The newest American Anthropologist (a publication of the American Anthropological Association) recently arrived at my doorstep with a cover story about Persian-language blogging. The article by Alireza Doostdar is titled ‘“The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging”: On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan’ (PDF)

Also take a look at the cover art from the journal:

Doostdar presents a mini-ethnography of a particular dispute on a popular Persian-language blog. It’s a fascinating account of the place that blogging, the internet, and public forums in general hold in the context of some Muslim cultures. I need to read this article again, but expect some commentary in the near future.

Another fascinating article from Wired asks whether blogging is helping to ‘open’ Iranian society.

According to blogcensus.net there are 200,000 blogs in Persian, and some 65,000 of them are active. It seems like we need to look at doing some serious comparative work about the place of blogging in different cultures. Of course, we hardly know enough about blogging in the United States to begin any meaningful comparisons!

Check out Wikipedia for a fantastic article on Persian Weblogs.