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Movementizing the Election: Contentious Meanings of Conventional Politics in the Iranian Presidential Election of 2013

Sun, August 17, 12:30 to 1:30pm, TBA

Abstract

The Iranian Green Movement (2009–2012)—which emerged as a response to the results of the 2009 presidential election—accused the government of election fraud, yet decided to become involved in the presidential election of 2013. In this paper I aim to explore why a social movement that began with the slogan “where is my vote?” decided to become involved in the electoral process when we know there wasn’t any change in the election procedures or any signals of political opening. To this end, I analyzed essays, interviews, and parties’ pronouncements published on JARAS, an influential website of the Iranian Green Movement. I argue that the Iranian Green Movement framed the election beyond its traditional meaning as a conventional form of politics. For them, the election was not just an election, but also a form of contentious action and an opportunity to rebuild networks of resistance. This creative cooptation of elections—a major form of institutionalized action—challenges the dominant dichotomy of protest/conventional politics in the social movements literature. In this paper, I go beyond theories that view institutionalized and non-institutionalized actions as complementary, instead arguing that SM activists not only use both of them in tandem, but they also use what we call “conventional” politics in a contentious form. By constructing a new meaning for their votes and electoral engagement, protesters movementize an election; that is, they give contentious meaning to conventional politics.

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