Simin Fadaee

India’s New Middle Class and the Critical Activist Milieu

One manifestation of India’s recent transformations and rapid economic growth has been the emergence of a new group referred to as the “new middle class.” The relatively recent and growing literature on this topic represents the new middle class as a relatively homogenous social group with specific lifestyles and politics. The main objective of this article is to critically engage with these homogenizing assumptions. Based on original research, I introduce presence of a group within the new middle class – critical activist milieu – who in their work and lifestyle are contentious and explicitly reject the bourgeoisie values and attitudes that are widely ascribed to the Indian new middle class.

Social Movements in Iran : Environmentalism and Civil Society

Introduction 1. Theoretical Framework 2. Grand Social Movements of Iran in Twentieth Century 3. Civil Society Discourse as Battleground of Societal Change 4. From a Movement for Civil Society towards a Movement for Environment 5. The Relevance of the Touraine/ Melucci Model in the Iranian Context 6. Conclusion

Post-contentious politics and Iran's first ecovillage

ABSTRACT The existing scholarship on alternative institutional designs around environmental issues mostly focuses on ideals, goals and practices of these designs. It remains unclear under which circumstances these initiatives emerge and expand. Moreover, those scholars who address the emergence and expansion of these initiatives focus on examples which are located in advanced industrialised societies. It remains unclear why and how these alternative institutions emerge in non-industrialised societies and countries which have not gone through the same growth path as their advanced industrialised counterparts. Consequently, transformative implication of these initiatives for broader social change in non-advanced industrialised societies has not been explored. In this paper, I show that in Iran the emergence of these alternative designs should be understood within the context of post-contentious politics. I present original research on a cooperative that embraces an alternative lifestyle and whose aim is to create Irans first ecovillage. This case study discusses one kind of response to the contraction of space for civil society and environmental non governmental organisations in Iran. The paper adds to our understanding of the interplay between democratisation processes and environmental activism.

The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Vulnerability

Abstract The Occupy movement has generated a significant amount of scholarly literature, most of which has focused on the movements tactics or goals, or sought to explain its emergence. Nevertheless, we lack an explanation for the movements broad appeal and mass support. In this article we present original research on Occupy in New York City, Detroit, and Berlin, which demonstrates that the movements heterogeneous participants coalesced around the concept of vulnerability. Vulnerability is an inability to adapt to shocks and stresses, and it inhibits social reproduction and prohibits social mobility. Rather than specifically discussing the wealth of elites per se, Occupy participants consistently expressed the feeling that the current political economic system safeguards elites and increases the vulnerability of everyone else. We argue that the Occupy movement has reworked the relationship among a range of political struggles that were hitherto disconnected (i.e. ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements) and rendered them complementary through the politics of vulnerability.

Ecotours and politics of fun in Iran: from contested state-society relations to emancipatory nature-society relations

This article shows how nature–society relations in Iran’s burgeoning ecotourism industry are influenced by power-laden state–society relations and the state’s regulation of public space. Based on original research, this article demonstrates that ecotours operate as a means through which young middle-class residents of Tehran practise fun beyond the socio-political restrictions they face in the city’s public sphere. Non-human nature represents a safe setting for these ecotourists to engage in restricted ‘unislamic’ practices of self-expression and socialization. In other words, the non-human nature functions as a zone of transgression. This article provides an example of how the nature–society interface can provide opportunities to defy conservative social norms in a restricted socio-political system and it shows that the influence of political systems on nature–society relations requires more explicit analysis. Moreover, it enhances our understanding of everyday politics in a society where social conducts in the public sphere are heavily controlled.

Environmentalism and Social Change in Iran

This chapter traces the emergence and evolution of the environmental movement in Iran from the launch of the nationwide reform movement, which began in the 1990s and generated unprecedented civil society mobilisations. It shows how the movement has changed in relation to its actors, strategies, objectives and targets, charting the trajectory of the environmental movement through two stages. What the author calls the ‘first wave environmentalism’ of the late 1990s and the early 2000s centred on claim-making within the organised sphere of civil society, while the second wave in the late 2000s changed its focus to individual lifestyle practices. This chapter critically examines this shift and its consequences for objectives, strategies and targets within the context in which the movement emerged and evolved. It shows how constraints on specific spaces of environmental activism spurred this transformation and forced a range of stakeholders to produce new spaces of environmentalism.

The Long Twentieth Century in Iran: Dynamics of Change, Continuity and Mobilizing Master Frames:

This article explores master frames of social movement mobilization over the course of the long twentieth century in Iran. It illustrates that while participants were diverse, democratization remained the dominant master frame of the grand social movements of the twentieth century. In this article, I present historical analyses of four social movements in Iran which demonstrate that although Iran’s integration into the capitalist world system fostered profound economic and social transformation, its political system remained comparatively unaffected. This explains why demands for political reforms served as key mobilizing frames for social movements. This continuity reveals a profound crisis of the Iranian political system, because although nationwide social movements have experienced success the state–society relationship remains fraught with contention.

Power and change in Iran: politics of contention and conciliation, edited by Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Farhi

while no credible North Korea observer posits that Kim Jong Un is considering preemptively launching nuclear weapons. Smith’s ambition in attempting to satisfy these various constituencies is bold, but the general reader will certainly be enlightened as a result. Finally, it is a surprising methodological choice to analyse marketization “from below” by largely relying on macro-level data. This is not to argue the national, international, and NGO sources that Smith uses are unhelpful. Smith diligently unpacks publicly available statistics to document the nature of marketization, such as on the makeup of the workforce (284), or on overlooked demographic groups including children in care homes (276). However, the analysis could have been enhanced by triangulation with data gathered from former North Korean citizens. This need not have inhibited Smith’s ability to make generalizable claims, and would certainly have helped probe the statistics used. For example, in discussing the role of women under the Kim Il Sung era, Smith cites a source from a government-based publishing house in North Korea to observe that working mothers received five months’ paid maternity leave (180). It is fair to note that such sources can provide data on the North Korean government perspective (6). However, such “facts”must not be taken for granted. Individual-level data could complement the macro-social, economic, and political data. This would enable an improved understanding of the motivations for North Koreans to engage in private economic transactions, and subsequently how and why marketization “from below” transformed North Korean society. These concerns are by no means fatal. General readers will enjoy a comprehensive account of North Korean history and society. Academic readers will also glean valuable insights from Smith’s assiduous analysis of publicly available data on howmarketization has transformed North Korean society. Overall, the book provides a powerful argument of why North Korean citizens must be viewed as the agents of change behind society’s transformation. Smith convinces that any future changes in North Korean society, or even to the North Korean state, will likely derive from North Korean people.

Women hawkers in Tehran’s metro: everyday politics and the production of public space

Tehran’s metro symbolises the city’s claims to world-class status and its expansion enjoys widespread support across the political spectrum. This article focuses on the ways in which the carriages reserved for women are appropriated by female hawkers despite the efforts of municipal officials determined to eliminate hawking within the metro. On an everyday basis, the ubiquity of hawkers contributes to the production of a convivial atmosphere within the carriages reserved for women. However, the surreptitious appropriation of space comes at a cost for the hawkers, who face competing pressures. While this space is emancipatory in the sense that it is a relatively safe place for female hawkers to earn their livelihoods or spending money, many have reported feelings of anxiety because of the stigma associated with hawking. This article contributes to the scholarship on urban citizenship and exclusion by focusing on the governance of a ‘world-class’ urban megaproject, and the complex social and economic pressu...

Environmentally friendly food initiatives in Iran: between environmental citizenship and pluralizing the public sphere

Abstract In this article I analyze acts of citizenship within environmentally friendly food initiatives in Iran. I show that act of environmental citizenship intersects with politics of pluralizing the public sphere within these initiatives. I present original research that shows how these practices are determined by state-society relations. It is shown that the main objective of most of the initiators of these enterprises is to provide a source of information about healthy and environmentally friendly food as well as providing access to such food. In contrast, many consumers also use these initiatives as spaces where they can experience and make a more pluralistic public sphere. This article contributes to a better understanding of the concept of environmental citizenship and demonstrates the relevance of the concept to broader notions of citizenship.