Overview

This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Part One explores sovereignty in ancient Iran by looking at the Elamites through a theoretical lens, the Achaemenids, and the Parthians and Sasanians. Part Two explores how territory relates to sovereignty alongside other dynamics in the Safavid, Second World War, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods. Part Three then focuses on competing and co-existing sovereignties in the southern Persian Gulf at the beginning of the twentieth century in Kurdistan and its relationships with Iranian governments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. A non-Eurocentric framework requires the reader to think about co-existing and competing sovereignties with an 'Area Studies' lens. This approach moves beyond periodised understandings of history and not only contributes to better understanding Eurocentrism but also enables a greater appreciation of contexts, complexities and agencies.

Full Product Details

9781399554183

Table of Contents

Reviews

Through a historical overview from the ancient Iran to the present, this timely and original contribution offers a non-Eurocentric approach. It presents many interesting insights into the complexity and relationality of sovereignties, both internal and external. As social construction, sovereignties, ranging from the state to women’s bodies and agencies, as well as their markers, are navigated, enforced and contested. -- Azadeh Kian, Université Paris Cité (Professor Emerita)

Author Information

Dr Shabnam J. Holliday is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Plymouth, UK. She is also Research Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies (part of the British Academy). Her research interests are around Iran and world orders, and decentring International Relations (IR). She is author of several peer-reviewed articles including (with Edward Wastnidge) 'Towards a Post-imperial and Global IR?: Revisiting Khatami's Dialogue among Civilisations', Review of International Studies (2025) and 'Beyond Hegemony, World Order as Domination: Iran's Green Movement and the Nuclear Sanctions Regimes', International Relations (2023). She is co-editor (with Philip Leech) of Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2016) and author of Defining Iran: Politics of Resistance (Routledge, 2011).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available