Young and Defiant in Tehran (review)

Abstract

Shahram Khosravi, Young and Defiant in Tehran. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 240 pp. In Young and Defiant in Tehran, Shahram Khosravi examines youth and popular culture, generational divides, popular spaces, spatial dominance and resistance, and defiance in contemporary Tehran. He is centrally interested in exploring politics and how young Tehranis defy forms and practices and seek to create their own. He argues that more than two decades after Islamic Revolution, much revolutionary spirit has evaporated. Indeed members of generation that has recently come of age in Islamic Republic (over half of Iran's population) see Revolution as project of their parents' generation. Khosravi illustrates how in particular middle and upper-middle class youth in Tehran, caught in a rather authoritarian and patriarchal context, carve out and create their own spaces where they seek to live their own lives and actively create and negotiate everyday cultures. He argues that, in absence of larger social movements, there are plentiful individual acts of defiance and instances of escape among Tehran's youth. Khosravi introduces concept of cultural crime that emerged in Islamic Republic, which denotes violations of 'collective sentiment' of Muslim community (17). The concept covers much that is associated with youth, popular culture, sexuality, and passion. While somewhat eased in 1990s, its hold continues. Khosravi notes that when the shariat (...) was extended to cover public law, distinction between illegal, immoral, and sinful disappeared. Thus crime, vice and sin become synonymous (18). Aspects of youthful experimenting, misbehavior and protest were criminalized. The author shows how concept of gharbzadegi (Western-struck) denotes alienation, sell-out, or worse, betrayal of national and Islam, and plays an important role in Iranian debates and politics. Consequently, principle of mutual discipline (25) emerged to monitor and suppress defiant (and often gharbzadegi) practices, which are identified as counter-productive to individual wellbeing. The caring power (28) of state works to set individuals back on straight path. The aesthetics of Islamic Republic are central in Khosravi's discussion. Revolutionary leaders associate gharbzadegi with consumerism, as opposed to virtue of self-restraint. The Islamic Republic has developed its own aesthetics, revolutionary and officially sanctioned art, an aesthetic of modesty, and most prominently, veiling. Khosravi describes official of theocracy [as] characterized by a tone of petrified seriousness, based on religious awe, lamentation and humility (53)-its favorite color black. Public life turns into a performance with predetermined roles and little space for agency (56). Khosravi's ethnographic work is based in Shahrak-e Gharb, an upper class Tehran neighborhood. Designed by French architects in 1970s, quarter has its own infrastructure of schools, clubs and shops. In addition to its elite status, quarter is marked by a distinct sense of different, worldlier, and more modern than other quarters. Residents oddly position themselves as the victim of state's policy and being best (64). Unlike in most other capital cities, this wealthy and educated elite does not represent state and takes up an awkward position as a simultaneously powerful and powerless social class. Forced to hide some preferences and social practices, this group has nonetheless more freedom to transgress rules. More than elsewhere in Tehran, signs of globalization, like global media or patterns of consumption, are visible in Shahrak. Because of this vague and precarious freedom and superior access to global by way of satellite TV, internet and international travel, Khosravi stresses that Shahrak is a center for diffusing Westernized youth culture (87). …