{"title":"Capitalist Lineages of Early Modern Iran","authors":"Maziar Samiee","doi":"10.1017/irn.2023.7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Iran is hardly perceived as a normal country, whether it be by Western commentators and politicians critical of the government, Iranian leaders who impart special distinction to it, or ordinary Iranians protesting against it. This sense of anomaly has become so ingrained that some factions of the Iranian opposition take to social media to express their yearning for a “normal life.” Economic peculiarities form one aspect of Iran's supposed abnormality, and the solution to them is posited as the establishment of a free market economy. Without denying the specificities of contemporary Iran, in this contribution I seek to scrutinize the very norms against which it is compared. I challenge the pathologizing approach that identifies Iran outside of or at the margins of history as a failing or stagnating polity and economy. This approach presupposes that a singular pattern of capitalist modernity is capable of yielding progress and prosperity, and diagnoses developmental shortcomings as the automatic outcome of deviating from a normal path of development.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Iranian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2023.7","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"AREA STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Iran is hardly perceived as a normal country, whether it be by Western commentators and politicians critical of the government, Iranian leaders who impart special distinction to it, or ordinary Iranians protesting against it. This sense of anomaly has become so ingrained that some factions of the Iranian opposition take to social media to express their yearning for a “normal life.” Economic peculiarities form one aspect of Iran's supposed abnormality, and the solution to them is posited as the establishment of a free market economy. Without denying the specificities of contemporary Iran, in this contribution I seek to scrutinize the very norms against which it is compared. I challenge the pathologizing approach that identifies Iran outside of or at the margins of history as a failing or stagnating polity and economy. This approach presupposes that a singular pattern of capitalist modernity is capable of yielding progress and prosperity, and diagnoses developmental shortcomings as the automatic outcome of deviating from a normal path of development.
期刊介绍:
Iranian Studies is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to Iranian and Persian history, literature, and society, published on behalf of the Association for Iranian Studies . Its scope includes all areas of the world with a Persian or Iranian legacy, especially Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Caucasus, and northern India, and Iranians in the diaspora. It welcomes submissions in all disciplines.