The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran * By ARZOO OSANLOO

Abstract

How do women perceive ‘rights’ in the Islamic Republic of Iran? How has the law evolved over the past thirty years? And how is it that the quintessentially liberal notion of individual rights has permeated Iranian culture and its legal system? These are among the questions raised and addressed in this intelligent and engaging book. Arzoo Osanloo, an Iranian-American academic who specializes in human rights law, has penned an instructive analysis of how Iranian women engage with the law to understand, realize, or renegotiate their rights. Having conducted fieldwork at a number of sites in Tehran, she is in a position to explicate the evolution of the ‘Islamico-civil’ legal system, the intricacies of the law, and the strategies used by women and their legal counsel—which, she argues, has created a ‘culture of rights’ replete with ‘rights-bearing subjectivities’. Deftly demonstrating the permissibility of individual agency within a legal framework and social context that is sometimes rigid and untoward and sometimes flexible and conducive, Osanloo reveals the paradox of ‘the resurgence of the Euro-American rights talk initially proscribed by Iranian revolutionaries who considered it to be an attack on revolutionary values, specifically for its emphasis on individuality over the needs of the community’ (p. 7).