Success Narrative Frames: Claiming Recognition and Countering Disadvantage in Iran

In recent years there has been a rise in protests led by socially and/or economically marginalized groups in Iran. These movements suggest new modes of citizen engagement, whereby those on the sidelines are making increasing claims to cultural membership. While such instances of popular protest often receive the most attention in analyses and scholarship of contemporary Iran, these moments of visible resistance are often preceded by more quiet everyday forms of disruption to dominant power structures that go unaccounted for.

Building on the emerging sociological literature on recognition, this paper examines how poor stigmatized service workers in Iran resist their marginalization and lay claim to belonging and recognition amid heightened economic insecurity. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews in the provinces of Mazandaran, Semnan, and Lorestan, I highlight how workers use evaluative schema revolving around interpretations of wealth, the rich, and success – what I term success narrative frames – to counter their disadvantage and articulate alternative imaginaries of what it means to be successful in Iran today. I demonstrate how these discursive strategies minimize the importance of material wealth and the economically privileged. Instead, workers’ success narrative frames place emphasis on 1) quality of life and 2) benevolence that serve as the basis of moral distinctions from rich “others.” Appeals to both dimensions lead workers to elevate their status and code culturally embedded qualities such as generosity and caretaking as indicative of their own success. However, in deconstructing the classed social order by creating an alternative ranking system based on moral rather than economic benchmarks, workers amplify the same processes of evaluation that have contributed to their own exclusion. These findings prompt consideration of how recognition claims in settings marked by the normalization of crisis and economic uncertainty can foster subjective well-being while also reifying distrust and weakening cross-class solidarities.