The Emergence of Challenging Public; From Urban and Job-Oriented Social Movements to Inclusive Movements

Numerous social movements have been emerged in Iran over the past three decades. The aim of this article is to analyse this emergence and diffusion. Constructing a mixed theoretical framework, taken from New Social Movements theory and Framing Alignment theory, and conducting a documentary research, we analyse three main properties of the movements: social conflict, participants, demands. We classified the movements based on their conflicts as well as their inclusiveness in two types; inclusive and exclusive. Urban movements, teachers’ movement, and workers’ movement are exclusive type because they concentrated on their own demands. Reform movement, women movement, student movement, and the 2017 uprising are inclusive ones because they spoke for society and had inclusive demands. The findings show that various conflicts have been the matrix of the movements. They include providing urban services, economic policies, social practices, and the manner of governmentality. The participants in both types have been diverse and come from all parts of the society. Despite diversity, the demands of the movements can be categorised into social justice, improvement of policies, and better governmentality. We concluded that the emergence of the numerous social movements is the result of dissolved social conflicts in different parts of the society. The special properties of the movements, specifically diverse conflicts and participants who come from all parts of the society, shows the appearance of “challenging public” in Iran. The challenging public is a shapeless/ polyshape new force who seeks social change with a specific demand for social justice and equality.