Shaping the Unborn Child in Contemporary Iran

Discover the first session of the 2025–2026 seminar series "Crossed Perspectives on Early Childhood" – Shaping the Unborn Child in Contemporary Iran: Representations and Practices of Shiite Pregnant Women at the Intersection of the Intimate and the Political.

The seminar approaches early childhood as a social, historical, and cultural construct. Knowledge and theories relating to conception, birth, and child development are analysed in terms of the child’s interactions with their surroundings and according to gender norms. The seminar also explores the boundaries of this age category and its temporality, as defined by medical, international, anthropological, and historical standards.

Since the 2000s, religious publications on pregnancy have been increasingly circulated in Iran among urban Shiite women. These works list practices and rituals said to transmit certain physical and moral traits to the unborn child. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Tehran and Isfahan, complemented by remote interviews, this session examines the religious representations and practices surrounding pregnancy, as well as the underlying conceptions of the child. It also explores how pregnant women appropriate this literature and contribute to the creation of virtual corpora, alongside the Iranian state’s role in disseminating and standardising these practices. Finally, in a context of increasing medicalisation, the seminar will reflect on the ambivalence of these practices, balancing women’s desire to regain control over their pregnancy with the state’s political intention to exercise biopower.

• Amélie Neuve-Eglise: lecturer in Islamic studies at INALCO, member of the Center for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies and Research (CERMOM)
• Discussant: Doris Bonnet: anthropologist - IRD