History, Space, and Industrialization: An Industrial Archaeology of Labor at Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The notion of industrialization is one of the key terms in shaping new cultural identities in a post-colonial situation. The industrializing process in Persia, began in 1930s, is one of the less-perceived examples of its kind. Away from the economy, the cultural and social conditions in which the industrialization took place have not been elucidated. The aim of this paper is an archaeological explanation of the industrial labor phenomenon and the transformation it took in the last decades of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century. For this matter, with using the concept of space and utilizing some of the space syntax methods, the social metamorphosis in the experience of labor have been studied through the description of the change in structural paraphernalia of industrial spaces. This paper is confined to study of Tehran, the city which was center of some of the most important industrial enterprises in the country. At the end, it has been concluded that despite all of the complexity in problematic of industrial transformation, it is the overall cultural continuity that matters and it is the uninterrupted local culture that has the primary role in shaping any change.