NOV. 4: WRITING CAPITALISM INTO THE HISTORY OF IRAN

PANEL DISCUSSION

Despite the recent upswell of new histories of capitalism and reassessments of the categories by which the history of Iran has been conventionally narrated, these two conversations have for the most part proceeded on separate tracks. This panel invites scholars to reflect on what new entries into the study of capitalism might mean for writing Iran into the history of capitalism and capitalism into the history of modern Iran. How might we capture the local experiences and institutions that gave capitalism meaning to Iranians as well as larger processes of capital accumulation? While class is often deployed as the master axiom of capitalism and political economy its principal method, this panel aims to adopt a more expansive understanding of capitalism and the methods by which it might be studied. Rather than see social processes as determined by discrete economic forces, it hopes to think of ways by which Iran’s integration into global capitalism might be analyzed at multiple scales and in multiple methodological registers. In this sense, the panel will examine the disciplinary and conceptual boundaries that have sustained the separation of critical histories of Iran and critical theories of capital.