Politics of Culture in Iran: Anthropology, Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century (Routledge Bips Persian Studies)

273 Pages·2006·1.18 MB·English

by  Nematollah Fazeli

Politics of Culture in Iran
Politics of Culture in Iranis the first comprehensive study of modern anthropology
within the context of Iranian studies and politics in the twentieth century.
This book analyses the ways in which anthropology and culture in Iran have
interacted with Iranian politics and society. In particular it highlights how and
why anthropology and culture became part of wider socio-political discourses
and how they were appropriated and rejected by the pre- and post-revolutionary
regimes. The author shows that there have been three main phases of Iranian
anthropology, corresponding broadly to three periods in the social and political
development of Iran and including:
● The Period of Nationalism: lasting approximately from the Constitutional
Revolution (1906–11) and the end of the Qajar dynasty until the end of Reza
Shah’s reign (1941);
● The Period of Nativism:from the 1950s until the Islamic Revolution (1979);
● The Post-Revolutionary Period.
This book also places Iran within an international context by demonstrating how
Western anthropological concepts, theories and methodologies affected
epistemological and political discourses in Iranian anthropology.Politics of Culture
in Iran is essential reading for those with interests in Iranian society and politics
and anthropology.
Nematollah Fazeliis Associate Professor of Allameh Tabatab’ai University of
Iran and he specializes in Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies focusing on
contemporary culture of Iran,ethnography and Higher Education Studies.
Routledge/BIPS Persian Studies series
Editorial Board
Prof. C. E. Bosworth, Dr V. S. Curtis, Dr R. M. Gleave and
Dr V. A. Martin
In this series,Routledge in association with the British Institute of Persian Studies
(BIPS) publishes scholarly books on the social sciences and humanities in Iran.
Such works include: original research monographs; suitably revised theses;
specially planned books deriving from conferences; specially commissioned,
multi-authored research books and translations.
1 Iranian History and Politics
The dialectic of state and society
Homa Katouzian
2 The Making of Modern Iran
State and society under Riza Shah 1921–1941
Edited by Stephanie Cronin
3 Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran
New perspectives on the Iranian Left
Edited by Stephanie Cronin
4 Religion and Society in Qajar Iran
Edited by Robert Gleave
5 The Political Thought of Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari
An Iranian theoretician of the Islamic state
Mahmood T.Davari
6 Politics of Culture in Iran
Anthropology,politics and society in the twentieth century
Nematollah Fazeli
Politics of Culture in Iran
Anthropology, politics and society
in the twentieth century
Nematollah Fazeli
First published 2006
by Routledge
2 Park Square,Milton Park,Abingdon,Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave,New York,NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2006 Nematollah Fazeli
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical,or other means,now known or hereafter
invented,including photocopying and recording,or in any
information storage or retrieval system,without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0–415–37005–1(Print edition)
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Note on transliteration viii
1 Iranian anthropology and ideology 1
Introduction 1
Anthropology as the research problem 1
Anthropology as the research subject 5
Methodological and theoretical considerations 7
The politics of anthropology 17
Writing a history of anthropology 20
Organization of the book 25
2 Anthropology and Iranian cultures:
Iranian anthropology 1900–25 27
Introduction 27
Travel accounts 28
Orientalism 33
Mythology and nationalist history 34
Archaeology and the identity question 37
Folklore and modernist literati 40
Conclusion 43
3 Anthropology and nationalism:
Iranian anthropology 1925–41 45
Introduction 45
Political discourses in Reza Shah’s time 46
Anthropology in the reign of Reza Shah 47
Anthropological institutions 52
Intellectual nationalist folklore studies 61
Conclusion 76
vi Contents
4 Anthropology and modernization:
Iranian anthropology 1941–79 79
Introduction 79
Anthropology and modernization 82
Anthropology and the West 93
Indigenization 98
Monarchic nationalism 104
Anthropology and anti-modernization 109
Liberal nationalism 122
Socialism 125
Conclusion 133
5 Anthropology and Islamism:Iranian
anthropology in the 1980s 135
Introduction 135
A Revolution against anthropology 136
The religious–secular conflict 148
The culture of anthropology versus political culture 159
Conclusion 163
6 Anthropology and Islamic modernization:
Iranian anthropology in the 1990s 165
Introduction 165
Structural changes in postwar Iran 166
The teaching of anthropology 172
Local knowledge studies 182
Studies of the nomads 187
Cultural heritage studies 190
Folklore studies 196
Conclusion 198
7 Iranian anthropology:a conclusion 201
Introduction 201
Rethinking anthropology in Iran 212
Notes 216
Bibliography 223
Index 249
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to express my most profound gratitude to
Professor Richard Tapper, for his direction, guidance and generous encourage-
ment throughout the research and writing of this book.I also sincerely appreci-
ate and thank Dr Ziba Mir-Hosseini for everything she has done for me during
my four years of living in London.She has several times read and commented on
the drafts of this book. I would like to thank my wife and my son for providing
me a calm and comfortable situation for writing this book. During my years of
study, research and preparation of this book, they made many sacrifices to
support me and my work in every way possible.I hope we construct a better life.
I owe a great debt to Linda Heidan for her great generosity and kindness to
accept editing this book and for her effective and thought-provoking comments.
Iwould also like to thank the SOAS librarians for their kind and warm hospital-
ity and support.Many people in Iran generously gave me their time and agreed
to be interviewed. I would like to sincerely thank Mr Mohammad Beheshti,
Head of the Iranian Organization of Cultural Heritage; Mr Mohammad
Mirshokra’i, the Director of the Centre for Iranian Anthropology; Dr Mortaza
Farhadi, Anthropology Professor of Allameh Tabataba’i University; Dr Naser
Fakuhi,Anthropology Professor of Tehran University;Dr Mahmud Ruholamini,
Anthropology Professor of Tehran University; Dr Said Moidfar, Head of the
Research Institute of Culture,Communication and Art;Dr Mahmud Sharepour,
Head of the Department of Social Sciences of Mazandaran University;
MrEbrahim Mossavi,Editor of the Journal Zakhayer Enqelab;Mr Mahdi Fahimi,
Editor of Farhang Jebheh; Mr Jalal Sattari, prominent Iranian scholar; Mr Javad
Safinezhad, prominent Iranian anthropologist; Dr Jalaloddin Rafifar, Head of
Department of Tehran University; Mr Rahmati, an Iranian anthropologist;
MrMohammad Fazeli,a PhD sociology student of Tarbiyat Modarres University
in Tehran; Mr Alireza Kamari, co-Author and co-Editor of Farhang Jebheh; and
anthropology students of Tehran and Mazandaran Universities in the years 2000
and 2001.I would like to thank Dr Vanessa Martin for her kind attentions to my
study and her support to publish this book.Without her support and encouragement
I would not be able to publish this book.
Note on transliteration
I have adopted a simple system of transliteration,close to modern spoken Persian.
All Persian and Arabic words and names are rendered in accordance with the
transliteration rules outlined here, except when cited in sources in European
language.
The full range of English vowels are used to express current Persian pronunciation
of Arabic,Turkish,French and Persian words and names,though long and short
‘a’are not differentiated.The following are some examples:
Q as in Abol Qasem
Gh as in Forughi
O as in Mardomshenasi
E as in Esfahan.
For dates I have pursued the following format. For material originally published
in Persian the bibliography provides both Muslim solar calendar years (Hejri
Shamsi) current in Iran and the equivalent years in Christian Era,respectively.In
the body of the text and the notes, however, I provide the Christian Era dates,
except for a few cases as noted.Finally,unless otherwise indicated,all translations
from Persian are my own.
1 Iranian anthropology and
ideology
Introduction
This book is a systematic empirical study of Iranian modern anthropology
extracted from my PhD thesis called Anthropology and Political Discourses in the
Twentieth Century Iran (SOAS, London University 2004). As a standard academic
research project it had a certain research problem,a research subject,an objective
and a theoretical and methodological framework. In this introductory chapter
I introduce all these aspects. Furthermore, the theoretical and practical signifi-
cances of this study for anthropology in general and contemporary Iranian
studies will be explained. Also, at the end of this chapter, I shall introduce and
highlight the organization of the book.
Anthropology as the research problem
This study is an ethnographic account of the formation and development of
anthropology in twentieth-century Iran.It is ethnographic in the Geertzian sense
that ethnography is conceived of as ‘an enterprise...whose aim is to render
obscure matters intelligible by providing them with an informing context’(Geertz
1983: 152). In the same way, this research is intended to contextualize modern
anthropology in Iran within its pertinent socio-political context. My major
questions in this study are:how has anthropology been relevant to Iranian society
in the last century? And how did political changes affect Iranian anthropology?
Through examination of these questions in this research I will attempt to ethno-
graphically clarify the contextual meaning of anthropology in contemporary Iran.
To answer these questions,the socio-political situation and context in which the
discipline is placed must be examined. I believe that ‘intellectual paradigms,
including anthropological traditions,are culturally mediated,that is they are con-
textually mediated and relative; and if anthropological activities are culturally
mediated, they are in turn subject to ethnographic description and ethnological
analysis’(Scholte 1969:431).Gerholm and Hannerz formulate this hypothesis as
the major question in the study of ‘national anthropologies’. They maintain:
‘Anthropology is an interpretation of culture.Could it be that this interpretation
is itself shaped by culture? Could some of the differences between national