“For an Ordinary Life:” Contested Imaginaries of Past and Future in Recent Iranian Social Movements

• In Event: 40420 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 17: The Politics of Social Movements 2

Abstract

Research on social movements has emphasized how frames play a crucial role in constructing movement identities, mobilizing masses, and helping movements cross ideological boundaries. The idea of “ordinary life” recently propagated over the course of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran presents itself as a widely used frame that brings together diverse political demands of a various array of ideological and socio-economic groups. The meaning of “ordinary life,” however, has not been clearly examined by empirical research. Specifically, it is unclear what major issues and imaginaries inform the perceptions of an “ordinary life” and how can the “longing for an ordinary life” affect Iranians' perceptions about the movement. In-depth interviews (so far 10 but more are in progress) with Iranians show that a) there is a significant ideological and demographic diversity in ways people think about “ordinary life” but it comes to conceal and overcome these tensions as a non-ideological frame; b) Despite the variety in perceptions about “ordinary life,” they are heavily influenced by a sense of missing out that occurs through both historical (nostalgic memories of the pre-revolutionary Iran) and spatial axes (longing for the lives of European countries, Arab countries of the Gulf, or sometimes the US). This study’s contribution lies in bringing together the sociology of everyday life and the sociology of social movements in showing how the normal is constructed as an imaginary which can affect social actors’ behaviors and perceptions as strongly as the normal constructed in the real interactions of everyday life.

Author

• Mahdi Feyz Karimlou, University of Iowa