From the organizers:

“Dismantling the Family Unit”: Clerics and Cohabitation in Contemporary Iran

202 Jones Hall, Princeton University
Sep 29, 2025, 12:00 pm – 1:20 pm

Intimate partner relationships are an affective site of neoliberalism, constantly transforming to fit the exigencies of the moment. Individuals uniquely adapt marriage expectations and practices within and beyond normative practices, to make life liveable. The Islamic Republic of Iran is witnessing a historical moment where the emergence of ‘white marriage,’ the vernacular for cohabitation, has everyday actors and the state engaged in a push and pull until the practice is normalized. When brought into public discussions and debates, white marriages are criticized by clerics as a social ill destined to “dismantle the family unit.” At the same time, legal actors change laws to accommodate this emergent practice. This talk will use ethnographic data to situate Iran’s current marriage and non-marriage practices within the region and argue that the Shi`i Islamico-civil legal code creates a space for everyday actors to perform unregistered white marriages and gradually redefines the family unit.

Maral Sahebjame is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies where she is working on her manuscript that explores the ways in which gender practices drive social, legal, and political change in contemporary Iran.