Abstract

Abstract:

This article aims to analyze the transformations of reproductive politics in the Islamic Republic and to explore how the state's policies and reproductive practices of women in the family became an important site of governing in Iran. By tracing transformations of reproductive politics, I offer a different periodization of postrevolutionary Iran reflected in different socioeconomic imaginaries, that is, main sources of meaning making for people to justify certain individual or collective actions. Based on archival research and a secondary analysis of existing inquiries, I distinguish three phases in politics of reproduction in the Islamic Republic: optimism and hope, development, and resistance and survival. I also elaborate on how women in each period, as noncollective agents, have (re)acted collectively in their everyday practices to those reproductive policies. Based on my findings, I argue that one can understand the current conjuncture, which corresponds with adopting neopronatalist and familyoriented reproductive policies, through a new shift in the Islamic Republic's governing regime: a neoliberal turn to manage the socioeconomic crisis after 2006. This study shows that neopronatalism not only carries a major burden of social reproduction and regulation of sexuality but also performs crucial functions in advancing neoliberalization. Moreover, neopronatalism, unlike pronatalism in the first decade of the Islamic Republic, primarily targets the quality rather than the quantity of the population and families. From a socioeconomic perspective, I conclude that the recent shift in reproductive politics eventually pushes more women back into domestic or caregiving work, defeminizing the labor market while reinforcing the informal sector and domestic work units, which are mainly female based.

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