Abstract In this article, we examine how domestic heating technologies functioned as instruments of spatial reconfiguration and imperial power in twentieth-century Iran. The replacement of the traditional floor-based korsi with portable oil heaters like the Aladdin catalyzed a shift in how domestic space was materially organized. Whereas the heating ecology centered around the korsi unfolded on the ground and resisted Western objects such as sofas, refrigerators, and stoves that needed elevated or upright usage above the floor, the Aladdin enacted a subtle but powerful form of imperialism by reorienting bodies and their spatial modes of habituation toward upright “civilized” living. We argue that this technological shift and spatial elevation enabled the inflow of Western goods into Iranian homes, helping to affix Iran as a semiperipheral state within the global capitalist economic system. Rather than treating materiality as neutral or derivative, this study foregrounds its role as a mediator of social transformation, in which heating technology becomes a vector of governance and spatial elevation a proxy for progress. By centering the home as a site of techno-political encounter, we reveal how imperial rationalities were naturalized through mundane objects within the space of domesticity.
Sefat et al. (Thu,) studied this question.