Reading Legitimation Crisis In Tehran

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.

With international politics issues likely to remain on the Middle East stage for the foreseeable future, this comprehensive study looks at the important international and regional actors and their interactions with, and reaction to, US foreign policy towa

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.

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.

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.

This important study examines the cultural turn for women in the Middle East and North Africa, analyzing the ways they have adjusted to and at times defended, socially conservative redefinitions of their roles in society in matters of marriage, work, and public codes of behavior. Whether this cultural turn is an autochthonous response, or an alternative to Western feminism, Islamic Feminism and the Discourse of Post-Liberation: The Cultural Turn in Algeria examines the sources, evolution, contradictions as well as consequences of the Cultural Turn. Focusing on Algeria, but making comparisons with Tunisia and Morocco, it takes an in-depth look at Islamic feminism and studies its functions in the geopolitics of control of Islam. It also explores the knowldge effects of the cultural turn and crucially identifies a critical way of re-orienting feminist thought and practice in the region. This new work from a highly regarded scholar will appeal to researchers, graduates, and undergraduates in North African studies; Middle Eastern studies; sociology, women and gender studies; anthropology; political science; and ethnic and critical race studies.

In Anthropological Futures, Michael M. J. Fischer explores the uses of anthropology as a mode of philosophical inquiry, an evolving academic discipline, and a means for explicating the complex and shifting interweaving of human bonds and social interactions on a global level. Through linked essays, which are both speculative and experimental, Fischer seeks to break new ground for anthropology by illuminating the field’s broad analytical capacity and its attentiveness to emergent cultural systems. Fischer is particularly concerned with cultural anthropology’s interactions with science studies, and throughout the book he investigates how emerging knowledge formations in molecular biology, environmental studies, computer science, and bioengineering are transforming some of anthropology’s key concepts including nature, culture, personhood, and the body. In an essay on culture, he uses the science studies paradigm of “experimental systems” to consider how the social scientific notion of culture has evolved as an analytical tool since the nineteenth century. Charting anthropology’s role in understanding and analyzing the production of knowledge within the sciences since the 1990s, he highlights anthropology’s aptitude for tracing the transnational collaborations and multisited networks that constitute contemporary scientific practice. Fischer investigates changing ideas about cultural inscription on the human body in a world where genetic engineering, robotics, and cybernetics are constantly redefining our understanding of biology. In the final essay, Fischer turns to Kant’s philosophical anthropology to reassess the object of study for contemporary anthropology and to reassert the field’s primacy for answering the largest questions about human beings, societies, culture, and our interactions with the world around us. In Anthropological Futures, Fischer continues to advance what Clifford Geertz, in reviewing Fischer’s earlier book Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice, called “a broad new agenda for cultural description and political critique.”

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.