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“We Deserve Better”: Ideologies of Deservingness and Status in the Interpretation of Chinese Goods in an Iranian Bazaar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2022

Simon Theobald Open the ORCID record for Simon Theobald [Opens in a new window]
Simon Theobald*
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University
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Abstract

This article argues that even as Chinese imports occupy an increasingly large percentage of the space in Mashhad’s bazaars and marketplaces, such goods are interpreted not only as being of poor quality but, critically, as insufficiently “worthy” of the Iranian middle class who positioned themselves as “deserving better.” In attempting to assess why this is the case, the article suggests that such framing both reveals much of, and requires us to consider, the pivotal role of status in Iran. It holds that this concern for status is expressed at multiple levels: that of the family, as a class, and finally, of the nation. At each of these levels of expression, it is possible to trace different post-revolutionary social phenomena. These include the reification of the family as a moral unit, major shifts in the demographics of education and urbanization, the rise of a consumer culture and the perilous decline of the fortunes of the middle class, and, finally, imaginings of national exceptionalism. This article then uses such readings of Chinese goods as a window into middle class ideologies of worth and deservingness.

Keywords

China-IranStatusConsumptive BehaviorClassDeservingnessAspiration
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 5-6 , December 2020 , pp. 947 - 961
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2020

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