The Impact of Dominant Cultural-Political Discourse On Iran Fiction Publishing Network: A Case Study of Reformist Discourse and Novel Publishing Network

Novel publishing in Iran has always been accompanied by fluctuations arising from socio-political transformations. The present paper seeks to study Iran’s novel publishing market through the lens of socio-political shifts in Iran before the end of the second millennium. The period studied includes 1997 to 1998, when the reformist administration gained victory after the presidential election of 1997. Given the interdisciplinary nature of this research, two theoretical frameworks have been adopted: Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory and Giddens’ theory of structuration. Moreover, Social Network Analysis was used to study the changes in the field of translated novel and domestic novel publishing. Furthermore, in order to understand the structural and causal factors affecting changes in the publication of the novel during this period, semi-structured interviews with publishers were conducted to investigate the structural transformations from agents’ viewpoints. The results of the study show that the structure of the novel has undergone a number of qualitative and quantitative changes over the two years under review, in which the structural and political impact of the situation has strengthened or restricted the active agency of publishers and authors / translators.