For most of its history, Islamic law has developed independently of the state, law-making being the sphere of legal scholars.…
Privatization of assisted reproductive technologies in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Iran
Compulsory things: Some reflections on Hirschkind and Doostdar
In an illuminating exchange, Charles Hirschkind and Alireza Doostdar debate the compulsory quality of modern scientific reasoning. Doostdar, in The…
On epistemic possibility: A reply to Hirschkind and Tambar
In their thoughtful reflections on The Iranian Metaphysicals, Charles Hirschkind and Kabir Tambar focus on my analysis of how different…
The future of enlightenment: Comparison, tradition, temporality
In The Iranian Metaphysicals, Alireza Doostdar describes his work as contributing to “comparative anthropologies of epistemology”—“how people know things and…
Thoughts on tradition in The Iranian Metaphysicals
While this book is an extraordinary accomplishment, rich in its ethnographic wanderings and sophisticated in its theoretical framing, my interest…
Anatomy of a tweet
I fell in love with the Perfect Man at a young age. He was humble, compassionate, strong, disciplined, affectionate, and,…
How to make someone famous for the wrong reason
Shahin Najafi never set out to be a rapper, much less “Salman Rushdie of Rap,” but in early 2012, global…
Beyond denial
For a brief moment in 2007, news of a hit Iranian television series, whose Farsi title was translated variously as…
Panel discussion on Iran’s Green Movement and the upheaval in the Middle East
This Friday, February 25, at 6:00 PM, there will be a panel discussion of the resurgence of the Iranian Green…
Book of Esther showing up in unlikely places
"Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran's race for a nuclear weapon lies what…