Columbia University Seminar on Iranian Studies

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINARS

SEMINAR ON IRANIAN STUDIES

******************************

The fifth meeting of the 25th consecutive year of the Columbia University Seminar on Iranian Studies for the academic year 2012‐2013 will take place on: Wednesday February 6, 2013, 5:30pm at the Faculty House of Columbia University.

Our speaker will be:
Dr. Kevan Harris from the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, who will lead the discussion on the topic of Military Monolith or Subcontractor State?
The Politics of Privatization in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Abstract:

Post-2009 analyses of Iran have stressed the centralizing takeover of the country’s economy by a single institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. At the same time, however, Iran’s factionalized political elite uniformly advocate for rapid privatization of state-owned 2 enterprises. Underneath this puzzling contradiction is a complex shift of economic ownership away from the state toward a variety of para-statal organizations including banks, cooperatives, pension funds, foundations, and military-linked contractors. In this talk, based on newly published research drawing from fieldwork and archival data, I will examine how intra-elite conflict and non-elite claims from below have structured the process of privatization in Iran's large public sector. Framed in comparison with privatization outcomes in other middle-income countries, Iran’s subcontractor state is a consequence of the way in which politics and society shaped the form of capitalism that has taken root in the Islamic Republic.

Bio-Notice

Kevan Harris, a post-doctoral research associate at Princeton University, earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University in 2012. He was awarded the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship in 2009–10 to conduct fieldwork in Iran, and was a US Institute of Peace Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar in 2010– 11. His publications include: "The Rise of the Subcontractor State: Politics of Pseudoprivatization in the Islamic Republic of Iran," International Journal of Middle East Studies, forthcoming, February 2013. “The Brokered Exuberance of the Middle Class: An Ethnographic Analysis of Iran’s 2009 Green Movement,” Mobilization: An International Journal, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2012): 435-55. “A Martyrs’ Welfare State and Its Contradictions: Regime Resilience and Limits through the Lens of Social Policy in Iran,” Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran, edited by Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press (2013): pp. 61-80. “A Fistful of Tomans,” London Review of Books, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2013): 28-29.

To reach the Faculty House:

Enter the Wien Hall Gate on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. Walk past Wien Hall, then turn right to the Faculty House.