cohesion and conflict in transnational merchant families

How do people negotiate the diversity of positionalities within kin groups? Through a diachronic approach, I investigate how Ali and Jalal, two merchants with Azeri and Gilaki ethnic identifications who came to Hamburg in the 1930s, mobilized kin to generate capital along the lines of generation, gender, and age. The reader simultaneously learns about the local history of Iranian immigration. Building on literature about historical merchant networks, the social organization of the Iranian marketplace (bazaar), the anthropology of kinship and transnational families, I question the social cohesion on which Aihwa Ong's study of flexible capital creation relies. The material suggests that the experience of family relations influences agents' positioning in the local Iranian social field

Between the democratisation of international relations and status quo politics : Russia's foreign policy towards the Iranian nuclear programme

This article sheds light on Russia’s foreign policy towards the Iranian nuclear programme and analyses to what extent Russia’s Iran policies are indicative of a security culture that resists hegemony. Following a two-level model between a discursive and a behavioral level of foreign policy, it will be shown how Moscow advocates a non-hegemonic security culture discursively, but still displays a level of behavioural convergence with hegemonic power structures. Process-tracing Russia’s positioning on the Iranian nuclear dossier as from the disclosure of Iran’s nuclear programme in 2002, the article carves out Russian normative conceptions in international relations and material considerations that let Russia partially fall short of acting upon its own discourse. It will be argued that Russian Iran policy is the outcome of a balancing act between resistance to hegemony and hegemonic accommodation