Representation of Women in the Mystical–Social Poetry of Ahmad Azizi: A Sociological Analysis Based on Bourdieu’s Theory of Cultural Capital

Karami, Salman; Akbariyan, Mostafa; Shekarbeygi, Alyeh

doi:10.30465/scs.2025.52997.3057

Representation of Women in the Mystical–Social Poetry of Ahmad Azizi: A Sociological Analysis Based on Bourdieu’s Theory of Cultural Capital

Articles in Press

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Authors

Salman karami ¹

Mostafa Akbariyan ²

Alyeh Shekarbeygi ²

¹ PhD student, Department of Sociology, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

10.30465/scs.2025.52997.3057

Abstract

This study examines the configurations of womanhood in the poems and ecstatic prose of Ahmad Azizi. It explores how women are represented in Azizi’s poetic world and how these representations relate to the cultural field, the unequal distribution of cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the processes of legitimization. The study argues that women in Azizi’s work appear in four simultaneous forms: the sacred woman rooted in mystical-Shi‘i memory; the social-critical woman situated in the urban field and structures of exclusion; the female body positioned between sacralization and commodification; and the resistant woman as the bearer of symbolic capital derived from suffering and hope. Using a qualitative method based on thematic analysis and three-stage coding, the research analyzes Azizi’s poetry and ecstatic prose. The findings show that these representations are shaped by Azizi’s position within the cultural field and by the logic of capital distribution, meaning that the value of each image emerges not purely from aesthetics but from its relation to field-specific rules of legitimacy and symbolic power. Overall, Azizi’s poetry becomes a site where symbolic struggle, the reproduction of inequality, and the possibility of resistance in Iran’s cultural field can be observed.

Keywords

Ahmad Azizi

representation of women

mystical–social poetry

Bourdieu

cultural field

cultural capital

symbolic capital

Subjects