LAUSR

“Produce to Solve Iran’s Problems.” “Boost Production to Exit This Labyrinth of Difficulties.” “A New Road [different] from the Past” has to be taken. “Big Successes of Our Economy.” Iran’s “New Goals Are: Development, Growth, Efficiency.” “We Should Promote Industrial Research.” “The Youth Looking for a Job Needs To Be Skilled to Succeed.” If newspapers are sites for the public sphere and give any indication about the top-down narratives in Iran, the mantra behind these headlines was certainly “decide, produce, and succeed.” Since the early 1990s, the dominant discourse within the Islamic republic de facto customized the dictum “produce and consume” (tulīd va masraf). Although Iran’s path toward liberalism has been “tortuous,” when Hashem Rafsanjani took the helm of the presidency in 1989 the myth of the winner in a competitive society began to take shape. During the reconstruction era (sāzandigī) after the Iran–Iraq war, a new narrative boosting domestic production, fostering the idea of impressive career growth, and promoting recognition of talents began to permeate the Iranian public sphere. The top-down rhetoric was framed along the following lines: liberal market economy, consumer culture, opening to the international arena. It paved the way for social dichotomies such as classy and luxurious (bā kilās/luksī) versus poor, cheap, or provincial-kitsch (bī kīfyat/javād/dihātī-khaz). Government policies, meant to rehabilitate the Iranian economy after the destruction of the eight-year war with Iraq (1980–88), emphasized the production imperative. The process of rationalizing productivity as the only way to achieve national growth fully appropriated the public space, and the labor realm in particular, so that it eventually imbued Iran’s social relations and narrowed the political space of workers. The dominant discourse, through newspapers and advertisements, sketched the ideal profile of success as belonging to those who dared, planned, and worked hard. As Fairclough has shown, class relations deeply affect discourse; on the one hand they determine it, and on the other they are reproduced in discursive practices. What is therefore the connection between classes and discourse? It is a mediated one, Fairclough argues, and the Iranian case is exemplary in this sense. Indeed, with a money-oriented discursive strategy permeating the public space, during the years of the Rafsanjani presidency the Islamic Republic gradually institutionalized the hunger for success and addressed the new middle class. Within the context of encouraging rivalry and praising the