THE INCARCERATED MODERN

Prisons and Public Life in Iran

GOLNAR NIKPOUR

The United States integrated counterterrorism mandates into its aid flows in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the early years of the global war on terror. Some two decades later, this securitized model of aid has become normalized across donor intervention in Palestine. Elastic Empire traces how foreign aid, on which much of the Palestinian population is dependent, has multiplied the sites and means through which Palestinian life is regulated, surveilled, and policed—this book tells the story of how aid has also become war.

Drawing on extensive research conducted in Palestine, Elastic Empire offers a novel accounting of the US security state. The US war chronicled here is not one of tanks, grenades, and guns, but a quieter one waged through the interlacing of aid and law. It emerges in the infrastructures of daily life—in a greenhouse and library, in the collection of personal information and mapping of land plots, in the halls of municipal councils and in local elections—and indelibly transfigures lives. Situated in a landscape where the lines between humanitarianism and the global war on terror are increasingly blurred, Elastic Empire reveals the shape-shifting nature of contemporary imperial formations, their realignments and reformulations, their haunted sites, and their obscured but intimate forms.

Lisa Bhungalia is Assistant Professor of Geography at Kent State University.

Iran’s prison system is a foundational institution of Iranian political modernity. The Incarcerated Modern traces the transformation of Iran from a decentralized empire with few imprisoned persons at the turn of the twentieth century into a modern nation-state with over a quarter million prisoners today. In policing the line between “bad criminal” and “good citizen,” the carceral system has shaped and reshaped Iranian understandings of citizenship, freedom, and political belonging.

Golnar Nikpour explores the interplay between the concrete space of the Iranian prison and the role of prisons in producing new public cultures and political languages in Iran. From prison writings of 1920s leftist prisoners and communiqués of 1950s militant Islamists, to paintings of 1970s revolutionary guerrillas and mapping projects organized by contemporary dissident prisoners, carceral confinement has shaped modern Iranian political movements. Today, mass incarceration is a global phenomenon. The Incarcerated Modern connects Iranian history to transnational carceral histories to illuminate the shared architectures, economies, and techniques of modern punishment.

Golnar Nikpour is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College.

STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES

DECEMBER 2023

11 halftones

272 pages | 6 x 9

Paper $26.00 (£21.99) SDT

Cloth $85.00 (£73.00) SDT eBook 9781503637528

Middle East Studies

9781503637511

9781503634527

STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES

FEBRUARY 2024 328 pages | 6 x 9

15 halftones

Paper $30.00 (£25.99) SDT 9781503637634

Cloth $90.00 (£78.00) SDT 9781503636699 eBook 9781503637641

Middle East Studies

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