Paper short abstract

This paper examines how embodied and sonic practices in recent Iranian protests transform pain and repression into shared hope and meaning.it shows how chanting,silence, and bodily presence create collective solidarity and sustain politico-spiritual resistance beyond formal ideology in crisis.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the intersections of contemporary spiritualities and collective mobilization in recent Iranian protest movements, focusing on how hope, pain, and meaning are enacted through embodied and sonic practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews, digital ethnography, and analysis of personal narratives and audiovisual archives, the study adopts a bottom-up anthropological perspective to explore how experiences of repression, uncertainty, and suffering are transformed into shared emotional and ethical resources for collective action.

Spirituality is approached as a lived and situational mode of sense-making rather than an institutional framework. Practices such as chanting, ritualized silence, mourning, and bodily presence in public and semi-public spaces generate affective intensities and ethical commitments, blurring the boundaries between political protest and spiritual expression. Sound and the body operate as mediators between individual vulnerability and collective solidarity, enabling endurance, hope, and participation in everyday forms of resistance.

By foregrounding sensory and emotional dimensions, this paper contributes to debates on new social movements and contemporary spiritualities, highlighting how embodied and sonic pathways sustain hope and solidarity under authoritarian conditions. It emphasizes that everyday resistance is both materially and spiritually enacted, producing alternative imaginaries of dignity, community, and life beyond state narratives.