What Is So Special about Field Research in Iran?

Rivetti, Paola; Saeidi, Shirin

doi:10.1093/oso/9780190882969.003.0003

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(7 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…18 Paola Rivetti and Shirin Saeidi argue that gendered barriers to long-term research in Iran have less to do with Islamic religious policy and more to do with the state's authoritarian character. 19 In 2004, anthropologist Mary Elaine Hegland described the non-Iranian anthropologist's challenge of obtaining long-term visas to adequately carry out research in Iran. 20 While not necessarily the focus of her article, the barriers she described revolve around the challenges of manoeuvering heavy bureaucracies in which policies for obtaining research visas are unpredictable and highly digressionary.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating “Sensitive” States: How Surveillance Practices Affect Research Development between the United States and Iran

Nesvaderani

2023

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

I had completed two months of exploratory dissertation research in Tehran in the winter of 2015 when I was called in for questioning by two men who declined to provide me with their names or that of the office they called from. We met in an unmarked building adjacent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Tehran. They were middle-aged and sat on opposite sides of a table with a framed picture of Ayatollah Khomeini. When they offered me tea, I declined, remembering my cousins’ hurried advice an hour earlier. “God forbid someone puts something in your drink and they take you away to a different location,” he had said.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating “Sensitive” States: How Surveillance Practices Affect Research Development between the United States and Iran

Nesvaderani

2023

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1 Limitations on inquiry and knowledge are not unique to authoritarian states (Glasius 2018). Democracies, too, occasionally create spaces wherein the securitization of dissent and the implementation of preemptive measures of social control effectively recreate "nonpluralist spaces" and other features of an authoritarian environment within otherwise liberal states (Fernandez, Starr, and Scholl 2011;Rivetti and Saeidi 2018). However, as Rivetti and Saeidi (2018) remark, despite the existence of authoritarian contexts within supposedly liberal and democratic states, it is the uneven distribution of power in autocratic states that sets them apart and poses additional hardships for researchers.…”

Section: Outsider Ethnography In Authoritarian Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Outside Looking In: Ethnography and Authoritarianism

Stroup¹,

Goode²

2023

Perspect. polit.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite the common assumption that ethnography is most successful where researchers achieve recognition as insiders within the communities they study, conducting research in nondemocracies inverts incentives to conduct ethnographic research as an insider and poses unexpected ethical risks to both researchers and respondents. Rather than increasing trust and facilitating access, cultivating insider roles in nondemocracies may have the unintended effects of encouraging conformity with regime discourses, limiting further fieldwork access, and exacerbating respondents’ tendency toward epistemic deference. Drawing on the authors’ research experiences and the growing literature on fieldwork in nondemocracies, this article argues that outsider roles may be preferable to insider roles for identifying the unspoken rules, assumptions, and taken-for-granted aspects of everyday politics in nondemocracies. Moreover, outsider roles clarify the relationship between researcher and respondent in ways that provide clear ethical advantages in terms of consent, value, and risk.

show abstract

Reformism and Political Participation in Iran

Rivetti

2019

Political Participation in Iran From Khatami to the Green Movement

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Kaveh and Mohammad, activists from Tehran in their late thirties, do not know each other but have a number of friends in common. Both were active in Mir Hoseyn Musavi's electoral campaign in 2009 in Tehran and, after protests erupted in June 2009 upon the announcement of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of the Republic, both became very active in attending, organising, and participating in the protests that came to be known as the Green Movement. 1 Kaveh and Mohammad enjoyed a certain degree of popularity within activist circles, because they had already been politically active as university students. They had a network they could mobilise and indirect access to other social circles outside Tehran. The marches, demonstrations, and sit-ins lasted into 2010, and were met with increasing state violence. In 2010, both left for Turkey where they became asylum seekers and where I met them in 2011 and 2012. Kaveh and Mohammad's words reflected the excitement and enthusiasm that characterised the days of the mobilisation in the

show abstract

What Is So Special about Field Research in Iran?

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

Navigating “Sensitive” States: How Surveillance Practices Affect Research Development between the United States and Iran

Navigating “Sensitive” States: How Surveillance Practices Affect Research Development between the United States and Iran

On the Outside Looking In: Ethnography and Authoritarianism

Reformism and Political Participation in Iran

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About