Culture Beyond County: Strategies of Inclusion in the Global Iranian Diaspora

The Iranian diaspora, estimated at 5 to 8 million people worldwide, has become increasingly visible, especially in North America and Europe. In response to misrepresentation and marginalization, many have turned to cultural work to reshape public narratives and claim space for more accurate and diverse expressions of Iranian identity. Drawing on 16 years of ethnographic fieldwork and over 125 interviews in Los Angeles, Stockholm, and Toronto, Culture Beyond Country examines how community organizers, artists, and entrepreneurs navigate belonging under different state policies and local dynamics. The book shows how these cultural efforts both challenge and reproduce power structures, revealing ongoing debates over who gets to represent Iranian culture and what it means to be Iranian in the diaspora.

Amy Malek is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in the intersections of migration, citizenship, memory, and culture in the Iranian diaspora. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at William & Mary. Her research investigates how immigrants and their descendants actively construct cultural belonging and navigate the constraints and possibilities shaped by state projects, market logics, racial formations, and digital technologies. Her scholarship has been published in a wide variety of interdisciplinary journals, such as Memory Studies, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Iranian Studies. Her new book, Culture Beyond Country: Strategies of Inclusion in the Global Iranian Diaspora, is forthcoming from New York University Press and is a transnational ethnography of the impacts of cultural policies on diasporic Iranian communities in Sweden, Canada, and the United States.