Asgharzadeh Zaferani, Azadeh A; (2024) Domestic Agents: Dowries, Homes and Infrastructures in Iran (1925-2013). Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Abstract

This thesis investigates the process of home making in Tehran from 1925 to 2013. The period 1925-1979 marks the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty when modernisation was systematically implemented in Iran. This period ended with the Iranian revolution, which laid the foundation for a welfare state, which in spite of great promises declined in essence at the end of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency in 2013 when the country moved towards privatisation while welcoming non- western imperialism. Using domestic objects, the investigation reveals how the domestic realm reflects local and global politics that have shaped the country for the last hundred years. The thesis argues that the domestic realm has been a significant everyday context for mediating two grounds simultaneously: on the one hand, it pursues central planning strategies to secure various states’ political gains; and, on the other, it serves as a platform for tactics that resist these strategies through spatial and material expressions. To uncover these strategies and tactics, the thesis investigates dowries in order to explain human relations through their social and experiential aspects. Through different chapters, the materials, scales, brands, and aesthetics of these changing assemblies of objects will be explored in order to discuss aspects of modernism and its aftermath in a non-western context, moving from body-centered matters such as health and natalism to state-centered matters such as political ideologies and modes of production. Part I of the thesis places Iran’s modernisation in the context of the First and Second World Wars as well as the Cold War and investigates the process of modern home making in Iran. In 1979, however, the new regime broke with western standards. In Part II, the rise of global south-south politics is explored through the lens of the Iranian revolution and the new state’s welfare program. As these case studies show, home making is also always a process of home unmaking and vice versa, with each act presenting evolving and resistant possibilities.

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