Suchergebnisse

Electronic Iran introduces the concept of the Iranian Internet, a framework that captures interlinked, transnational networks of virtual and offline spaces. Taking her cues from early Internet ethnographies that stress the importance of treating the Internet as both a site and product of cultural production, accounts in media studies that highlight the continuities between old and new media, and a range of works that have made critical interventions in the field of Iranian studies, Niki Akhavan traces key developments and confronts conventional wisdom about digital media in general, and contemporary Iranian culture and politics in particular. Akhavan focuses largely on the years between 1998 and 2012 to reveal a diverse and combative virtual landscape where both geographically and ideologically dispersed individuals and groups deployed Internet technologies to variously construct, defend, and challenge narratives of Iranian national identity, society, and politics.l

Electronic Iran introduces the concept of the Iranian Internet, a framework that captures interlinked, transnational networks of virtual and offline spaces. Taking her cues from early Internet ethnographies that stress the importance of treating the Internet as both a site and product of cultural production, accounts in media studies that highlight the continuities between old and new media, and a range of works that have made critical interventions in the field of Iranian studies, Niki Akhavan traces key developments and confronts conventional wisdom about digital media in general, and contemporary Iranian culture and politics in particular.


Akhavan focuses largely on the years between 1998 and 2012 to reveal a diverse and combative virtual landscape where both geographically and ideologically dispersed individuals and groups deployed Internet technologies to variously construct, defend, and challenge narratives of Iranian national identity, society, and politics. While it tempers celebratory claims that have dominated assessments of the Iranian Internet, Electronic Iran is ultimately optimistic in its outlook. As it exposes and assesses overlooked aspects of the Iranian Internet, the book sketches a more complete map of its dynamic landscape, and suggests that the transformative powers of digital media can only be developed and understood if attention is paid to both the specificities of new technologies as well as the local and transnational contexts in which they appear.

This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.

More than three decades of hostile relations between Iran and the West have meant that images about Iran and Iranian women circulate in a charged political environment. In this geopolitical context, Iranian women filmmakers have often found receptive audiences abroad who turn to documentaries as sites to reveal the truths of contemporary Iran. The enthusiasm for these works, however, also exerts pressures on filmmakers to adhere to familiar narratives about Iran and Iranian women or risk losing their audiences. Focusing on Nahid Sarvestani's Prostitution behind the Veil (2004) and Mahvash Sheikholeslami's Where Do I Belong? (2007), this article examines two tendencies in recent Iranian documentary. The former film exemplifies the prevalent trend of repeating troubling but familiar tropes about Islam and Muslim women, while the latter is an example of attempts to provide a more nuanced picture of Iran's social and political problems. Placing these films in the broader context of the history of nonfiction films in Iran, the article also draws from both feminist scholarship on representations of the Muslim world and longstanding debates within documentary studies to show the high stakes of producing films about Iran and to suggest that documentary works by and about Iranian women should be more rigorously interrogated for their ethical and political implications.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction / Petro, Patrice / Ferguson, Kennan -- Part I: Financialization, Creditocracy, Austerity -- 1. Capital, aft er Capitalism / Mann, Geoff -- 2. Restoration of the Rentier and the Turn to Lifelong Extraction / Ross, Andrew -- 3. The Subprime Subject of Ideology / Ascher, Ivan -- 4. Social Democracy and Its Discontents: The Rise of Austerity / Sommers, Jeffrey -- Part II: Media/Art -- 5. Austerity Media / Petro, Patrice -- 6. Imagining Beyond Capital: Representation and Reality in Science Fiction Film / Vint, Sherryl -- 7 Mistaken Places: Unemployment, Avant-Gardism, and the Auto-da-Fé / Bullock, Marcus -- 8. Liquid, Crystal, Vaporous: Th e Natural States of Capitalism / Leslie, Esther -- Part III: Belonging -- 9. Cuban Filmmaking and the Postcapitalist Transition / Venegas, Cristina -- 10. "Neither Eastern nor Western": Economic and Cultural Policies in Post-Revolutionary Iran / Akhavan, Niki -- 11. Differentiating Citizenship / Aneesh, A. -- 12. Gaming the System: Imperial Discomfort and the Emergence of Coyote Capitalism / Perley, Bernard C. -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX