![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This study asks questions about the understudied cultural, especially discursive, consequences of social movements at large, and rightist movements in particular. Focusing on the discursive repertoire of the Islamist rightist movement in Iran (known as principlism), I demonstrate that in response to the liberal Reform Movement (1997–2005), the principlist groups in Iran weaponized a millennial language against liberal reformists beginning in the early 2000s. The institutionalization of the Islamist principlist movement in 2005 mainstreamed this politicized language, giving rise to a new cultural reform politics in the country known under Aḥmadīnizhād as the Mahdavī discourse (millennialism). That is, the Mahdavī discourse represented a new cultural reconfiguration, or “cultural engineering,” in state politics. However, the Green Movement of 2009 as well as the Arab uprisings divided the unified Mahdavī discourse within the principlist movement into divergent millennial discourses. Drawing on millennial-oriented news stories and events from the early 2000s until the rise of the self-identified Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, I highlight the millennial discourses, as well as the Islamist-centered cultural engineering project, as the discursive outcomes of social movements.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Kevin Leicht, Dr. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Dr. Mahmoud Sadri, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Āyatollāh Miṣbaḥ Yazdī in his meeting with Maḥmūd Aḥmadīnizhād before the presidential election of 2005, in Riza Ṣanʿtī (2008) Gūftimāni Miṣbaḥ: Gūzārishī az Zindigānīi Ilmī va Syāsīi Āyatollaḥ Miṣbaḥ Yazdī [Misbah’s Declarations: Speeches from the religious and political life of Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi] (Tehran:Markazi Asnādi Inqilābi Islāmī), p. 879.
2 See Bosi & Uba (Citation2009) Introduction: The Outcomes of Social Movements, Mobilization: An International Journal, 14, pp. 409–415.
3 See Leo D'Anjou (Citation1996) Social Movements and Cultural Change: The First Abolition Campaign Revisited (New York: Aldine de Gruyter); and Thomas R. Rochon (Citation1998) Culture Moves: Ideas, Activism, and Changing Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
4 Chris Bail (Citation2011) Terrified: Fringe Movements, Emotions, and Islam, 2001–2008 (PhD thesis, Harvard University), p. 32.
5 Kin Yat Gary Tang (Citation2016) Discursive Appropriation: Government’s Discursive Response to Social Movement, and the Limitation of Movement Outcome (PhD thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong), p. 23.
6 Bail, “Terrified,” p. 32.
7 Edward H. Miller (Citation2015) Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).
8 Kathleen M. Blee & Kimberly A. Creasap (Citation2010) Conservative and Right-Wing Movements, Annual Review of Sociology, 36, p. 270.
9 Ṣubḥ, September 26, 1995.
10 See ṢanꜤtī, in ibid; and F. Rajabī (Citation2005) Aḥmadīnizhād: MoꜤjizi Hizāri Sivuwwm (Tehran: Danish Āmūz)
11 Ibid.
12 Kayhān, February 8, 2005.
13 Kayhān, January 16, 2005.
14 Available online at http://www.rajanews.com/news/146402, accessed March 23, 2021.
15 See Abbas Amanat (Citation2009) Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism (New York: I. B. Tauris); Paul Boyer (Citation1992) When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press); Vittorio Lanternari (Citation1963) The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, translated by Lisa Sergio (New York: Alfred A. Knopf); Amy Luebbers (Citation2001) The Remnant Faithful: A Case Study of Contemporary Apocalyptic Catholicism, Sociology of Religion, 62, pp. 221–241; William F. Tucker (Citation2008) Mahdis and Millenarians: Shiite Extremists in Early Muslim Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
16 Eric J. Hobsbawm (Citation1959) Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (NY: The Norton Library).
17 Miller, “Nut Country,” p. 6.
18 See Michael Barkun (Citation1974) Disaster and the Millennium (New Haven and London: Yale University Press); Martha Lee and Herbert Simms (2008) American Millenarianism and Violence: Origins and Expression, Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 2, pp. 107–127.
19 See Amanat, “Apocalyptic Islam;” R. Jaʿfaryān (Citation2013) Mahdīāni Durūghīn (Tehran: ʿllm Publication).
20 Hillel Schwartz (Citation1976) The End of the Beginning: Millenarian Studies, 1969–1975, Religious Studies Review, 2, pp. 1–15; Joseph F. Zygmunt (1975) Prophetic Failure and Chiliastic Identity: The Case of Jehovah’s Witness, American Journal of Sociology, 75, pp. 926–948; Michael P. Carroll (Citation1975) Revitalization Movements and Social Structure: Some Quantitative Tests, American Sociological Review, 40 (3), pp. 389–401; Graham Allan (Citation1974) A Theory of Millennialism: The Irvingite Movement as an Illustration, The British Journal of Sociology, 25 (3), pp. 296–311.
21 Erling Jorstad (Citation1970) The Politics of Doomsday: Fundamentalists of the Far Right (Nashville & New York: Abingdon Press); Joshua J. Yates & James Davison Hunter (2000) Fundamentalism: When History Goes Awry, in Joseph E. Davis (ed.), Stories of Change: Narrative and Social Movements (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 123–149; and Daniel Wojcik (1970) The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America (New York: New York University Press).
22 Fred Kniss & Gene Burns (2004) Religious Movement, in David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule & Hanspeter Kriesi (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), pp. 694–717.
23 For the political outcomes, see Felix Kolb (Citation2007) Protest and Opportunities: The Political Outcomes of Social Movements (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag). For the cultural outcomes, see Jennifer Earl (Citation2016) Protest Online: Theorizing the Consequences of Online Engagement, in Lorenzo Bosi, Marco Giugni & Katrin Uba (eds.), The Consequences of Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 363–400.
24 Bosi et al., “The Consequences,” p. 4.
25 Jennifer Earl (Citation2004) The Cultural Consequences of Social Movements, in Snow et al., “The Blackwell Companion,” pp. 508–531; Bosi & Uba “Introduction;” Bosi et al., “The Consequences;” Earl, “Protest Online.”
26 Thomas Alan Elliott (Citation2015) “The Cultural Consequences of Social Movements: The LGBT Movement and the Transformation of Discourse about Homosexuality in Mainstream Newspapers” (PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine).
27 Nancy Whittier (Citation2016) Aggregate-level Biographical Outcomes for Gay and Lesbian Movements, in Bosi et al., (eds.), The Consequences of Social Movements, p. 136.
28 William A. Gamson (Citation1998) Social Movements and Cultural Change, in Marco G. Giugni, Doug McAdam & Charles Tilly (eds.), From Contention to Democracy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers); William A. Gamson & Andre Modigliani (1989) Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach, American Journal of Sociology, 95 (1), pp. 1–37.
29 Sarah Gaby and Neal Caren (2016) The Rise of Inequality: How Social Movements Shape Discursive Fields, Mobilization: An International Quarterly 21(4), p. 412.
30 Sindey Tarrow (Citation2013) The Language of Contention: Revolutions in Words 1688–2012 (New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 4.
31 Ibid, p. 13.
32 Tang, “Discursive Appropriation,” p. 20.
33 Edwin Amenta & Francesca Polletta (Citation2019) The Cultural Impacts of Social Movements, Annual Review of Sociology, 45, p. 281.
34 JaꜤfaryān was selected as the most prolific blogger among all Iranian scholars in 2014. Available online at https://bit.ly/2UdoU2G, accessed March 23, 2021.
35 Amanat, “Apocalyptic Islam;” Ali Rahnema (Citation2011) Superstition as Ideology in Iranian Politics: From Majlesi to Ahmadinejad (New York: Cambridge University Press).
36 Robert Wuthnow (Citation2014) Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Miller, “Nut Country;” and Boyer, “When Time Shall Be No More.”
37 Miller, “Nut Country.”
38 Amanat, “Apocalyptic Islam,” p. 27.
39 Holly J. McCammon, Harmony D. Newman, Courtney Sanders Muse & Teresa M. Terrell (2007) Movement Framing and Discursive Opportunity Structures: The Political Successes of the U.S. Women’s Jury Movements, American Sociological Review, 72 (5), pp. 725-749.]
40 Amanat, “Apocalyptic Islam;” and Rahnema, “Superstition as Ideology.”
41 ṢanꜤtī, “Gūftimāni Miṣbaḥ,” p. 499.
42 Kayhān, June 24, 1998.
43 Available online at: https://bit.ly/2WzQtVi, accessed March 23, 2021.
44 Kayhān, October 23, 2002.
45 Kayhān, October 31, 2001.
46 Kayhān, November 4, 2000.
47 Kayhān, October 28, 2004; November 8, 2003; December 9, 2000.
48 Kayhān, September 27, 2005
49 Kayhān, May 31, 2001.
50 Kayhān, October 12, 2002.
51 Nazanin Shahrokni (Citation2020) Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (Oakland, CA: University of California Press).
52 Kayhān, October 4, 2003; and April 29, 2004.
53 Kayhān, September 22, 2004.
54 Kayhān, September 21, 2005.
55 Mohammad Taghī Miṣbaḥ Yazdī (Citation2007) Majmūi Maqālāti Sevuwwmīn Hamāyishi Biynal Milalīi Dukturīni Mahdavāat (Tehran: Muassi Āyandi Rushan).
56 Ṣanʿtī, “Gūftimāni Miṣbaḥ.”
57 Rajabī, “Aḥmadīnizhād,” p. 145.
58 Kayhān, March 12, 2006.
59 ṢanꜤtī, “Gūftimāni Miṣbaḥ.”
60 Panjarih, volume 174.
61 Rahnema, “Superstition as Ideology,” p. 38.
62 Kayhān, January 1, 2007.
63 Kayhān, September 2, 2007.
64 Mahmūd Ahmadīnizhād (Citation2007) Mahdavīat va Ṣulḥi Kul: Gūftārhāī az Dr. Maḥmūd Aḥmadīnizhād pirāmūn Imam Aṣr (Tehran: Muassi Āyandi Rushan).
65 Panjarih, volumes 169, 170, 174.
66 Available online at https://bit.ly/2wuBOA0, accessed March 23, 2021.
67 Panjarih, volumes 169, 170.
68 Available online at https://bit.ly/2vGzZj6, accessed March 23, 2021.
69 See Panjarih, volume 169.
70 Available online at https://bit.ly/3yRROay, accessed March 23, 2021.
71 Āghā Tihrānī, for example, published four books about Shiʿi millennialism between 2005 and 2013, one of which is entitled “Family and the Mahdavī Upbringing.” As one of the most prominent students of Miṣbaḥ Yazdī, he became the religious advisor in Ahmadīnizhād’s first administration. He later became the Resilience Front’s first secretary general.
72 Available online at http://www.rajanews.com/news/209237, accessed March 23, 2021.
73 Available online at https://bit.ly/3wINDMp, accessed March 23, 2021.
74 Available online at https://bit.ly/3uu76zH, accessed May 7, 2021.
75 Available online at https://bit.ly/2QW4Ym6, accessed May 7, 2021.
76 Available online at http://www.rajanews.com/news/120392, accessed March 23, 2021.
77 Panjarih, volumes 100, 149 & 150.
78 Blee & Creasap, “Conservative and Right-Wing Movements;” Susan Friend Harding (Citation2000) The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press); Robert Wuthnow (Citation1988) The Reconstructing of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).