Project NAZM addresses one of the most pressing questions of contemporary international politics: how various polities, languages, and temporal framings conceptualize international order. This project analyzes various uses of concepts to understand and organize the international sphere, focusing specifically on Iran. It highlights the co-constitution of domestic and international order and examines how specific language and socio-political contexts lead to differing conceptions of international order.
In exploring the longevity of debates on international order within domestic political contexts, the project also examines the temporality of political projects and how the past, present, and future are represented and imagined politically. It emphasizes how the discipline of International Relations often fails to grasp particularities such as religious notions of international order and messianism, which influence the study of concepts like justice, cooperation, and conflict, all with significant normative consequences.
The project's objective is to challenge the unitary assumption of what international order is and how it is understood in various contexts and geographies. This broadens the scope of academic and policy debates on the present and future of international order beyond just great powers or Eurocentric frames. The project highlights the role of religion in shaping and contesting international order, both historically and contemporarily. It successfully studies how religious texts and other modes of knowledge, such as practices and rituals, influence both domestic politics and international order through various legitimacy claims or temporal politics.
