Paper Title: Social Movements in the Age of the Internet: The New Contested Sphere of Political Discourse. While the Arab Spring was consuming many countries in the Arab Middle East and North Africa in the past year, many were wondering about the lack of such public uprisings in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This was particularly relevant, as it was Iran which first had experienced a spontaneous and authentic social uprising following the questionable presidential elections of 2009. The uprisings in Tehran and many other cities were quickly and violently put down by the regime's oppressive security machinery. It is the intent of this paper to investigate the specific socio-cultural, political and economic conditions that determine the dynamics of social change in Iran, and which set it apart from the Arab Middle East. It is of particular interest here to further present an analysis of the viability of the burgeoning virtual space as the new sphere of political contestation. It is evident that the Islamic government intends to use this new space for the dual purposes of surveillance and censorship, as well as a means for the regime propaganda. The Islamic government, furthermore, considers cyberspace as a battle ground in which it is engaged in an ongoing “soft war” with its local and global adversaries. The Islamic government’s efforts in containing the threats coming from this contested space will be further analyzed.

This paper suggests that today’s Iran is on the brink of a “post-Islamist turn”, as the first post-Islamist civil society in the Middle East is in the making, underneath of the Islamic Republic. Over the past century, modern Iran has been a pioneer of progressive political changes in the Middle East: the home to the first constitutional revolution (1906–11), the first nationalist and parliamentary democratic movement in the post–World War II period (1950–53), and the first anti-despotic revolutionary change with an Islamic discourse (1977–79). Iran is home to the first civic social movement in the context of current social movements in the Middle East, known as the Green Movement (2009–present). The current Green Movement is marked by a new historical era toward post-Islamism in Iran. This paper is part of a larger book project based on fieldwork (context analysis) and text analysis (writings of post-Islamist intellectuals). The findings suggest that main features of post- Islamism in post-revolutionary Iran are threefold: first, it is an attempt to make modernity from below. It is a radial call for a critical dialogue between sacred and secular, faith and freedom, revelation and reason, tradition and modernity, religiosity and rights, and local and global paradigms. Second, post-Islamism in Iran is more than an intellectual discourse; it is deeply rooted in the civil society. The reform movement in the late 1990's and the current Green Movement symbolize the sociopolitical features of Iran’s post-Islamist movement. It represents Muslims’ disenchantment with the Islamist state. Third, post- Islamism in Iran is not monolithic; it can be divided into three main intellectual trends, with each trend subdivided into various views: a) quasi/semi post-Islamism; (b) liberal post-Islamism; and (c) neo- Shariati post-Islamist discourse. Post-Islamism in post-revolutionary Iran signifies the paradoxes of the Islamist state. This paper examines the nature and the diversity of post- Islamist trends in the country. I first briefly conceptualize and contextualize post-Islamist discourses in Iran and then analyze the sociopolitical origins of three trends of post-Islamism in post-revolutionary Iran. The conclusion problematizes nature and future success of post-Islamism in the country. It examines the contribution of Iran’s post-Islamist trends/discourses towards indigenous/authentic modernity –modernity from below – and sustainable social change from within.

The eruption of the Arab Spring, was and is perceived as a political opportunity by Iranian actors, both on the left and right of the political/ideological spectrum. Political opportunity is defined by social movement theorists broadly as "consistent—but not necessarily formal or permanent—dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations for success or failure" (Tarrow qtd. in Meyer and Minkoff 2004, 1459). According to Gamson and Meyer (1996), "there is a component of political opportunity involving perception of possible change that is, above all else, a social construction" (283). The implication here is that the existence of political opportunity is contingent upon it being recognized and framed as such by motivated activists. In the wake of the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, political figures in Iran have offered competing claims of inspiration for the protests now spreading through the MENA region. One narrative makes the case for the Islamic Revolution of 1979 as a slow burning catalyst for popular unrest directed towards corrupt and often Western backed leaders. The other offers a direct correlation to Iran's Green Movement sparked by the 2009 presidential election. This paper aims to compare the discourse of regime leaders to that of opposition activists, each seeking to frame current events in the region as a reflection of their particular aspirations and competing worldviews. Benford and Snow's literature on challenges facing movement adherents embroiled in contested framing processes will be employed as a means of highlighting some of the various obstacles to political transformation in the case of Iran. The authors outline three major challenges that serve to structure this discussion: “1 counterframing by movement opponents, bystanders and the media, 2 frame disputes within movements, and 3 the dialectic between frames and events” (Benford and Snow, 2000, 625). It is my intention in this paper to outline the collective action frames of regime and opposition leaders invoked in relation to the ongoing protests in the region and illustrate the unique challenges facing each narrative in relation to the three aforementioned variables. In so doing this paper will help clarify the unique challenges inherent to political transformation inside Iran by highlighting the impact of this framing debate on the political opportunity space for dissidents/reformers inside the country, contributing towards a refined understanding of the interplay between authoritarian resilience and political mobility of opposition actors.

Youth in Iran today have grown up with the constant presence of expatriate satellite television as well as the responses to it by the Islamic Republic’s media policy and programming. This paper investigates the reaction of youth to the global circulation of images about Iran and themselves. This paper begins with a description of the social worlds from which these youth come—and the shifting public/private boundaries they entail—and follows a large (25-30 member) long-running Tehran dowreh (discussion group). Based on over three years of participant observation and interviews with the group, this paper addresses the questions: how does this generation respond to the use of “Iranian youth” as a political symbol in conflicting representations of Iran constructed by the Islamic Republic, expatriate Iranian-Americans on satellite TV, and mainstream Western media? How do their own performances of identity reflect their negotiations of private and public spaces in Iran and their concerns with the global sphere? This paper examines how the youth in this group struggle against having to hide a private life and “faking” a public one, and their attempt to create an idealized version of a public sphere within the domestic realm.

The emergence of what has been dubbed the "weblogistan" in Iran, as well as the intensive usage of other kinds of new media technologies, can be considered the among the most important developments in the Iranian people's struggle to reclaim alternative spaces for the free flow of information, current events, and culture. In this paper, I explore the rise of the blogosphere in Iran as resulting from and producing increased demands for free and open individual expression, pluralism, and democratic governance among the youth of post-revolutionary Iran. I offer a sampling of interviews I conducted with relevant cultural figures in Iran's exiled community of writers, journalists, and artists in Paris (Reza Ghassemi, Mana Neyestani, Mohammad-Reza Yazdanpanah) that variously use the internet to promote these ideas in their works, and outline their thoughts on the role of mediated cultural and intellectual production for stimulating civic engagement. I conclude that the weblogistan makes it possible to overcome, in part, the challenges that exile brings to intellectual production within the Iranian diaspora, enables the staging and circulation of discourses of cosmopolitanism and inclusivity endemic to constructing civil society, and preserves and strengthens a sense of cultural grounding necessary for political action.

During the Qajar period (1800-1900) prostitutes were mostly neither stoned nor hanged. If, identified, they were thrown out of the city (nafi-balad). During Pahlavi reign (1920s) however, in line with modernization agendas, modern arrangement of spaces, and government-sponsored institutionalization, a red zone area called Shahr-e-naw (“The new city”), where prostitutes were segregated, was established. Burning down this district after the revolution resulted in the spread of prostitutes all around the city. As a result, in Tehran, today, a city run by a religious government, prostitutes are now in every street, on every corner, at every crossroad. They have become more visible than ever. As Butler (1990) has pointed out, to be politically present in Western liberal framework is tightly linked to the question of visibility. Adopting a Foucauldian understanding of modernity, the present paper will explore the ways in which spatiality and visibility played themselves out in the realm of identity politics, constructing, arresting, and policing the image of the stigmatized/ victimized prostitute. It will further argue that the significant shift, which happened during Pahlavi’s time, in terms of the arrangement of space, contributed to the emergence of representative identity politics. Along with institutionalization of prostitution during Pahlavi’s reign, the image of the prostitute as “a body in need of rescue” was constituted and fixed. Parallel to the production of this victimized image, prostitution was spatially stigmatized. In other words, not only the body of the prostitute became stigmatized and unfortunate, but also, the space of prostitution became the stigmatized section of the city. As Phelan (1993) points out, the conceptualization of power, in progressive activism is enmeshed with the idea of visibility. Prostitutes today, in Iran, are visually hyper-visible but representationally rendered invisible; they inhabit a state of (in)visibility. Juxtaposing the policed and segregated visibility of prostitutes during Pahlavi’s period, with the visual hyper-visibility of prostitutes in Iran today, the present paper, uncouples visibility and power. In doing so, it will attempt to figure whether visual visibility can be understood in terms other than representational visibility.