"Iran: between power and civil society" Ondřej Beránek and Collective (Metropolitan University Prague, 2011)

This book deals with the issues of power, civil society, and human rights in Iran. It includes contributions from Charles Robinson (Metropolitan University Prague), Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (SOAS, University of London), Farid Mirbagheri (University of Nicosia, Cyprus), Naghmeh Sohrabi (Brandeis University, US), Věra Vojtíšková a Zuzana Kříhová (both Charles University, Czech Republic).

Charles Robinson´s introductory chapter is intended as a series of theoretical reflection on the nature of civil society and its relationship to democracy and, to a lesser extent, human rights.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam´s chapter takes the contemporary emergence of radical and revolutionary politics in Iran as a departure point. The chapter discuss a) how the contemporary “radical subject” in Iran emerged out of dialectics between state and society in the late 19th Century and b) how, out of the depth of the political disillusionment with the Pahlavi monarchy, political radical turned to revolutionary action yielding the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Farid Mirbagheri´s chapter analyses Iran´s domestic, regional and international challenges by delineating four major political developments in Iran over the past century: the Constitutional revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, the occupation of Iranian territory by the Soviet forces during and after the end of World War II, the nationalisation of Iranian oil industry by the populist Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddegh, and the Revolution of 1978-9 led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Naghmeh Sohrabi´s chapter provides a novel perspective on the current power struggle evolving in Iran between the president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and their respective factions.

Věra Vojtíšková describes in her chapter the state of human rights in Iran and developments in this area in recent years. She especially focuses on the right to life, the right to freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the right to liberty and security of person and to freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right to a free trial, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and finally women´s and sexual minorities´ rights.

Zuzana Kříhová looks deeper into the notion of civil society in the case of Iran. She also draws parallels between the Iranian civil society struggles and the civil society movements in Central and Eastern Europe.
 

(Text by Ondřej Beránek)



………………………………………………………
Title: Iran: between power and civil society
Author: Ondřej Beránek,
Publisher: Metropolitan University Prague
Year: 2011
Number of pages: 159

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:: Table of Contents ::

Preface

Notes on Contributors

Civil Society and democracy: Theoretical Reflections (Charles Robinson)

What is radicalism? Power and resistance in Iran (Arshin Adib-Moghaddam)

Iran: An On-going Challenge after Three Decades of revolution (Farid Mirbagheri)

The Power Struggle in Iran: A Centrist Comback? (Naghmeh Sohrabi)

Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Věra Vojtíšková)

Civil Society (Un)Shaken (Zuzana Kříhová)

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