This panel includes two standalone presentations. One addresses with the complexities of digital labor in Iran from the perspective of online ride sharing drivers, and the other presentation focuses on the investigation of football fan culture in Iran, especially in the metropolis of Tehran.
Abstracts
Behdad Bordbar
Understanding the Complexities of Iranian Football Fan Culture
This research paper explores the intriguing world of Iranian football culture, with a particular focus on the passionate football fans in the metropolis of Tehran. The stadium serves as a microcosm of Iranian society, where thousands of fans come together to express their emotions, aspirations, and demands, extending beyond the boundaries of football.
This window opens to various dimensions, including political expressions, creative slogans, even vandalism and violent acts. Iranian football fans often display their respect for the national anthem, engage in Āshura ceremonies, commemorate the death of Husayn ibn Ali, and practice chest-beating as part of their cultural expressions.
Same people might boo the police or politicians at the stadium. Background: Despite football’s potential to serve as a platform for challenging the political establishment, and despite the efforts of political activists and prominent football figures to engage fans in politics, there remains a significant gap between Iranian football fans and radical political movements.
On one hand, the state promotes its propaganda and ideology, while on the other hand, the opposition strives to influence public opinion. According to a report from the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, “football stands as the most beloved sport in the region”, attracting individuals from all walks of life, including the middle and working classes, who converge within the stadium’s confines.
While football has a historical legacy as a space for protests and expressions of dissent, Chehabi, E. 2002 it appears that during critical moments of political turmoil, these fervent fans often choose to remain spectators.
The tension between the desire for freedom and democracy and the personal sacrifices that individuals must make, combined with the existence of a silent majority, creates a complex and contradictory dynamic. In Iran, a country marked by various political complexities, football serves as a unique platform for fans to participate and find joy, even amid significant political upheavals.
Despite these circumstances, many football enthusiasts opt to focus on the matches and the happiness they bring. While there have been instances where football fans engaged in protests and challenged societal norms, one touching example is the case of Sahar Khodayari, known as ”the Blue Girl.”
In September 2019, she tragically set herself on fire in Tehran after her trial, which stemmed from her attempt to enter a football stadium disguised as a boy, was repeatedly postponed. She had been arrested in March and spent three days in detention before being released on bail, enduring a six-month wait for her court hearing.
Unfortunately she overheard conversations regarding the potential length of her prison sentence, ranging from six months to two years. Her heart-wrenching death sparked weeks of chants and tributes by football enthusiasts within the stadiums. (BBC International)
In a more recent context, during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom, movement, Voria Ghafouri, the right-wing captain of Istighlãl, was arrested for publicly speaking out against the violent repression of Iranian protesters. Ghafouri is a vocal advocate for civil and human rights, consistently sharing his views on various platforms. When this popular was ousted, soccer fans protested. NPR
Ali Karimi, former national player and football star, was among the first celebrities who vehemently criticized the deadly crackdown on the protests which erupted in September. He left Iran and joined a group of opposition leaders that included crown prince Reza Pahlavi. BBC International.
Even Though these super stars joined the protesters, there was minimal support for radical change among the football fans.
Soheil Rezanejad
Digital Labour in Iran: A Case Study of Online Ridesharing Drivers
This is a an abstract of a report from a wider research project from my PhD thesis about the situation of online ridesharing drivers in Snapp Company in the city of Tehran, Iran. This research had started in the form of an organizational ethnography, seeking ways to ameliorate the working conditions of drivers.
Yet, the field had its toll on the research and not only changed the main questions, but also forced a methodological revision, which is informed in part by Bourdieu’s proposition of a ‘scholarship with commitment’, and in part by Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ ethical considerations regarding the research subjects.
Thus, this research is concerned with the experiences of worker in Snapp. Meanwhile, as I try to elaborate on scarce examples of labor protests and situate one such instance as a turning point in my research, I suggest that any labor organization is faced with antilabor practices of the company. Apart from encouraging brutal competitiveness among drivers, and against their health as seen in company’s “incentive plans” for longer working-hours; spying on communities is a common practice too, as related to me by one informant.
Furthermore, the company has devised a psychological test under the guise of a mental health advocate, resulting in deplatforming of 314 drivers, according to company’s reports. Iran’s place as a unique country in the global south has created a peculiar situation where the entanglement of the political and economic elites is seamless and all restraints on the so-called “innovation” is lifted.
Iran traditionally implemented a type of sharing taxis (Marshrutka) as a means to compensate for the nonexistent public transport. Yet, without expanding the public transport system, resources are channeled to a private company (e.g. government pays subsidies to Snapp drivers in the form of monthly free fuel, as compensation for their low wages), effectively privatizing the urban transport.
Today Snapp has successfully become the major player in transport market in Iran (as evidenced by the disruption of public transport during internet blackouts in early 2018) and envisions to become the “Super-App” that encompasses every online need of Iranian users. What is related here is a story of how drivers are dispossessed of their job identity.
Such dispossession is so radical that one may ask a driver, while seated in her car, ‘what is your job?’ without stumbling into absurdity. This points us to a new shift in the process of dispossession and commodification in late capitalism in Iran: dispossession of the abstract and the double commodification of ‘labor’ as such.
While the urban transport has become appropriated to private sector and become a “productive” industry in accumulation of wealth, the driver is zombified, her voice speaks not from where her body is, but rather from a beyond. Her body may have sought shelter from economic depression in the seat of her car, yet her voice does not sound depressed.
Hers is the embodiment of anxiety, of a being in between: a laborer of a job that is not permanent, a “between jobs” job; one where she constantly, by accepting and finishing each ride, goes in and out of a job. She is ever suspended in limbo.
