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.
Arvustused
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 womens bodies and agencies, as well as their markers, are navigated, enforced and contested. -- Azadeh Kian, Université Paris Cité (Professor Emerita) Seldom does theoretical and empirical inquiry intersect in such a sophisticated and intellectually rigorous manner. This is a collection of essays that warrants attention. -- Simon Mabon, Lancaster University
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Preface: 1919
Ali Ansari
Introduction: Writing Iran into Debates on Sovereignty
Shabnam J. Holliday
I. Sovereignties and Ancient Iran
1. Of Mountain and Plain: Sovereignty, Resilience, and Diversity in Elam
Brieg Powel
2. Created, Seized, and Held: Concepts of Sovereignty in the Old
Persian Inscriptions of Darius I
Lloyd Llewelyn-Jones
3. From Earth and Water to Spandarmaz and Anahita: Women as Archetypal Agents
of Emancipation and Sovereignty in Iranian Myths and Folktales
Saeed Talajooy
4. Sovereignty and the Parthian and Sasanian Kings
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
II. Navigating Territorial Sovereignties
5. The Safavids: An Argument for the Retention of Sovereignty on the Domestic
and International Scenes
Andrew Newman
6. A Subjugated State or Member of the United Nations: How Sovereignty was
Envisioned during the Occupation Years, 1941 1946
Rowena Abdul Razak
7. Sovereignty and the Pahlavi Empire State
Robert Steele
8. Seeking Spiritual Security: The Religion and Sovereignty Nexus in Iranian
Foreign Policy during the Islamic Republic Era
Edward Wastnidge
III. Competing Sovereignties
9. Banning and Belonging: Sovereignty and Ethnicity in Bahrain and the
Persian Gulf Coast, 1900-1941
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
10. The Clash of Sovereignties in Iran: Kurdistan and (Semi)sovereignty,
Marouf Cabi
11. Multiplicities of Sovereignty: Gender, State, and Intersectionality in
Irans Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising
Asma Abdi and Shabnam J. Holliday
Conclusion: Towards a Non-Eurocentric Approach to Sovereignty through Iran:
Appreciating Complexity, Contingency and Agency
Shabnam J. Holliday
Index
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 Khatamis Dialogue among Civilisations, Review of International Studies (2025) and Beyond Hegemony, World Order as Domination: Irans 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).
