This contribution addresses the strategic significance of family politics for the Islamic Republic of Iran, facing multifaceted crises. It identifies Iran’s recent family and gender policies, which are characterised by the fusion of neoliberal principles with moral politics and can be found in other authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Drawing on a historical analysis of familialism in Iran, spanning pre- and post-revolutionary periods, we contend that the recent shift towards a gendered-moral politics emphasising harsh pronatalism and family-oriented governance, termed ‘neoliberal familialism’, reflects a profound shift in the political rationality of the Islamic Republic towards neoliberal governance to manage its socio-economic crises. In other words, not only have neoliberal principles affected the family politics of the last decade in Iran, but a specific form of masculine nationalist neoliberalisation in Iran has also been possible and advanced partly through neoliberal familialism.
Introduction
In September 2022, a revolutionary momentum appeared in Iran with a series of nationwide protests after the state femicide of a Kurdish woman, Jina (Mahsa) Amini, due to wearing her hijab improperly in public. As a result, the streets of several cities and even marginalised towns turned into a battleground between protestors, many of them women, gender dissidents, and the middle-class poor (Bayat 2021), mainly from the most ethnic-religious marginalised areas (such as Kurds and Balochis), and anti-riot forces. Although resisting hijab was important in the ignition of the momentum, it went well beyond that to oppose the gendered moral politics of the regime, i.e. neoliberal familialism, in Iran. The revolutionary uprising, with its Kurdish slogan, Jin Jiyan Azadi (Women Life Freedom), was influenced and influencing transnationally to reclaim life against necropolitical forces and oppression for equality resonating. Indeed, the Jina uprising is a recent example of a global trend where feminist and gender movements have arisen to combat various forms of gender violence. These movements are challenging the existing authoritarian and heteronormative regimes. They offer a political vision that has the potential to unite different peoples beyond their immediate economic or political interests and demands for further inclusion into the system. This trend is becoming increasingly visible in various parts of the world, including Kurdistan, Latin America and Eastern Europe, where powerful gender movements are at the forefront of the struggles against necropolitics and for transformative change (see Farvardin 2024).
This paper contributes to recent attempts to address the questions surrounding the strategic significance of family-based gender politics in neoliberal authoritarian regimes, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, in governing its ongoing political and economic crisis as well as the crucial roles of gender struggles and counter strategies in contentious politics and their potentials in mobilising masses against the destructive effects (be they political, economic, ecologic or social) of authoritarian rule and neoliberal governance.
We contend that recent family and gender politics in Iran, as in other authoritarian neoliberal contexts, have been shaped by the prevailing worldwide neoliberal principles, particularly economisation and commodification of the reproduction of life. Likewise, authoritarian neoliberalism has been possible and advanced by introducing an affective gendered frame combined with moral and nationalist discourses.
In this regard, the Iranian case can be viewed as a ‘familiar’ form of the convergence of neoliberalism and family-oriented moral and nationalist politics, i.e. neoliberal familialism, characterised by the articulation of neoliberal principles with heteronormativity, religious conservatism and nationalism. Neoliberal familialism, indeed, has paved the way towards an emergence and domination of new authoritarian regimes with specific gendered and racialised agendas around the world, from Turkey to Poland, from Iran to the USA, and from India to Brazil (eg Torres Santana 2022; Chhachhi 2020; Fischer 2020; Akkan 2018). However, neoliberal familialism can also be considered an ‘unfamiliar’ case of producing knowledge on the political economy of gender dynamics. Indeed, adopting this analytical framework calls into question the common exceptionalist portrayal and mainstream yet familiar understanding of Iran as separated or disconnected from the global dynamics of capitalist relations.
In the following sections, we will first briefly discuss our theoretical inspirations and provide some general remarks on neoliberalism, affects, and gender and reproductive politics. Following that, we will examine the history of familialism concerning transformations of state power as a social relation in Iran towards understanding the conditions of the possibility of the emergence of neoliberal familialism. Finally, we will conclude the paper by reflecting on the specific entanglement of gender politics and authoritarian neoliberalism in the current conjuncture.
Neoliberal familialism: a gendered-moral governance
‘Neoliberalism’ has been used in recent decades to describe current socio-economic conditions, but there is no universally accepted definition. Taking inspiration from the Foucauldian feminist approach, we perceive neoliberalism not as just the latest stage of capitalism with a unified ideology but rather as a collection of local and global political projects that include a range of (non)discursive practices. These practices consist of diverse guidelines, processes and approaches that eventually establish new political rationality and give rise to neoliberal subjectivities (Brown 2015; Gago 2017). In this definition, the main problematic is not defining neoliberalism; rather, it involves understanding the variegated forms it has taken in different times and spaces. In other words, the question is about the various lineages of neoliberalism in the present (Callison and Manfredi 2020, 5).
In this context, the term ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ refers to a form of neoliberal governance in the twenty-first century that has emerged globally as a response to the crisis of social reproduction – also known as a crisis of capitalist life – and popular resistance against it. The crisis has arisen in three intertwined governing areas of sustaining life, reorganising work, and managing death and survival (Mezzadri 2022). This new form of governance exercises state power in an administrative, legal and coercive manner to suppress dissent (Tansel 2017a). Despite divergences in discourse and practices, authoritarian neoliberalism engenders novel commonalities and partnerships among national states, transnational and local actors, and grassroots movements (IRGAC 2022; Tansel 2017b).
The new authoritarian shift in neoliberalism, which aims to reproduce and maintain the regime of surplus value and surplus subjects (Mezzadri 2022), has resulted in a surge of violence against people and nature. The significant increase in gender-based violence globally and the popularity of anti-gender politics and policies must be seen as strategic components of authoritarian neoliberal governance (see Torres Santana 2022; Brown 2020; Dietze and Roth 2020). Authoritarian neoliberal governance aims to discipline gendered (and racialised) citizens and reproduce neoliberal subjects by reinforcing certain gender roles and practices through the state’s anti-gender policies and affective and ideological governing. Indeed, affective manipulation and intimidation have been used to provoke moral panic and collective insecurity (Wrenn 2014) and, consequently, mobilise religious conservative and far-right forces. Judith Butler calls these very diverse anti-gender ideologies and discourses ‘the phantasm of gender’, which gathers up and incites a wide range of (sometimes contradictory) fears and moral panic and categorises them under the name of gender (Butler 2024, 5). The phantasm of gender explains how ‘the demonization of gender deflects from, and covers over, legitimate anxieties about climate destruction, intensified economic precarity, war, environmental toxins, and police violence’ (Butler 2024, 6). It is thus understandable why, under the current ever-growing authoritarian neoliberal governance, gender has become a ‘meta-language’ in addressing power dynamics, in debating counter strategies, and in struggles over gaining hegemony and accessing strategic resources (Dietze and Roth 2020, 8).
As a result, ongoing theoretical debates in feminist scholarship revolve around the characterisation of neoliberal subjugation, its historical mutations and its entanglement with gendered/sexual oppression and violence. In addition to critiques of neoliberal feminism (e.g. Prügl 2015; Rottenberg 2014; Fraser 2013), the vast feminist contributions delve into the effects of neoliberalism and its recent shift towards authoritarianism on care work, social reproduction, and family (e.g. Mezzadri 2020; Federici 2018; Federici and Jones 2020; Cooper 2017, 2020; Bhattacharya 2017). They critically assess the formation of various (neoliberal) subjectivities as well as resistive strategies against neoliberal subjugation (eg Savci 2021; Brown 2019, 2020; Gago and Gutiérrez Aguilar 2020). Our theoretical framework has been inspired by and based on these feminist critiques that aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between authoritarian neoliberalism, as a form of neoliberal governance and gender/sexual violence and policing.
One of the main aspects of the literature on authoritarian neoliberalism is affective analysis – in other words, analysis of its moral and intersubjective emotional ideology that provide the basis for further subjugation and violence as well as mass mobilisation and the provocation of populism (e.g. Brown 2019; Whyte 2019; Cooper 2017). Authoritarian neoliberal governance, from this affective perspective, is but a micropolitics of everyday life that evokes and ‘normalizes a culture of fear, war, surveillance, and exploitation’ (Giroux 2015b). Neoliberal governance’s ideological and emotional dimension ‘produces the desires, identities, and values’ (Giroux 2015a, 157) of neoliberal subjects.
Brown (2019) further argues that neoliberalism is not just a market-driven project but a ‘market-and-morals’ project. According to her, the narrow market-based analysis of neoliberalism fails to theorise authoritarian neoliberalism as an ever-expanding form of neoliberal governance globally (Brown 2019, 42). In contrast, the moral-market account of neoliberalism emphasises the ideological and affective aspects of neoliberalism. It includes understanding how desires, emotions, and ideas have been reproduced and governed to provide a comprehensive account of how the neoliberal project has become hegemonic or failed, found popular support or lost popularity, (de)mobilised the masses, and given birth to (counter-) neoliberal subjects and strategies.
Our theoretical framework is centred on familialism as a gendered moral politics that, in our era, promotes authoritarian neoliberalism. This framework is based on Spinozian and feminist theories of affects and cultural politics of emotion in general (Ahmed 2013) and the moral-market account of neoliberalism in particular (Brown 2019). It places the affective (re)production and ideological framings at the forefront of analysing (counter-)strategies of authoritarian neoliberal governance. It is important to note that in Spinozian terminology, affect refers to an increase or decrease in the body’s capacity (either individual or collective) to act, thus encompassing ideas as well as emotions and desires (Read 2023, 368–369).
Our objective is to examine how moral politics has been employed and framed to detect the transformation of affective governance of gendered (and racialised) subjects. By doing so, we aim to identify and discuss points of convergence between the neoliberal project and familialism. Henceforth, ‘moral politics’ in our work refers to those political discourses and practices that aim to redraw the boundaries between public and private, production and reproduction, citizen/non-citizen, male and female by polarising the society between ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
Moral politics, adopted in authoritarian neoliberal governance, particularly establish their agenda by revalorising and/or redefining/rearticulating religious, heteronormative/sexist, nationalist/racist, and other normative ideologies. In this sense, moral politics in general is related to social boundaries and their spatio-temporalities. In particular, national narratives and nation-building projects are influencing the historical context of moral politics. Any nation-building project rests on the purportedly shared attributes among a community. In other words, it emerges ‘from the mutual recognition of large numbers of persons unknown to each other based on supposedly shared attributes that qualify them for membership of the same nation and, it should be added, that distinguish them from other persons who are thereby excluded from such membership’ (Jessop 2002, 173). However, despite a tale of homogenisation that supposedly calls upon a population for an equal relation with nationhood, there are varieties of power dynamics that remain hidden. Of particular interest here are the affective aspects of gendered nationhood, because the nation-building projects consider women ‘as symbols – patriarchally sculpted symbols – of the nation … symbols of the nation violated, the nation suffering, the nation reproducing itself, the nation at its purest’ (Enloe 2014, 87). In fact, differentiating between terms such as honour, patriotism and bravery, as well as their related ‘disgraces’, and associated affects as either nationalistic or masculinist, can be challenging due to the intricate ties they share with both the concept of nationhood and manliness (Nagel 2018).
For instance, feminist scholarship reveals the substantial importance of imposing heteronormativity and endorsing and/or reviving certain forms of masculinity in the functioning of neoliberalisation, militarisation and mobilisation of authoritarian far-right nationalist forces around the world (Repo 2018; Salzinger 2016; Cornwall, Karioris, and Lindisfarne 2021). The rise of hyper-masculine figures such as Trump, Bolsonaro, Milei, El-Sisi, Erdoğan and Qasem Soleimani, as well as public expressions of the demise of masculinity, for example, in the image of the ‘wounded white masculinity’ as discussed by Brown (2020), unfold how gendered/sexual politics and (anti)patriarchal relations, by provoking certain emotions and norms, have contributed to advancing or resisting authoritarian neoliberalism and its related nation-state building projects in our time.
Familialism is deeply rooted in the affective discourses and practices of inclusion and exclusion of certain gendered bodies as (non)citizens. Thus, it is as gendered as racialised and/or nationalist moral governance. While affective-driven politics helps theorise and analyse familialism, it must be analytically considered as profoundly rooted in materialist relations of (re)production.
In this respect, the materialist-feminist critique of neoliberalism uncovers another aspect of familialism, i.e. its political economic dimension. It highlights how neoliberalism also relies on privatised and unpaid family labour as a resilience strategy in times of crisis and uncertainty (Bedford 2009). Neoliberalism works through gendered constructions that reassign care work to the private sphere, unburdening the state from tasks of collective care (Cooper 2017, 2020). This goes against the common understanding of neoliberalism, which is believed to promote sexual freedom and gender diversity beyond the moral frame of the traditional family. Instead, in its ideal form, neoliberal governance aims to ‘enforce kinship obligations’ and proliferate the ‘tradition’ that guarantees ‘the moral and economic function of the family’ (Cooper 2020, 96–97). Therefore, the success of neoliberal governance largely depends on the different functions of households and housework. The household is reconstructed not only as a site for providing collective care but also as a factory, a crucial site of neoliberal exploitation and extraction, and, consequently, a space of multifaceted violence (Cavallero and Gago 2023).
Within this materialist-feminist framework, familialism as a moral heteronormative gendered politics and women as the reproductive bodies and the primary caregivers and houseworkers play a crucial role in maintaining the household as a care centre and a microenterprise. In summary, we define neoliberal familialism as a gendered-moral governance that establishes its agenda by valorising and/or redefining heteronormative family values, gendered norms, practices, and desires according to the neoliberal project. Nevertheless, neoliberal familialism is not uniform or consistent globally, nor is it internally coherent or successful in all aspects. If it were, we would not observe the ever-growing contentious politics concerning gender issues like gender-based violence and resistance both locally and globally against authoritarian politics and policies.
While we can observe a common trend and detect similar consequences of the implementation of neoliberal familialism worldwide – such as the increase in transcide and femicide, the enactment of more restricted anti-abortion laws, and the expression of anti-feminist views in various political environments – neoliberal familialism has been framed differently, using various languages, and making different demands based on the specific contexts and the hegemonic moral and religious discourses. Hence, this paper contributes to addressing general and context-specific aspects of neoliberal familialism, i.e. the ways gendered moral politics has been reappropriated in Iran along with the advancement of neoliberalism. Indeed, this contribution adds to the literature on authoritarian neoliberalism and its gender politics. There has been very little study or analysis of Iran in the context of critiques of neoliberalism and even less on its impact on gender politics. However, the Iranian example can provide valuable insights into the entanglement of authoritarianism and neoliberalism and its gendered moral-market project. Furthermore, this study is a step towards deexceptionalising Iran, while asserting its particularity, in regard to gender politics.
A brief history of familialism in Iran
The family is the foundational unit of Islamic society. Therefore, all laws, regulations, and their corresponding politics must be in the direction of facilitating the establishment of the family, the protection of its sanctity, and the maintenance of its relations, based on Islamic law and ethics. [1]
Multiple spatio-temporalities are crucial in understanding the strategic importance of familialism and gender politics for the Islamic Republic in governing its ongoing political and economic crisis. In this section, we briefly visit key (trans)formations of familialism concerning the history of national state formation before delving into the post-revolutionary era and the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism in Iran.
The emergence of familialism
The notion of the family and gendered familial roles was adopted metaphorically by reformers and nationalists in the late Qajar period towards the end of the nineteenth century in addressing patriotism, national responsibility towards the homeland, and in depicting hierarchical power in the society (see Kashani-Sabet 2011; Najmabadi 1996, 1998; Tavakoli-Targhi 2001). The Constitutional Revolution (1904–1906) was an attempt made by the newly emerged Iranian masculinity (Balslev 2019), which was highly influenced by Western culture, education and a heightened sense of awareness, triggered by a feeling of shame towards the ‘West’ based on a double comparison with a great lost past of the masculine ‘us’ and comparison with the present ‘other’. The revolutionary momentum also contains imposing heteronormativity and defining gendered roles and their relation to nationhood (Najmabadi 2005).
Reza Shah Pahlavi emerged as a hypermasculine figure after the defeat of the Constitutional Revolution. During his reign, a transformation towards a disciplinary strategy for governing the social was brought about through the normalisation of a certain form of life, reorganisation of public and private spheres, criminalisation and scientification of sexuality (Dezhamkhooy and Mousavi-Sharqi 2018, 13–14), legislation of the family, and finally moralisation and familialisation of the relation of the monarch/patriarch with his children/soldiers/citizens (Farvardin 2021, 94). The implementation of this interventionist strategy over bodies expanded the traditional guardianship/patriarchal relations beyond the domain of private life and to the state apparatus (Amin 1999; Rejali 1994). Consequently, ‘the state’s guardianship/patriarchal relations with its subjects legitimated the external authority of physicians, midwives, social reformers, and so on over families and reproductive bodies’ (Farvardin 2021, 111).
The aftermath of World War II and the deposition of Reza Shah in favour of his son, the Shah, profoundly impacted polity and politics in Iran. The period encompassed the transition from semicolonial to postcolonial conditions (Towfigh 2000, 112–119). This means that, in the immediate post-war period, Iran’s policies were mainly influenced by effects of the Cold War and also the popular mass movements in the absence of an authoritarian regime (Ladjevardi 1985). At the same time, the government prioritised economic modernisation through industrialisation and mass consumerism (Karimi 2013; Schayegh 2012). This shift, along with political struggles, impacted social policies and discourse, including the provision of hygienic services and social insurance for workers (see Akbari 2016; Schayegh 2009). It is worth noting that, for the first time, the nuclear family was considered a social unit that facilitates the provision of welfare services to citizens. These practices gave rise to familialism as a new site of gender struggles over state power in the mid-twentieth century. Besides welfare policies, maternalist measures, encouragement of heterosexuality, and pedagogical sexology in mass media influenced familialism (see Kashani-Sabet 2016; Najmabadi 2014; Afary 2009).
After the 1953 coup, the Shah regime in Iran aimed to diminish landlord power and leftist movements. In 1963, the White Revolution brought developmentalist social reforms, including the Land Reform, which led to social anxiety and an identity crisis. This collective anxiety reinforced protectionist discourses, such as the discourse of family crisis, discussing the demise of heteronormative gender order and masculinity as a consequence of modernisation and development. However, protectionism as a new form of governance became dominant in the early 1970s when Iran underwent massive transformations due to several factors, including the oil boom (see Talebi 2018; Nassehi 2018; Jafari 2013). As a result, the family became the primary strategic welfare unit that provided a more effective means for governing and policing transgressive bodies, regulating population dynamics, and protecting dominant political groups’ interests.
Post-revolutionary protectionist familialism
The 1979 Revolution represents continuity in discontinuity and discontinuity in continuity. For, in the aftermath of the revolution, protectionist governance continued, while post-revolutionary gender politics underwent radical changes to align with the new religious and moral values and objectives.
A few days after the revolution, the new religious leadership declared they were ending the Family Planning Program (FPP) and revoking the Family Protection Law (FPL). The FPL was a comparatively progressive law that considered equal rights in several aspects of gender regulations and family policies. In the name of protecting the nation, especially women and their chastity, veiling became mandatory for women aged nine and above, and gender segregation was enforced in public spaces, including schools, universities, and government buildings, despite strong opposition from feminist and women’s rights activists.
In the post-revolutionary period (1979–1989), there was an emphasis on pronatalism and the population growth that led to a baby boom in the mid-1980s. This coincided with the Iran–Iraq war, and the introduction of not only moral protectionism but also economic protectionism, resembling the pre-revolution pseudo-welfare state project, which were implemented to support the war effort, also reinforced the representation and function of the nuclear family as the backbone of the Islamic Republic (Farvardin 2021, 210–211). The government implemented several economic policies to support large families, such as allocating essential food items and subsidising products. Additionally, the government encouraged families to have more children to contribute to the war effort. For many families, having more children became a way to ensure long-term welfare security (Ghobadi 2010, 8–11).
The beginning of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) led to an increased focus on the moral conduct of the nation, particularly women and gender dissidents. As Najmabadi (2014, 164–165) notes, during the war, any non-normative behaviour was considered to be a betrayal of Islamic and national values. The war veterans and soldiers who protected the nation against foreign enemies became defenders of gendered morality at home and in public. Any non-conforming behaviour was seen as an insult to the martyrs of the war, known as ‘sacred defense’ (Najmabadi 2014, 165). Furthermore, the Islamic Republic mobilised its Islamist followers and formed a police force whose duty was to uphold gender order and discipline gendered bodies effectively. Since then, women and gender dissidents have been harassed, arrested, fined and lashed by hijab police for unveiling or improper veiling (see Yaghoobi 2012; Afary 2009; Sedghi 2007).
According to the Islamic Republic’s ideologues, protecting public morality and respecting the martyrs’ blood required the enhancement of the Islamic values and rituals that would have been initially nurtured and flourished in the families. Thus, a new version of familialism was introduced during the war. Unsurprisingly, women gained special attention in their maternalist roles and household care work. We refer to all these moral, warfare, protectionist gendered (non)discursive practices of the first decade of the Islamic Republic as post-revolutionary protectionist familialism.
Developmentalist familialism
The Islamic Republic’s second period (1989–2006) was dominated by developmentalist ideology. During this period, the state implemented policies and governmental planning based on developmentalist principles. These included promoting and prioritising economic growth for all so-called underdeveloped sectors, populations and communities, creating a competitive free market, reconstructing infrastructures, and even encouraging foreign investment in development projects.
This period brought antinatalism into prominence and revived the FPP, which was banned after the revolution. We call the form of familialism that prevailed during this period developmentalist familialism. This term emphasises the role of liberal developmentalist ideology and the ‘structural adjustment’ economic reforms in shaping the moral and emotional framework of gender politics during this time. In this period, the main goal of the state project was no longer the global-scale revolution or the promotion of the so-called Islamic economy, as advocated in the first decade, but rather the maintenance of Iran’s socio-economic stability. The post-war government turned to Global North partners such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for assistance (Khajehpour 2000; Ehsani 1994). This led to the implementation of a neoliberal economic reform plan referred to as structural adjustment policies. However, the desire for a neoliberal economic reform required institutional preparations for development that targeted the non-economic sector too. As a result, some social policies and political participation programmes were introduced, particularly during the late 1990s and early 2000s reform era.
The shift from pronatalism to antinatalism should be seen as an important aspect of change in the Islamic Republic’s art of governance and its necessary institutional preparations (Farvardin 2020, 2021). The First Development Plan (1989–1994) explicitly highlighted that the effectiveness of the FPP is directly linked to the level of women’s involvement in social and economic spheres, as well as the overall increase in female literacy rates.
The same logic also prevailed in policing gendered bodies, particularly feminised bodies. For instance, brutal punishment and coercive methods such as lashing and imprisonment to impose compulsory hijab, at least according to the official law, were replaced by punishing by paying fines. Furthermore, to comply with the gender/sexual policies of the developmentalist governance, women were assigned the task of participating in social and economic activities. The discourse of ‘empowerment’, borrowed from the Western doctrine, has also contributed to the popularity of discussions on the crucial roles of women’s empowerment and participation in advancing developmentalist policies.
At the end of this period, the number of women who obtained higher education degrees surpassed that of men. Likewise, women became more involved in both political and economic activities (Sedghi 2007). Moreover, there was a notable decline in birth rates during this period, which had a considerable effect on gender dynamics in the subsequent decade of the Islamic Republic.
Authoritarian neoliberalism in Iran
Since the mid-2000s, there has been a drastic increase in the number of women and gender dissidents who have gained more visibility in the public domain and have achieved significant cultural, economic and educational accomplishments. The revival of the feminist movement has coincided with these developments. To counteract this trend, the Islamic Republic has started promoting a narrative around the supposed crisis of the family and population decline. The government has launched different programmes to reverse the trend, such as providing financial incentives for larger families and annihilating the FPP. Furthermore, in October 2021, a new comprehensive law, known as ‘Youthful Population and Protection of the Family’, was passed that further restricts access to prenatal testing and diagnosis, abortion, contraceptives, voluntary sterilisation services, and related information. The use of new technologies to monitor and track pregnant women and women of fertility age to prevent possible illegal abortion or sterilisation is a unique aspect of the law.
Simultaneously, there has been a significant rise in the implementation of policies and (non)discursive practices aimed at reinforcing heteronormative Islamic gendered roles. For instance, surveillance technologies were used, and a new branch of police called the Guidance Patrol or the Moral Security Police was established (Akbari 2021). These policing measures have targeted women and gender dissidents in particular and led to further spatial segregation and restrictions on their clothing and educational and employment opportunities, and even their chances to move around freely.
Reimplementing pronatalist policies and enforcing surveillance and disciplinary mechanisms in Iran is notable because it coincided with the country’s shift to neoliberal governance. It is worth emphasising that neoliberal structural adjustment policies of the early period provided the conditions of possibility for the later shift; however, the qualitative transformation in the latest period did occur due to several critical economic and political events, including the instability and (civil) wars in the Middle East; consequently, Iran’s political and military interventions in the region, and its developing nuclear programme led to significant sanctions being imposed on the country. This, in turn, prompted the introduction of the ‘subsidy reform plan’, which entailed several cuts. Additionally, the political crisis that ensued in major cities after the 2009 election also contributed to this transformation. The combination of all these events led to the government’s assessment that this all-encompassing crisis could only be survived by further neoliberalisation beyond the economic sector (Farvardin 2020) along with using more coercive technologies.
Despite efforts to revive the economy and silence political opposition, by 2012, the country continued to struggle with high inflation and unemployment rates, fostering growing political discontent. The harsh economic conditions, along with crippling international sanctions, eventually led to the introduction of a new plan called the ‘Resistance Economy’ by the Supreme Leader in February 2014.
The general policies of the programme comprise articles, including, among others, these: providing facilities and resources for entrepreneurial activities, advancing subsidy reforms, reducing the state’s costs by downsizing its apparatus, cutting public services, privatising state-owned enterprises, changing consumption patterns, promoting a ‘jihādī’ lifestyle, i.e. Islamic warfare logic but in everyday life, and imposing so-called ‘resistive’ economic principles and habitus in all aspects of Iranians’ lives through both governmental regulations and media campaigns. [2]
The use of language and rhetoric associated with resistance economy, albeit in a more militant and guerrilla-like manner, highlights the significance of affective politics of provoking and addressing fear and insecurity from one side; on the other side, the adoption of warfare logic as a response to this fear on both economic and cultural fronts. In recent times, there has been a return to military language and logic in policymaking and propaganda discourses of the Islamic Republic. This includes the term ‘resistance economy’ itself, the Moral Security Police, naming the centre for monitoring population policies ‘Qarargah’ or population’s headquarters (in a militaristic sense). Additionally, terms such as jihādī lifestyle or intelligent jihād (jihād means Islamic war) are used while discussing cultural production and practices.
It is important to understand that the use of warfare concepts and militarised language by the Islamic Republic is not a new phenomenon. The concept of martyrdom, connected to Shi’a eschatology with the idea of justice, was decisive in the affective and discursive formation of the post-revolutionary regime in Iran (Talebi 2018). The political discourse of the Islamic Republic has always been characterised by hyper-masculine nationalism and a tendency to emotionally frame issues in terms of war and conflict between good and evil. However, the past decade has seen a significant shift in the way warfare is framed, as there is now little emphasis on the populist ideals of social justice and equality for all citizens or Muslim populations. This is a departure from the revolutionary messianism and, consequently, the more inclusive nationalist discourse of the 1979 revolution.
This new form of warfare discourse in Iran can be referred to as ‘negative messianism’, a term coined by Achille Mbembe (2019) to discuss necropolitics. It has been influenced by the neoliberal doctrine – among others, economisation and individualism. This discourse has had a significant impact on every aspect of Iranian lives, from lifestyle to politics, from gender policing to economic welfare policies. Although adopting the same religious concepts and rhetoric, negative messianism aims not for collective salvation but rather individual survival at the cost of sacrificing ‘the others’ (Mbembe 2019, 104–107). Indeed, the necropolitical drive in its most destructive form, i.e. warfare form, has been worked to justify ever-growing inequality, exploitation of population, and destruction of nature. This necropolitical discourse in Iran has been founded on exclusionary religious and, more importantly, economised language, which promises worldly (and otherworldly) victory and prosperity only to those citizens/soldiers who have ideological and institutional ties with the regime and resist the West and the other enemies. It has become common in the past decade to hear exclusionary rhetoric in everyday debates among officials in Iran. For example, those who do not support the regime are often told explicitly to leave the country, or it is stated that Iran and its wealth belong only to Hezbollahis (supporters of the regime). [3] This type of rhetoric is not limited to lower-level officials but is also evident among high-ranking individuals. This exclusionary warfare, which is steeped in masculine nationalism, is used to rally supporters of the Islamic Republic as the chosen victors of the world.
The speech delivered by the supreme leader after the violent suppression that took place during the November 2019 uprising is a clear example of the fundamental shift in the regime’s political rationality and gendered nationalist moral politics. In his speech, Khamenei presented a new interpretation of the Quranic term ‘Mostaz’af’ or ‘downtrodden’. Previously, Mostaz’af was of significant ideological importance in Islamic revolutionary mobilisation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, focusing on social justice and equality. The previous adoption of the Mostaz’af viewed the Islamic Revolution and its objectives and results as a promise to the oppressed people, especially Muslims and Iranians, who are considered underprivileged and victims of Imperialist forces. In a complete shift from that predominant definition, Khamenei claimed:
Who are the Mostaz’af? Some misunderstand it. They understand the Mostaz’af, inferior people, or even vulnerable people in recent years, no! The Qur’an does not consider those people the Mostaz’af! … This is the real meaning of the Mostaz’af: those who will eventually inherit the earth and all its creatures. [4]
In this statement, Khamenei redefines the meaning and function of this Islamic concept to fit with the neoliberal governing rationality of the Islamic republic. In his opinion, the Mostaz’af must not be misunderstood by the popular and revolutionary understanding of this Islamic term, i.e. underprivileged or subalterns. Instead, the Islamic Republic and its active supporters/soldiers are considered the Mostaz’af and destined to be ruled while in constant internal and external warfare in pursuit of its final victory, as stated by the supreme leader.
It has been widely discussed that remilitarisation and the rise of security discourses are both the conditions of possibility and the result of an authoritarian turn in governance. Surveillance technology, security, warfare languages and logic aim to promote authoritarian neoliberal governance across various facets of social life. However, what is crucial to note is how the use of militarised and masculine framing and practices not only results in political repression and the resurgence of nationalism but also has contributed to and justified the implementation of austerity policies in response to the imposition of international sanctions. Furthermore, by emotionally mobilising conservative nationalist and religious sectors of society against non-conformist (non)citizens and gender dissidents, the new militarised masculine discourse has aimed to further gender policing and the restriction of the reproductive rights of gendered citizens.
The resistance economy’s principles are grounded on economic resilience theory, which aims to recover from economic shocks and resist their effects. Despite being touted as a novel economic system, it relies on neoliberal policies to recover from sanctions and their socio-economic effects. However, although neoliberal economic reforms have been introduced since the post-war period, we argue for a qualitative shift in the new phase of neoliberalisation in Iran. The recent phase of neoliberalisation adopts new governing strategies, for example with regard to population and family policies, and expands its logic to the previously non-economic spheres to confront the socio-economic crisis. Put differently, even though neoliberalism was introduced as a practical and temporary policy, it has gradually expanded beyond just restructuring the economy. It has also introduced a new political rationality based on an innovative configuration of neo-patriarchal, nationalist, and religious values and practices.
As per one of the official statements of the resistance economy plan, [5] the policies, plans and regulations of the country are required to be ‘family-oriented’ and family friendly. This statement suggests that the family must have a primary role and be promoted not only as a site of reproduction but also as the ‘center of growth and development’. The document also acknowledges the gender differences in familial roles and highlights ‘women’s maternal and housework role’ as opposed to ‘men’s paternal and economic role’.
By adopting a so-called resistance economy and warfare discourses, the Islamic Republic has to find a way to adapt the population to the changes and challenges that come with depopulation, and more importantly, socio-economic crises and the intensification of neoliberalisation. In such circumstances, familialism as a gendered moral discourse and the family as an institution offer very advantageous means for this economic and political agenda. Overstating the demise of the Iranian family as a Western plot and linking the population decline to international economic and political pressures against Iran, in other words, provoking moral panic and a sense of insecurity, are part of the same discursive efforts to advance control over intimate spaces and reproductive bodies.
It seems that neoliberal familialism has emerged as a viable solution not only to depopulation and economic difficulties but also as a long-term strategy to address the governing dilemma that is either inherited from or advanced by neoliberalism. It assumes significant responsibility for social reproduction, regulating reproductive/gendered bodies. It serves as a crucial mechanism to safeguard the population and state apparatus from the insecurities and precariousness stemming from neoliberalisation.
Conclusion
This paper investigates the strategic implications of familialism for the Islamic Republic of Iran in addressing the socio-economic crises. We argue that prevailing global neoliberal principles have influenced recent family and gender policies in Iran. Moreover, we assert that the emergence of authoritarian neoliberalism in Iran has been facilitated by the fusion of neoliberal values with heteropatriarchal ideology, alongside moral and nationalist discourses aimed at shaping and governing ideas, desires and emotions of (non)citizens.
Neoliberal familialism, the latest iteration of gendered moral governance in Iran, reflects the country’s transition towards neoliberal political rationality in managing its socio-economic crises. Our analysis traces the evolution of familialism in Iran, highlighting its emergence as a site of contention over state power during the mid-twentieth century. The White Revolution of 1963, including the major land reforms, introduced protectionist discourses amidst social panic and identity crisis, emphasising the preservation of traditional family structures in response to perceived threats posed by modernisation.
Following the 1979 revolution, protectionist governance persisted, accompanied by a radical shift in gender policies to align with new religious and moral paradigms. The Iran–Iraq war further reinforced the nuclear family as the cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s stability, with pronatalist policies deployed as part of economic warfare protectionism. In the post-war period, developmentalist principles influenced familialism, emphasising the empowerment of family members, particularly women, in (re)productive roles. Therefore, familialism became a new site of struggles over state power.
Neoliberal familialism represents the latest evolution of familialism in Iran, characterised by adopting neoliberal principles, surveillance technologies, warfare rhetoric and authoritarian coercive measures to respond to the concerns about population decline, economic hardship, and political discontent exacerbated by neoliberalisation. It is built upon another affective-driven politics of social panic and feelings of precariousness and insecurity while addressing the family crisis and feminised bodies’ transgressive practices as the source of national demise and the main reason for social and economic insecurity and moral degradation. Unlike protectionist familialism, neoliberal familialism aims to benefit a few, not many, and unburden the state from its social responsibilities. It promotes the family as both a reproductive and entrepreneurial unit.
We contend that neoliberal familialism in Iran can be viewed as a familiar example of the convergence of neoliberalism and family-oriented gendered moral politics characterised by reviving nationalism and religious conservatism and reassertion of heteronormativity. At the same time, this perspective challenges conventional analyses of gender politics in Iran. Using the neoliberal governance framework and studying its transformations we contradict the conventional view about gender ideology and policing in Iran, which is detached from critiques of global capitalism and fails to account for the materialist base and political-economic aspects of gender dynamics in Iran. By offering this overlooked theoretical framework and empirical case study, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of how authoritarian neoliberalism intersects with moral and affective-driven politics and its implications for authoritarian regimes worldwide, including Iran.
Notes
[1] The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979, Article 10.
[2] Doctrine of Resistance Economy: http://moqavemati.net/doctorin/
[3] https://articleeighteen.com/analysis/14115/
[4] https://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=44267
[5] ‘Ayatollah Khamenei Announces General Policies on Family’, news release, 3 September 2016, http://english.khamenei.ir/news/4132/Ayatollah-Khamenei-Announces-General-Policies-on-Family
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Firoozeh Farvardin is a researcher and activist working on gender/sexual (counter-) strategies in the context of authoritarian neoliberalism. Nader Talebi is a postdoctoral researcher working on mobility and mobilisation in the Middle East, with a focus on Iran.
This article first appeared in Third World Quarterly.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).
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