Manata Hashemi: "The Struggles of Everyday Life and Its Implications: Poor Youth in an Iranian Context”

Manata Hashemi (PhD candidate, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley) "The Struggles of Everyday Life and Its Implications: Poor Youth in an Iranian Context” Discussant: Nosheen Ali (Visiting Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; 2009-10 ACLS/Mellon Early Career Fellow) ISLAMIC STUDIES WORKSHOP SERIES Unless otherwise noted, all workshops will take place on Thursdays from noon to 1:30 pm in Encina Hall West, Room 208. Papers are available to Stanford faculty and students upon request by email to abbasiprogram [at] stanford.edu (abbasiprogram[at]stanford[dot]edu). “POLITICS AND LIVELIHOODS IN CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN CITIES" This paper examines the politics of everyday life among poor street and working youth in the capital city of Tehran, Iran. Upon critically navigating through the prevailing theoretical paradigms that have thus far been used to study the politics of subaltern groups, namely resistance, passivity and quiet encroachment, I articulate an approach that centers on “youth quiet encroachment” and that more closely encapsulates the everyday experiences of poor young people in the Islamic Republic. As I argue, previous perspectives have incorporated a discussion of poor youth into a wider analysis focused on class, thereby undermining the significance associated with age-specific modes of struggle in the developing world. I draw from preliminary ethnographic fieldwork with street and working adolescents and college-age youth in peri-urban and urban districts in Tehran to inquire into poor young people’s everyday forms of quiet advancement onto the public sphere. In the presence of state policies that clamp down on collective acts of protest and bound by their socio-economic constraints, I argue that poor youth in Iran pursue a more pragmatic and rational strategy of quiet advancement onto the urban scene that allows them to achieve direct gains through participation in street services and industries. It is my contention that the unintended consequences of these practices problematize the prevailing ideology of youth that views them as maldeveloped, subversive, and lacking in moral and social values. By encroaching onto public spaces, by undertaking street vending and illegal work and therefore competing with adult merchants of the community for clients, by managing their lives in a way that makes sense to them, street and working youth unconsciously embody, through their actions, a challenge to dominant ideologies in Iran that have dictated that they’re somehow irresponsible and irrational subjects. The lived experiences of these youth both represent a transformative element to this prevailing ideology and further shed light on the character of civil society in the Islamic Republic of Iran.