Ph.D in Social Anthropology, Stockholm, Sweden.
My thesis:
a. The Third Generation: The Islamic Order of Things and Cultural Defiance among the Young of Tehran, Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology. (2003)
My current research is a study of 'illegality' in the field of migration, which focuses on the process of unauthorized migration (mainly in the form of 'smuggling') and the living conditions of undocumented immigrants in Sweden.
I'm affliated to The Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations(CEIFO) Stockholm University.
Tehran Arcades
The Golestan shopping center, located in Shahrak-i Gharb, is the most famous
passazh in Tehran. It has multiple dimensions in realms of politics,
commerce, youth culture, and transnational connections. I will argue that
the shopping center is above all a space of/for Oimagination¹. It is also a
site where the knowledge of Ohow to be modern¹ is communicated. The
hegemonic ideology in Iran promotes a revolutionary/ascetic aesthetic of
modesty and invites to self-abasement. That there exists such a place as
Golestan, where individuals can assert and show off themselves according to
quite another system of values is a challenge for the Oaesthetics of
modesty¹ promoted by the Islamic regime. For the Tehrani youths at Golestan,
flânerie is not only a way of leisure. It is also a struggle for
subjectivity. It is a challenge that in de Certeauian terminology:
constantly transforms places into spaces or spaces into place. Golestan it
is a site of pleasure and agency. Where there is consumption there is
pleasure and where there is pleasure there is agency. Walter Benjamin saw
the Paris arcades as a site where the mass culture materializes a collective
energy, by which the Oantiquarian effect of the father on his son¹ could be
overcome. Such a generation break is also an aspect of what happens at
Golestan. Golestan represents a disjunction in the continuity and coherence
of the Olocal¹, a pause from the hegemonic Islamic order of things.