A Critical Review of the Theoretical Framing of Societal Security in Iran

Over the past few decades, along with the increasing the complexity of social relationships in today’s societies, wider understanding of security has evolved and outweighed the military dimension, encompassing economic, social, environmental, and political aspects. In this regard, new definitions of security have been formulated, one of the most important of which is the concept of societal security. Despite the fundamental need for societal security in Iran’s society, research activities in the field of security are mainly focused on defense, international, national security and foreign policy. Thus, this paper reviews and analyzes three outstanding and main works that have attempted to theoretically formulate societal security in Iranian society. The book entitled "A Theoretical Introduction to Societal Security" by Ghadir Nasri (2011) is an effort to identify the principles of societal security in various theories which explain the main components of societal security in Iran based on such principles. “Societal Security: An Islamic Approach” (2013) by Asghar Eftekari aims at identifying societal security patterns in Islamic discourse and proposing operational principles for strengthening societal security in Islamic society. In “Historical Sociology of Security in Iran” (2012), adopting a historical sociological approach, Mirsondosi tries to provide a deep understanding of societal security based on historical developments in Iran and within the relationships in social, political, economic, and cultural areas. In the present research, introducing these works, their efforts to establish the societal security in Iranian society are examined in terms of their form and content.