What does it mean to “perform the State,” and in particular, what does this action mean in relation to the country of Iran? The concept of the “State” as a modern phenomenon has had a powerful impact on the formation of the individual and the collective, as well as on determining how political entities are perceived in their interactions with one another in the current global arena. In a time of mass globalization and hypercapitalism, State identities have become strengthened, as they demonstrate formidable presences in the globalized media, including satellite transmissions, the Internet and cellular phone communications. There has always been some sort of global contact, such as the silk roads that connected Asia, Africa and Europe, or the intricate infrastructure that led most of the ancient world back to Rome. Yet, increased daily contact between all geographic locations since the height of European imperialism during the nineteenth century has created a situation in which average persons are perpetually performing State identities for the world to see. The democratization of media has made us all international ambassadors, so to speak. Investigations of how these particular State identities may be formed, represented, disseminated, comprehended and maintained are crucial to discovering how structures of knowledge are constructed in relation to the world and to us individually.

In response to these continual rapid changes in defining and representing oneself and one's relationship to others through the dynamic mediation of State apparatuses and global media, this collection of essays is an attempt to understand the individual's and group's relationships to the State and how this bidirectional interaction is performed and depicted, particularly in relation to the State of Iran. Furthermore, this collection of essays features a variety of case studies focusing on persons or groups who perform the Iranian State or a State of Iran as outlined, manifested and confronted by Iranian society, those in exile and the world at large.