Revolutions and 'Rough Cuts': Bodily Technologies for Regulating Sexuality in Contemporary Iran
type: CreativeWork
description: Studies on the regulation of sexuality in the Islamic Republic of Iran are often focused on the regulatory tool of criminalization in relation to sex and sexuality. More recently, popular academic debates have centered on the revolutionary sexual practices among a subculture of upper-middle class Tehrani youth. Yet the scope of practices, methods, and technologies used to regulate and express sexuality in contemporary Iran are manifold and diverse, conflictive and collaborative, and seldom reflective of the state's ideological imperative of an "Islamic sexual morality." This dissertation examines the regulation of sexuality in Iran from 1965 to 2012, a period beginning with the launching of modernization reforms under the Pahlavi dynasty and ending well into the third decade of the Islamic Republic. As seen through state, religious, juridical, popular cultural, and public health discourses on sexuality, this project examines the construction and application of bodily technologies --meaning the physical and conceptual modes of regulation enacted to discipline and/or control "immodest" and "deviant" expressions of men and women. This project concentrates on five unique sites: a popular women's journal, a red-light district, temporary marriage, iconic public statues, and a HIV-AIDS advocacy organization in Tehran. In each site, I identify, compare, and contextualize the methods of regulation, posing the following questions: how are bodily technologies constructed discursively and socially in Iran? And, in particular, what values and perspectives are incorporated in them, serving to dictate what kinds of realities, lifestyles, and desires are both permissible and accessible? By tracing the construction and strategic application of both old and new modes of regulation, I discuss how each mode engages with the forces of modernity, consumerism, prostitution, and religious discourse. Also, I examine how sites and modes of regulation mutate into each other, breaking form to …
abstract: Studies on the regulation of sexuality in the Islamic Republic of Iran are often focused on the regulatory tool of criminalization in relation to sex and sexuality. More recently, popular academic debates have centered on the revolutionary sexual practices among a subculture of upper-middle class Tehrani youth. Yet the scope of practices, methods, and technologies used to regulate and express sexuality in contemporary Iran are manifold and diverse, conflictive and collaborative, and seldom reflective of the state's ideological imperative of an "Islamic sexual morality." This dissertation examines the regulation of sexuality in Iran from 1965 to 2012, a period beginning with the launching of modernization reforms under the Pahlavi dynasty and ending well into the third decade of the Islamic Republic. As seen through state, religious, juridical, popular cultural, and public health discourses on sexuality, this project examines the construction and application of bodily technologies --meaning the physical and conceptual modes of regulation enacted to discipline and/or control "immodest" and "deviant" expressions of men and women. This project concentrates on five unique sites: a popular women's journal, a red-light district, temporary marriage, iconic public statues, and a HIV-AIDS advocacy organization in Tehran. In each site, I identify, compare, and contextualize the methods of regulation, posing the following questions: how are bodily technologies constructed discursively and socially in Iran? And, in particular, what values and perspectives are incorporated in them, serving to dictate what kinds of realities, lifestyles, and desires are both permissible and accessible? By tracing the construction and strategic application of both old and new modes of regulation, I discuss how each mode engages with the forces of modernity, consumerism, prostitution, and religious discourse. Also, I examine how sites and modes of regulation mutate into each other, breaking form to …
author: Batmanghelichi, Kristin
language: English
keywords: Sexuality, Sex and law, Sociology, Ethnology
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:27Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8FT8T7F