of Foucault's theoretical positions on power, death, madness, uncertainty, spirituality, Orientalism and Otherness, preceding the revolution in Iran. The detailed historical overview of Foucault's involvement in the Iranian revolution, the responsible and non-polemical overview of the scholarship's attempts to deal with the issue and the author's original interpretation and presentation of the legitimacy of Foucault's presence in Iran from September 1978 to April 1979. In an age where it has become urgent to reinterpret both Shia and Sunni legacies within the context of radicalised Islam, the book argues for a Foucaultian recognition of the 'Orient Other' - as nothing more than 'An Other Self'.
Download or read book Youth and Women Sociocultural Insecurity in Iran written by King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and published by King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS). This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing ideological gap between the Islamic state and its people, particularly youth and women, has never been wider in Iran. Women and youth advocating modern and Western lifestyles and norms are undermining the regime’s Islamic legitimacy. This article examines the hard-liners’ attempt to re-revolutionize Iran and to bring back the ideological Islamic values that increase the likelihood of societal insecurity and domestic disorder. Through this lens, it attempts to explore the increasing discontent among a large segment of Iranians, including liberal and secular groups, women’s rights groups, and the ever-increasing sociopolitical demands of the growing youth population.
Download or read book In Defense of Lost Causes written by Slavoj Zizek and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2009-10-19 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned philosophical sharpshooter looks for the kernel of truth in the fascist politics of the past—offering an adrenaline-fueled manifesto for universal values. Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In fear of the horrors of totalitarianism, should we submit ourselves to a miserable third way of economic liberalism and government-as-administration? In this combative major work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Žižek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should re-appropriate several “lost causes”—and look for the kernel of truth in the “totalitarian” politics of the past. Examining Heidegger’s seduction by fascism and Foucault’s flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the “right steps in the wrong direction.” He argues that while the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao, and the Bolsheviks ended in historic failure and monstrosity, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism and the valorization of soft, consensual, decentralized politics. Žižek claims that, particularly in light of the forthcoming ecological crisis, we should reinvent revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this Cause—even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
