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Shahram Khosravi , Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran , Contemporary Ethnography (Philadelphia, Pa. : University of Philadelphia Press , 2017). Pp. 275. $51.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780812248876
Mobility and Precarity
In May 2017, BBC Persian posted a short video message on its Instagram feed that was submitted by a young Iranian viewer. This was Milad, a postsecondary student and resident of Qom, Iran. He outlines his "expectations of the presidential candidate" that he voted for, and calls upon this candidate to advance social and cultural opportunities "for people like me." He complains that recreational activities (sargarmi) in Qom--a "religious city," he points out--are limited for youth. The video ends on a rather despondent note as he suggests that actually realizing these expectations will probably prove costly for the candidate.
Shahram Khosravi's Precarious Lives is an anthropological exploration of the circumstances and lived experiences that underpin such appeals. The voices of its interlocutors strike many of the same chords that Milad does. In this regard, Precarious Lives may be read as an extension of Khosravi's earlier monograph on middle-class Iranian youth in Tehran (Young and Defiant in Tehran [Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008]). This time around, however, we are presented with a wider analytic lens: describing forms of precarity among, for example, the working class and urban poor, while also placing these experiences beyond Tehran. As a result, the chapters read more like progressive variations on this theme, precarity, rather than a sustained study of a particular locale or set of social practices.
Khosravi clarifies the scope of "precarity" early on as "a defining feature of society in general" (p. 4). The introduction takes care to foreground the various ways in which the experiential contents of this concept are unpacked in the chapters that follow. These include vulnerability, social exclusion, a sense of being stuck in an abortive present, and a lack of confidence in the future. Tracking...