As part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colloquium Series, Hassan Shahraki presents: "Can We talk about Islamic Buen Vivir? Iran's development: A case study."

Title: Can We talk about Islamic Buen Vivir? Iran's development: A case study

Abstract: I will attempt to discuss the literature regarding the Andean and Ecuadorian concept of Buen Vivir, meaning collective well-being or improvement, and propose that due to the adaptability of Buen Vivir to various cultural and geographical contexts, it is possible to achieve a three-dimensional and localized paradigm of it as an alternative developmental approach in Iran. IBV (Islamic Buen Vivir) criticizes the development school of thinking but goes beyond, accepting Iran's shift to a post-development period. Three components make up this paradigm: nature, post-development, and Islamic liberation theology. My main assertions are that in order to achieve Islamic Buen Vivir: (1) Religion needs to redefine itself in terms of service, not politics and power, by supporting a discourse on development that is bottom-up, spiritual, and non-positivistic, (2) Iran's post-development rhetoric ought to eschew essentialist cultural conceptions in favor of a constructivist understanding of culture, incorporating post-colonial practices for drastic changes meant to democratize the state and society (radical or popular democracy), and (3) Given the inherent worth of nature, the religious belief that humans are the highest of all species ought to be challenged by solving the animal problem, replacing ideology with nature, and reevaluating how many development projects are carried out.

Bio: Hassan Shahraki is an assistant professor in University of Zabol, Iran. He has earned his bachelor degree in Agriculture Machinery from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, the Master Science in Rural Development form Razi University, Iran, and PhD in Rural Development from Bu-Ali-Sina University, Hamedan, Iran. Also, he has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna, Austria, from 2015 to 2016. Right now, he is a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in Carleton University. Shahraki’s main academic interests include the wide range from critical development studies, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Situational Analysis (SA), to the sociology of development, post-modernism, rural development (entrepreneurship), and the sociology of body and embodiment. His main intention as a visiting scholar in Carleton is to search about the Buen Vivir (Collective well-being in English) as a Latin American development approach, and redefine it according to the sociological, historical, and cultural circumstances, conditions, and situations in Iran as an Islamic country. He named this revised version of Buen Vivir the IBV (Islamic Buen Vivir).