This article examines how Iranian intellectuals negotiated Western science and technology under semi-colonial sovereignty: a formally independent state constrained by unequal power. I argue that these negotiations operated through translation not only as linguistic transfer but as a recursive set of practices—adoption, reworking, and refusal—through which intellectuals repositioned science within Iranian political life as its authority shifted from universal reason to militarized power to developmental urgency. Using Frantz Fanon as a comparative framework, I identify four overlapping modes: (1) nineteenth-century epistemic translation, when science was framed as a route to reform; (2) early twentieth-century regulation of the “performative translator,” when translation became a site of linguistic, epistemic, and gendered policing; (3) mid-century emancipatory translation, shaped by the global militarization of science; and (4) iterative remembrance in the 1970s, when translation became a practice of insurgent authorship through cycles of forgetting and reactivation. The paper’s central paradox is that later thinkers strategically inhabited the position long maligned as the “performative translator”—the Europhile dandy or fokoli, later refigured and pathologized as the gharbzadeh (West-struck)—to claim new forms of insurgent authorship, even as such projects risked forging new orthodoxies. Tracing the genealogy of the fokoli, I show how debates over performative translation organized conflicts over method, authority, and epistemic nationalism. Ultimately, I argue that the reappropriation of the fokoli’s maligned position reveals decolonization not as a clean rupture but as an ongoing metabolization of inherited materials. The article contributes to decolonial thought, translation studies, and the global intellectual history of science by reframing semi-colonial modernity as a struggle over epistemic authority conducted through the labor of translation.

Social investment policies have introduced a shift in the normative underpinnings of European welfare states but are layered into compensatory and workfarist policies. This article questions the normative outcomes of social investment from a citizen perspective, asking how hybrid active labour market policies (ALMPs) shape citizen-level norms of social solidarity. Building on normative feedback theory, we conduct a comparative qualitative secondary analysis of focus-group datasets from France and Belgium (2006; 2019), where enabling instruments were gradually introduced between observation points. Based on a two-fold operationalization of citizen-level norms, we report that compensatory and workfarist cues dominate discussions with scarce reference to capacitation. The frames participants rely on feature normative tensions, particularly the ambivalent coexistence of compensation and individual responsibility. The normative feedback of ALMPs takes the form of a dilemma between generous-yet-stringent solidarity. Social investment policy norms have not (yet) reshaped citizen-level norms of social solidarity.

For survivors of domestic violence, public safety net benefits, including housing, food, and cash assistance, are often critical resources in establishing independent, safe lives. Using a reflexive thematic analysis of qualitative data from a local housing programme collected from August 2023 to January 2024, this study explores the intersection of trauma-informed care (TIC) and administrative burden within public safety net programmes for survivors of domestic violence. Findings demonstrate that barriers to accessing and participating in the public safety net, including learning, compliance, and psychological costs, hinder survivors’ recovery and stability, and clash with TIC principles. Conversely, TIC-aligned practices at the local housing programme, including strong case management, peer support, and flexible programming, mitigate these challenges. Research and policy implications related to how the integration of TIC principles can ease administrative burden in the public safety net are discussed.