Iranian Journal Of Antheropology

Iranian Journal Of Antheropology

Institutional Violence: An Anthropological Study of the Gray Zone in Client-Worker Interactions in Welfare and Social Emergency Centers

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Ahmad Naderi 1
Narges Yousefi 2
1 Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
2 M.A in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
10.22034/jasi.2026.2096759.1663
Abstract
This anthropological study investigates the inherent tension between bureaucratic logic of targeted support and the lived experience of clients in Iran's Welfare Organization and Social Emergency Centers. Drawing on the concept of the "gray zone," the research explores how supportive institutions inevitably oscillate between "assistance" and "control". The theoretical framework integrates three contemporary anthropologists: Loïc Wacquant's "gray zones of sovereignty," Sherry Ortner's "dark anthropology" with its emphasis on ethical ambiguity and subjective experience of institutional suffering, and Insa Koch's "personalizing the state" which reveals clients' creative strategies for agency within institutional gray zones. Data were collected through fourteen months of participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews with 62 participants (38 clients, 16 social workers, and 8 administrative staff), and analysis of 147 case files across two Welfare Centers and one Social Emergency Center in Tehran and Alborz provinces. Thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke's, six-phase approach revealed three main tensions in client-worker interactions: the tension between information needs and feelings of humiliation; the tension between standardized procedures and unique life contexts; and the tension between service conditionality and client agency and dignity. Despite these tensions, clients were never passive consumers of institutional violence; they developed three primary strategies for personalizing the state and maintaining their agency: formal compliance, informal networking, and narrative adaptation. The study argues that many secondary harms stem not from individual negligence or systemic deficiency, but from the unconscious reproduction of procedures no longer aligned with contemporary conditions. By localizing the gray zone concept within Iran's rentier-welfare state with its ethical-revolutionary legitimacy, the research reveals an added ideological-moral layer that distinguishes it from Western neoliberal models, shifting institutional violence from the level of "status" to that of "identity."
Keywords
Dark Anthropology
Gray Zone
Institutional Violence
Personalizing the State
Social Emergency
Subjects
 
 
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Iranian Journal Of Antheropology
Volume 23, Issue 42 - Serial Number 42
September 2026
Pages 205-228