Occidental Malakut

The first book about Persian weblogs has just been published. I have already written a review of the book in BBC Persian (A black and white image of blogosphere). The book 'We Are Iran' written by Nasrin Alavi, is in my opinon a monolithic book which although addresses a number of very important issues in the blogosphere, generally misses one big point: the Persian blogosphere as described by the author is not the ‘entire’ Persian blogosphere.

I was expecting a book which could address the issue in a far more sophisticated way. At least here in my own weblog, I have the liberty to address the issue and raise some points which I could not raise in a journalistic review for the BBC. I will try to divide my review or rather comments and critiques into a number of chapters to avoid a lengthy post.

First of all, the title of the book sounds too pompous to me. What on earth is the meaning of ‘We are Iran’? Is this choice for the title not manipulating the mind of the reader even before starting to read the book. With all due respect and without undermining the importance of the book, I strongly believe that the author could at least avoid this assumption and negative impression by the readers by choosing a less sensitive and less problematic title.

The book, at least what I have seen, does not have an introduction at all. There is no proper biography of the author in the book. Not knowing who the author really is and what her background is can be one of the problems with this book (this small piece is all that you would ever learn about the author!). The book hardly ever properly explains what has been the basis or criteria for selecting a limited number of weblogs for her study. Is it that they have a high number of hits? This is for sure not true. There are a number of weblogs which hardly ever have more than an average of 50 hits per day. Again, why is it that some weblogs are frequently quoted, Shabah having the highest frequency among them?

My main argument in my review for the BBC was that the author is greatly under the influence of politics and tends to interpret and contextualize all these weblog contents in the light of political events in Iran. Although, politics greatly impact the content of the blogosphere, I believe that the story has been too far fetched. Otherwise, the author could at least write a foreword for the book and explain what she truly attempts to achieve by writing this book. Rather, she could even choose a title more befitting for the book which could better relate to the content of her research.

Let me leave this first part of my words about the book and I shall get back with next chapters of my review or rather opinions about the book.

(See also this English piece by Hoder in his English blog, 'A book on blogs in Iran')