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Maziyar Ghiabi

DPhil Politics

Academic Profile

Maziyar Ghiabi is a transdisciplinary researcher working on the intersection of politics and health using ethnographic and historical approaches. His work concerns the study of illegal drugs and ‘addiction’ in West Asia, in particular Iran, but he has also carried out research across the Global South. In 2021, he will start a Wellcome University Award at the University of Exeter on Living ‘Addiction’ in States of Disruption: a transdisciplinary approach to drug consumption and recovery in the Middle East. Before this, Maziyar was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Drugs & (Dis)Order Project, based at the SOAS (University of London) and held research and teaching positions at Oxford University, the EHESS and SciencesPO. His first book Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Cambridge University Press, 2019, also in Open Access) was awarded the 2020 Best Book of the Year (Nikki Keddie Prize) by the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA). Maziyar is also the author of Power and Illicit Drugs in the Global South (Routledge, 2019) and other peer-reviewed publications in English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic and Persian.

Sample Publications

Monographs

  1. Ghiabi, M. Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran. London: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN 9781108567084

This is the first comprehensive study on the politics of drugs in Iran. It shows how and why Iranian authorities experimented on drugs and addiction policy prior to and after the revolution. It explores the dynamics determining the Islamic Republic’s transition from a punitive to a public health-oriented policy on drugs.


Edited Volumes

  1. Ghiabi, M (ed.). Power and Illegal Drugs in the Global South. London: Routledge, 2018. Forward by Philippe Bourgois. ISBN 9781138323544. Also published in the Third World Quarterly Special Issue ‘Drugs, Politics, and Society in the Global South’, Vol. 39, no. 2 (2018).

This edited volume is the outcome of the two-day symposium sponsored by a Wellcome Trust Small Grant in 2016. It brings together several leading scholars of drug studies from various disciplinary backgrounds and different area studies, triggering a redefinition of our ways of understanding drugs.

 

Peer-reviewed articles

 

  1. Ghiabi. ‘The Council of Expedience: Crisis and Statecraft in Iran and Beyond’, Middle Eastern Studies, (2019: 1-18, DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2019.1585346.

This article studies ‘crisis’ within the Iranian political order. It argues that it is neither the government nor the Supreme Leader that intervenes in situations of ‘crisis’. Taking the case of public health crises, it shows that it is an ad hoc institution, the Expediency Council, that governs crisis.

 

  1. Ghiabi M. ‘Under the bridge in Tehran: Addiction, Poverty and Capital’. Ethnography (2018) : 1-31. DOI : 1466138118787534.

The article is an ethnographic study of the lives of the ‘dangerous class’ of drug users based on fieldwork carried out among different drug using ‘communities’ in Tehran between 2012 and 2016. It is one of the first ethnographies of addiction in Middle East, inspired by Philippe Bourgois’s research.

 

  1. Ghiabi M., Maarefvand M., Bahari H., and Alavi Z.  ‘Islam and Cannabis: Legalisation and Religious Debate in Iran’, International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 56, 2018: 121-127. PMID:29635140 PMCID:PMC6153265

The article engages with the question of medical cannabis in the legal interpretation of religious authorities in the Islamic world, focusing on Iran. It is the result of a direct engagement with leading religious authorities. The authors redacted a list of eight questions about the status of cannabis.

 

  1. Ghiabi. ‘Maintaining Disorder: The Micropolitics of Drug Policy in Iran’, Third World Quarterly 39, 2 (2018):  277-297. PMID:29456274 PMCID:PMC581378


This article provides an example for studying public policy through ethnographic methods. It takes the case of Iran’s policy with regard to addiction treatment. It is based on participant observation with health and policy officials, NGOs working in treatment settings and informal rehabilitation ‘camps’ for drug users.

 

  1. Brownlee, B. J. and M. Ghiabi. ‘Passive, Silent and Revolutionary: The “Arab Spring” Revisited’. Middle East Critique 25, 3 (2016): 299-316. PMID:27829987 PMCID:PMC5098598

This article revisits the scholarship that emerged in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ and reassesses some of its shortcomings, proposing alternative ways of engaging with social mobilisation through interdisciplinary methods. It is a collaboration with an Exeter scholar in Middle East politics, therefore combining empirical research (Brownlee) with theoretical formulations (myself).

 

  1. Ghiabi M. "Drugs & Revolution in Iran: Islamic Devotion, Revolutionary Zeal and Republican Means." Iranian Studies 48, 2 (2015): 139-163.

A historical study of the impact of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 on Iran’s drug problem, the article uses untapped archival material, showing how the anti-narcotic impulse of the 1980s was guided by anti-imperialist concerns rather than religious ideas. It won the Best Article Prize at Oxford in 2013.



Chapters in edited books

Ghiabi, M., ‘Deconstructing the Islamic Bloc: The Middle East and North Africa and Pluralistic Drug Policy’. In Stothard and Klein, Collapse of the global order on drugs? From UNGASS 2016 to the High Level Review 2019. London: Emerald, 2018, pp. 167-189.

The chapter is part of an edited volume which discusses the developments in global drug policy ahead of the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs. My contribution looks at the different drug policy regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the potentials for public health-oriented reforms.

 

  1. Ghiabi, M., ‘The Opium of the State: Local and Global Drug Prohibition in Iran, 1941-1979’. In Roham Alvandi (ed). The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and Its Global Entanglements. London: Gingko Press, 2018: pp. 70-109.

This is historical research into the policies with regard to opiates in pre-revolutionary Iran (1925-1979). The chapter is part of an edited volume on the global history of Pahlavi Iran, showcasing aspects of its social, medical, economic and political life in the increasingly globalised world of the 20th century.

Current Position

Wellcome Lecturer in Medical Humanities, SOAS