Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society (review)

Mehri Honarbin-Holliday's Becoming Visible in Iran centers on Iranian women's narratives of creating spaces to enable themselves to actively engage in social life within the country. The book covers various themes but mainly revolves around issues of identity, autonomy, and agency which it addresses through real life stories narrated by different generations of women in the capital city, Tehran. Its organization is unusual for an academic book: rather than chapters, it comprises an Introduction and five "Texts" which do not necessarily follow a particular pattern. However, the material is presented in a flowing style, starting with the past, continuing into the present, and offering a view of the future that reinforces the author's attempt to show fluidity and continuity in Iranian women's lives despite the limitations placed upon them by the society.

"Text One: Histories, Transitions and Continuities" concentrates on the narratives of a generation of women who were born and lived their childhood during Reza Shah's reign. Its main theme is women's early involvement in formal education and female social engagement. "Text Two: Making Meaning, Acquiring Identities" and "Text Three: Presences" discuss contemporary discourses and events in Tehran around gender status, which is linked to dress code, which is seen as a marker of the public/private spheres. The author applies a novel approach to the different aspects of dress code and the restrictions and advantages of styles of dress in the society. She writes, "The dress code is currently a significant tool to make a collective and symbolic statement, and a means for being a highly visible front in society, declaring identities and social capital" (54). She demonstrates through stories how dress code can become a signifier of an individual's cultural competencies, economic privileges, residence, and gendered solidarity claiming ideological distinction.

"Text Four: Vision of a Civil Society" offers a discussion of young people's views on developing a society where women's social and legal status is considered equal to that of men. This section introduces some grand narratives of civil society, democracy, and equality, showing women's increasing awareness of their political situation and its implications on a global scale. "Text Five: Arrivals and Departures" focuses on the primary sources of inspiration and strength that women have sought to redefine their sociopolitical location.

The book as a whole gives a powerful sense of anticipation and of the collective ownership of broadened and shared horizons in the minds of Tehrani women. With profound integrity it illuminates Iranian women's intellectual preoccupations and aspirations under the Islamic regime. It is tailored for a Western audience, providing background information for the events, stories, and women's narratives. However, the volume might have been enhanced had the author been more self-reflexive and included her own experiences throughout the book. Utilizing a methodology that embraces storytelling as an act of self-performance, Honarbin-Holliday writes reflexively only in the concluding pages (172–6). As this is an ethnographic study in which the author was a participant-observer, had she expanded more on her role as the audience in the construction of these stories, the work could have been more beneficial to the reader.

The post-reformist era (i.e., post–2005) about which the author writes is notable as a period of severe limitations on researchers in the field of gender studies in Iran. The book makes a major contribution in that it succeeds in openly discussing significant aspects of the lives of urban women in contemporary Iran during this time. In this sense, it is a useful resource for analyzing the underlying layers of meaning-making in Iran in recent years, something absent from most of the recent literature on Iranian women. As such, these narratives may be representative of a quest for "change" in the lives of Iranian youth and would seem to resonate with people's feelings as shown in the upheavals during the 2009...