Conformity and Resistance in Mahabad

The initial aim of this research was to examine the factors which shape a sense of belonging and place among young people in Mahabad, a town in Iranian Kurdistan. This research is to look at the consumption of local, national and transnational forms of media, and how this influenced the view of events, their local environment, and the ways they chose to narrate these. Reflexive visual methods was used, asking the youth to take their own photographic pieces dealing with themes they saw as relevant to local current events and their place within these processes. The work produced by the young people shows the multiple and sometimes competing forces at work in the lives of youth in Iran, where idealised images about "the west" can serve to challenge or reinforce their own sense of place. Conventions of media and popular culture "story telling" – that is the discourses used to describe current affairs and social conditions.