Zohreh Bayatrizi
Biographic Data
| ID | 247745 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zohreh Bayatrizi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zohreh |
| FAMILY NAME | Bayatrizi |
| SIGNATURE | BAYATRIZI Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3729-0377 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Death, class, culture: Giving meaning to mortality in Tehran
This paper investigates attitudes towards death and the social factors that influence them among a sample of residents in Tehran, Iran. Using grounded theory and anchoring our analysis in the meaning of death (what people think happens after death), we were able to conceptualise three broad worldviews on death, which were then further refined into nine attitudes. Our research highlights socio-economic status as a factor potentially shaping people…
Vicarious death: Grief, politics, and identity after the flight PS752 tragedy
In January 2020, Ukrainian Flight PS752 was shot down shortly after take‐off from Tehran's IKA airport, killing all 176 passengers, the majority of whom were headed to Canada via connecting flights. In the aftermath of the tragedy, many among the Iranian diaspora in Canada, ourselves included, were stricken by an unexpectedly deep sense of shock and sorrow, to the point that some experienced what we term as “vicarious death.” Drawing on 49 in‐dep…
Risk, religion, and reified camels: The past and the future of insurance in Iran
This paper is a contribution to the understanding of insurance and risk management as a culturally mediated form of social action. It examines how commercial insurance functions in the Iranian marketplace, focusing on insurance against liability in bodily harm. The quantum of damages (diya) currently used in Iran’s ‘Islamicized’ laws, including in insurance law, is rooted in the historical conventions of Bedouin Arabs, chief among which was the c…
Risk, mourning, politics: Toward a transnational critical conception of grief for Covid-19 deaths in Iran
This article examines the case of COVID-19 deaths and grief in Iran in order to shed light on how the biological, social and political 'risks of contagion' combine to impact mourning and grief. As a contagious biological agent, the novel coronavirus causes people to suffer, die and grieve alone. But this loneliness is deepened due to social stigma and political abandonment. Conceptually guided by Mary Douglas's work on the socio-cultural and poli…
Dangerous positions: Male homosexuality in the new penal code of Iran
What does it matter who has what position in the same-sex sexual act? The difference can be life and death. This paper, drawing on sociology of punishment and the critiques of cultural determinism in explaining capital punishment, examines the new penal code of Iran (2013) with respect to same-sex sexual acts between men, analyzing it in terms of its literal and symbolic significance for homosexual men in Iran and its broader meaning and function…
The objective life of death in Tehran: A vanishing presence
The present article investigates the objective life of death in Tehran. It explores specific instances indicating the public presence and sequestration of death in the city's physical space. Using Simmel's method of direct observations and lived experience, we characterise the public profile of death through such objective indicators as death notices, funeral and mourning services, the design of the cemetery, executions, and so on. We discuss fac…
Antecedents of Censuses from Medieval to Nation States: How Societies and States Count
From Marx to Giddens via Weber and Habermas: The politics of social thought in Iran
This article investigates the political role of social theories in contemporary Iran. It focuses, specifically, on how the 1979 Revolution marks a passage in Iranian political and social thought from political radicalism informed by Marxism to reformist liberalism inspired by local readings of Weber, Habermas, and Giddens. By investigating the writings of public intellectuals and political activists involved in Iran's reform movement, the article…
McManus, Ruth, Death in a Global Age
Between palace and prison: Towards a reflexive history of academic sociology in Iran
The Institute for Social Studies and Research, founded in 1958, provided a framework for research and teaching modern social sciences, especially sociology, in Iran. The political climate of post-Second World War Iran, that delivered neither the full benefits of freedom nor the true powers of censorship, fostered both resilience and pragmatism among the founders and leading figures in the Institute. The outcome was a brand of applied sociology th…
Un problème de chiffres: L'Utilisation Des Connaissances Empiriques en Statistique Dans La Théorie Sociale Classique
En se référant à des exemples précis de théoriciens reconnus ou non de la sociologie duxixeau début duxxesiècle, et en prenant en compte les écrits de Georg Simmel quant à la détermination quantitative des groupes sociaux comme cadre théorique et point thématique de départ, cet essai considère la diversité des formes de connaissances qui caractérisent certains des textes fondateurs de la sociologie. Nous nous concentrons en particulier sur l'util…
Mapping character types onto space: The urban-rural distinction in early statistical writings
This article investigates the construction of urban/rural binary distinctions in 18th- and 19th-century social scientific literature, and in particular in the writings of the statistical societies in England. The 18th-century writers were primarily concerned with the spread of luxury, vice, and effeminacy among the upper social strata in large cities. Later on, statisticians began to focus on moral hazards among the urban working poor. These writ…
John Weaver, A Sadly Troubled History: The Meanings of Suicide in the Modern Age
S tarting in the 19th century, social scientists and medical experts began a frenetic search for comparative and aggregate statistical information on suicide, each trying to prove that suicide was a proper subject of their own discipline.The credibility of their arguments, however, was undermined by political, ideological, institutional, and cultural biases that tainted data, and by lack of access to first hand, comprehensive, and uniform suicide…
Ian Marsh, Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth
I read this book while on maternity leave, often putting my sleeping baby and the book in the stroller and heading across the street to Vancouver Public Library.The background noise kept the baby asleep, but it proved awkward to read the book in such as public space.Awkward not only because of the contrast between a young life and a grim topic, but also because, thanks to the increasing psycho-pathologization of motherhood, new mothers are often …
Knowledge is not Power: State-Funded Sociological Research in Iran
The discipline of sociology, as an officially funded area of research and teaching, was created in Iran five decades ago primarily as an instrument to help solve state problems. Today the state remains the main sponsor and client of sociological research. The absence of independent sources of research funding outside the government has left sociology dependent on state agencies and organizations. This situation has significant effects both on soc…
Counting the dead and regulating the living: Early Modern Statistics and the Formation of the Sociological Imagination (1662-1897)
This paper examines the contributions made by early modern statistical literature to the formation of the sociological imagination. Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, the fields of 'political arithmetic' and vital and moral statistics provided a discursive framework within which it became possible to identify and study aggregate dynamics and structures underlying seemingly random and episodic aspects of life (birth, death, divorce, health).…
Life Sentences: The Modern Ordering of Mortality
Zohreh Bayatrizi examines the many concerted attempts from the last 350 years to strip death of its mystery, and to order, manage, and transform it from an individualized and fatalistic event to a social phenomenon that allows intervention
From Fate to Risk: The Quantification of Mortality in Early Modern Statistics
This article examines the discursive transformation of death from a destined fate into a manageable and calculable risk in statistical writings dating back to the mid 17th century. It analyses early works in 'political arithmetic' and vital statistics in an effort to illuminate how death was reconceived as a more or less predictable occurrence that is governed, in the aggregate, by social, economic and political, as well as environmental factors.…
Dangerous positions: Male homosexuality in the new penal code of Iran
What does it matter who has what position in the same-sex sexual act? The difference can be life and death. This paper, drawing on sociology of punishment and the critiques of cultural determinism in explaining capital punishment, examines the new penal code of Iran (2013) with respect to same-sex sexual acts between men, analyzing it in terms of its literal and symbolic significance for homosexual men in Iran and its broader meaning and function…
Counting the dead and regulating the living: Early Modern Statistics and the Formation of the Sociological Imagination (1662-1897)
This paper examines the contributions made by early modern statistical literature to the formation of the sociological imagination. Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, the fields of 'political arithmetic' and vital and moral statistics provided a discursive framework within which it became possible to identify and study aggregate dynamics and structures underlying seemingly random and episodic aspects of life (birth, death, divorce, health).…
From Fate to Risk: The Quantification of Mortality in Early Modern Statistics
This article examines the discursive transformation of death from a destined fate into a manageable and calculable risk in statistical writings dating back to the mid 17th century. It analyses early works in 'political arithmetic' and vital statistics in an effort to illuminate how death was reconceived as a more or less predictable occurrence that is governed, in the aggregate, by social, economic and political, as well as environmental factors.…
Knowledge is not Power: State-Funded Sociological Research in Iran
The discipline of sociology, as an officially funded area of research and teaching, was created in Iran five decades ago primarily as an instrument to help solve state problems. Today the state remains the main sponsor and client of sociological research. The absence of independent sources of research funding outside the government has left sociology dependent on state agencies and organizations. This situation has significant effects both on soc…
Risk, religion, and reified camels: The past and the future of insurance in Iran
This paper is a contribution to the understanding of insurance and risk management as a culturally mediated form of social action. It examines how commercial insurance functions in the Iranian marketplace, focusing on insurance against liability in bodily harm. The quantum of damages (diya) currently used in Iran’s ‘Islamicized’ laws, including in insurance law, is rooted in the historical conventions of Bedouin Arabs, chief among which was the c…
Between palace and prison: Towards a reflexive history of academic sociology in Iran
The Institute for Social Studies and Research, founded in 1958, provided a framework for research and teaching modern social sciences, especially sociology, in Iran. The political climate of post-Second World War Iran, that delivered neither the full benefits of freedom nor the true powers of censorship, fostered both resilience and pragmatism among the founders and leading figures in the Institute. The outcome was a brand of applied sociology th…
Un problème de chiffres: L'Utilisation Des Connaissances Empiriques en Statistique Dans La Théorie Sociale Classique
En se référant à des exemples précis de théoriciens reconnus ou non de la sociologie duxixeau début duxxesiècle, et en prenant en compte les écrits de Georg Simmel quant à la détermination quantitative des groupes sociaux comme cadre théorique et point thématique de départ, cet essai considère la diversité des formes de connaissances qui caractérisent certains des textes fondateurs de la sociologie. Nous nous concentrons en particulier sur l'util…
Mapping character types onto space: The urban-rural distinction in early statistical writings
This article investigates the construction of urban/rural binary distinctions in 18th- and 19th-century social scientific literature, and in particular in the writings of the statistical societies in England. The 18th-century writers were primarily concerned with the spread of luxury, vice, and effeminacy among the upper social strata in large cities. Later on, statisticians began to focus on moral hazards among the urban working poor. These writ…
Life Sentences: The Modern Ordering of Mortality
Zohreh Bayatrizi examines the many concerted attempts from the last 350 years to strip death of its mystery, and to order, manage, and transform it from an individualized and fatalistic event to a social phenomenon that allows intervention
From Fate to Risk: The Quantification of Mortality in Early Modern Statistics
This article examines the discursive transformation of death from a destined fate into a manageable and calculable risk in statistical writings dating back to the mid 17th century. It analyses early works in 'political arithmetic' and vital statistics in an effort to illuminate how death was reconceived as a more or less predictable occurrence that is governed, in the aggregate, by social, economic and political, as well as environmental factors.…
Counting the dead and regulating the living: Early Modern Statistics and the Formation of the Sociological Imagination (1662-1897)
This paper examines the contributions made by early modern statistical literature to the formation of the sociological imagination. Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, the fields of 'political arithmetic' and vital and moral statistics provided a discursive framework within which it became possible to identify and study aggregate dynamics and structures underlying seemingly random and episodic aspects of life (birth, death, divorce, health).…
John Weaver, A Sadly Troubled History: The Meanings of Suicide in the Modern Age
S tarting in the 19th century, social scientists and medical experts began a frenetic search for comparative and aggregate statistical information on suicide, each trying to prove that suicide was a proper subject of their own discipline.The credibility of their arguments, however, was undermined by political, ideological, institutional, and cultural biases that tainted data, and by lack of access to first hand, comprehensive, and uniform suicide…
Ian Marsh, Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth
I read this book while on maternity leave, often putting my sleeping baby and the book in the stroller and heading across the street to Vancouver Public Library.The background noise kept the baby asleep, but it proved awkward to read the book in such as public space.Awkward not only because of the contrast between a young life and a grim topic, but also because, thanks to the increasing psycho-pathologization of motherhood, new mothers are often …
Knowledge is not Power: State-Funded Sociological Research in Iran
The discipline of sociology, as an officially funded area of research and teaching, was created in Iran five decades ago primarily as an instrument to help solve state problems. Today the state remains the main sponsor and client of sociological research. The absence of independent sources of research funding outside the government has left sociology dependent on state agencies and organizations. This situation has significant effects both on soc…
Mapping character types onto space: The urban-rural distinction in early statistical writings
This article investigates the construction of urban/rural binary distinctions in 18th- and 19th-century social scientific literature, and in particular in the writings of the statistical societies in England. The 18th-century writers were primarily concerned with the spread of luxury, vice, and effeminacy among the upper social strata in large cities. Later on, statisticians began to focus on moral hazards among the urban working poor. These writ…
Un problème de chiffres: L'Utilisation Des Connaissances Empiriques en Statistique Dans La Théorie Sociale Classique
En se référant à des exemples précis de théoriciens reconnus ou non de la sociologie duxixeau début duxxesiècle, et en prenant en compte les écrits de Georg Simmel quant à la détermination quantitative des groupes sociaux comme cadre théorique et point thématique de départ, cet essai considère la diversité des formes de connaissances qui caractérisent certains des textes fondateurs de la sociologie. Nous nous concentrons en particulier sur l'util…
Between palace and prison: Towards a reflexive history of academic sociology in Iran
The Institute for Social Studies and Research, founded in 1958, provided a framework for research and teaching modern social sciences, especially sociology, in Iran. The political climate of post-Second World War Iran, that delivered neither the full benefits of freedom nor the true powers of censorship, fostered both resilience and pragmatism among the founders and leading figures in the Institute. The outcome was a brand of applied sociology th…
McManus, Ruth, Death in a Global Age
From Marx to Giddens via Weber and Habermas: The politics of social thought in Iran
This article investigates the political role of social theories in contemporary Iran. It focuses, specifically, on how the 1979 Revolution marks a passage in Iranian political and social thought from political radicalism informed by Marxism to reformist liberalism inspired by local readings of Weber, Habermas, and Giddens. By investigating the writings of public intellectuals and political activists involved in Iran's reform movement, the article…
The objective life of death in Tehran: A vanishing presence
The present article investigates the objective life of death in Tehran. It explores specific instances indicating the public presence and sequestration of death in the city's physical space. Using Simmel's method of direct observations and lived experience, we characterise the public profile of death through such objective indicators as death notices, funeral and mourning services, the design of the cemetery, executions, and so on. We discuss fac…
Antecedents of Censuses from Medieval to Nation States: How Societies and States Count
Dangerous positions: Male homosexuality in the new penal code of Iran
What does it matter who has what position in the same-sex sexual act? The difference can be life and death. This paper, drawing on sociology of punishment and the critiques of cultural determinism in explaining capital punishment, examines the new penal code of Iran (2013) with respect to same-sex sexual acts between men, analyzing it in terms of its literal and symbolic significance for homosexual men in Iran and its broader meaning and function…
Risk, mourning, politics: Toward a transnational critical conception of grief for Covid-19 deaths in Iran
This article examines the case of COVID-19 deaths and grief in Iran in order to shed light on how the biological, social and political 'risks of contagion' combine to impact mourning and grief. As a contagious biological agent, the novel coronavirus causes people to suffer, die and grieve alone. But this loneliness is deepened due to social stigma and political abandonment. Conceptually guided by Mary Douglas's work on the socio-cultural and poli…
Risk, religion, and reified camels: The past and the future of insurance in Iran
This paper is a contribution to the understanding of insurance and risk management as a culturally mediated form of social action. It examines how commercial insurance functions in the Iranian marketplace, focusing on insurance against liability in bodily harm. The quantum of damages (diya) currently used in Iran’s ‘Islamicized’ laws, including in insurance law, is rooted in the historical conventions of Bedouin Arabs, chief among which was the c…
Death, class, culture: Giving meaning to mortality in Tehran
This paper investigates attitudes towards death and the social factors that influence them among a sample of residents in Tehran, Iran. Using grounded theory and anchoring our analysis in the meaning of death (what people think happens after death), we were able to conceptualise three broad worldviews on death, which were then further refined into nine attitudes. Our research highlights socio-economic status as a factor potentially shaping people…
Vicarious death: Grief, politics, and identity after the flight PS752 tragedy
In January 2020, Ukrainian Flight PS752 was shot down shortly after take‐off from Tehran's IKA airport, killing all 176 passengers, the majority of whom were headed to Canada via connecting flights. In the aftermath of the tragedy, many among the Iranian diaspora in Canada, ourselves included, were stricken by an unexpectedly deep sense of shock and sorrow, to the point that some experienced what we term as “vicarious death.” Drawing on 49 in‐dep…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Islamic Studies and History (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)