Bertram on Karimi, ‘Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era’
Pamela Karimi describes her book accurately as “a survey of Iranian domesticity and its transformations” (p. 11). With an emphasis on interaction with the West, the book begins in the late Qajar period (1794-1925) and ends in the postrevolutionary present, even into the early twenty-first century. A major focus is the pivotal, Western-oriented interim of Pahlavi Iran (1925-79), particularly the post-World War II period as Iran negotiated oil wealth and imports from the West. The author argues that the most important import was a consumer mentality that introduced Western household items and Western housing as objects of desire, with varied success and with a variety of repercussions.