Iran’s Hezbollah and Citizenship Politics

Abstract

This penultimate chapter is based on nearly three years of fieldwork at various Hezbollah cultural institutions in Tehran (2012–2014). Here, I examine acts of citizenship among another group touched by the legacies of the Iran–Iraq war. However, these women ascribe to a notion of democratic politics which deviates from the Western sensibilities of popular sovereignty. Contrary to acts of citizenship performed by female relatives of war martyrs, post-2009 Hezbollah–affiliated cultural activists view rights to be only one pillar of the state’s structure, and not necessarily the most important element of statecraft to be protected. They engage with the tensions which exist between the state’s Islamic and Republic elements, and the entanglement of religion and politics, but without necessarily intending to resolve or undo them in the interest of the people. In this chapter, I move into the ambit of citizenship and politics among pro-state Hezbollah affiliates in post-2009 Iran to make this counterintuitive argument: the legislation of religion is not necessarily a fruitless effort for the state even when it fails to uniformly produce its ideal religious citizen. Indeed, hybrid regimes’ contradictions and ambiguities work in different ways to produce particular types of citizens.