Contemporary Iran Research Articles

Difference in difference: language, geography, and ethno-racial identity in contemporary Iran

ABSTRACT Three approaches to portraying ethno-racial and national identity for Iran are common: a discretizing approach that groups and conflates ethnicity, language and geography; a civic-territorial conception of nationalism as supra-ethnic Iranian-ness; and an ethno-nationalist approach that criticizes the former for privileging a state-centered, Persian-Shiite majority’s culture and status. Instead of arbitrating between them, we propose a sociological approach that compares different forms of ethno-racial self-identification in modern Iran. Using the 2016 Iran Social Survey, which asks open-ended questions on ethno-racial self-identification, we find wide variation in how ethnic identity is expressed. On the one hand, the findings suggest that a sizable degree of mismatch exists, where concepts of ethnic groupness are confusing or not fully recognizable to many individuals. On the other hand, we also find that multi-ethnic self-identification is common, including across the ethno-racial boundaries often portrayed as closed and mutually exclusive groups in Western discussions on Iran.

Islamic feminist political narratives, reformist Islamic thought, and its discursive challenges in contemporary Iran

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the challenges of the political narratives and discourse of, what we would and some scholars have argued as, Islamic feminism in contemporary Iran. The paper explains briefly the social origins and accompanying intellectual and political developments that led to the emergence and shaped the political narratives in Iranian Islamic feminism. Next, it outlines and discusses the nature and characteristics of the Islamic feminist discourse. In doing so, the paper highlights and explains the central intellectual and ethical-political principles deliberated and advocated by several writers and thinkers within and related to this discourse and women’s discourse in general, including Ali Shariati, as well as Murtada Mutahhari whose views on women and gender inform mainstream perspectives on the status and role of women in Iranian society. The paper then examines the challenges confronted by the discourse of Islamic feminism and concludes by considering the implications of Islamic feminist narratives and discourse on contemporary Iranian thought and society.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA WITH REGARD TO MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA WITH REGARD TO MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE MONA MOUSA ALOTAIBI This paper will discuss women’s rights as they pertain to marriage and divorce in present-day Iran and in Saudi Arabia. Part II is an overview of several international treaties governing human rights and women’s rights in particular. Through the generally-accepted concept of “customary international law,” these treaties may apply to countries, even if they are not parties or signatories to the treaties. Part III will examine the principleslaid down in the Koran relating to marriage anddivorce, and Part IV discusses the interpretation of the Koran by the governing clerics in Iran as evidenced by the Iranian Civil Code, and how these interpretations are applied. Contemporary Iranian literature and films will help shed light on current practices in Iran. Key words: women's rights, marriage, divorce, human rights, treaties. حقوق المرأة في إيران والمملکة العربية السعوديةفيما يتعلق بالزواج والطلاق منى موسى العتيبى ملخص : تناقش هذه الورقة حقوق المرأة فيما يتعلق بالزواج والطلاق في إيران والمملکة العربية السعودية الحالية. الجزء الثاني هو لمحة عامة عن العديد من المعاهدات الدولية التي تنظم حقوق الإنسان وحقوق المرأة على وجه الخصوص. من خلال مفهوم الدولي العرفي المقبول عموما ، قد تنطبق هذه المعاهدات على البلدان ، حتى لو لم تکن أطرافا أو موقعة على المعاهدات. الجزء الثالث سوف يدرس المبادئ الواردة في القرآن فيما يتعلق بالزواج والطلاق ، والجزء الرابع يناقش تفسير القرآن من قبل الحاکم رجال الدين في إيران کما يتضح من القانون المدني الإيراني ، وکيف يتم تطبيق هذه التفسيرات. ستساعد الأدب والأفلام الإيرانية المعاصرة في تسليط الضوء على الممارسات الحالية في إيران. الکلمات المفتاحية : حقوق المرأة ، الزواج ، الطلاق ، حقوق الإنسان ، المعاهدات .

Mullā Ṣadrā’s Political Legacy: Ṣadrā’s Theory of Justice and the Religio-Political Authority in Post-Revolutionary Iran

Apart from its philosophical attractions, the religio-political potentials in the transcendent philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1641) have helped to its dominance in the seminary and university in contemporary Iran. It seems that one of the reasons for the state’s support for al-Ḥikmah al-mutaʿāliyah in Iran after the Islamic revolution is the potentials existing in this philosophy to justify the establishment of a religious government based on the discourse of Shīʿī political authority, conspicuously the doctrine of walāyat-i faqīh (the guardianship and governance of the jurist). This article aims to demonstrate how Mullā Ṣadrā’s theory of moral and social justice could have provided an intellectual ground for the establishment of an Islamic state in the Shīʿī sense.

The Growth of Women’s Role in the Iranian Parliament since the Islamic Revolution of 1979

This article discusses the position of women in Iranian political life, enhancing the role of Iranian women policy, the story of their political struggle for the rightful place and role in the country’s political arena, as well as the results achieved by women in public organizations of Iran. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, based on the legitimacy of women’ rights and political participation, the rules and laws in Iran have been reviewed and changes have been made in respect of political rights and participation in the government of this gender group. The article deals with the problem of political participation of women in contemporary Iran, as well as the issue of enhancing their role in the parliament as one of the most important political institutions of the country.

Characteristics of Environment in Contemporary Iraqi and Iranian Pottery A Comparative Study (Saad Shakir- Muhammad Mahdi) A Model

ان للخزف العراقي والايراني دورا مهما في مساحة الخزف العالمي المعاصر، وان كانت المؤثرات التي اوجدت تلك الصياغات، لذا يفترض الباحث ان هنالك علاقة بين الخزاف وبيئته ضمن بيئة العراق وبيئة ايران التي تتشابه حينا وتفترق حينا اخر ، ومن هنا وجد الباحث نفسه امام، عدد من التساؤلات:- 1)ما مدى استلهام البيئة من قبل الخزافين العراقيين مقارنة بالخزافين الايرانيين ؟2)هل استلهم الخزف العراقي والايراني مفردات البيئة واقعيا ام كانت استعارات محورة؟ اذ يهدف البحث الحالي الى: (تعرف الخصائص البيئية المؤثرة في الخزف العراقي والايراني المعاصر). اذ شمل مجتمع البحث مجموعتين من اعمال الفن الخاضعة للدراسة، الأول مجتمع البحث العراقي من الأعمال الخزفية المعاصرة للفنان سعد شاكر انموذجا، أما المجموعة الثانية المتضمنة مجتمع البحث الإيراني من الأعمال الخزفية للفنان محمد مهدي انوشقر الإيراني انموذجا، وقد قام الباحث بتحليل عينتين من اعمال الخزافين وقد استخرج الباحث بمجموعة من النتائج اهمها:1) تمكن الفنان العراق المعاصر بفعل التقصي والتجريب من تأسيس معطيات جمالية فنية عن طريق استلهامه الموروث الحضاري بروحية وأسلوب معاصر كما في النموذج (1).2)غنى الموروث الحضاري كان واضحا في منجز الفني العراقي للقدم الحضارة العراقية مع قصور في الجانب الايراني كما في نموذج (1).

Beyond the Prophet’s Heirs: Emergent Trajectories of a new Sectarian Polemic in Contemporary Iran

ABSTRACT Sectarian polemic directed at Sunni Muslims in Iran and elsewhere in the Shi’ite world has traditionally foregrounded the historic conflict over and fallout from the Prophetic succession as one of the primary markers of Sunni difference. In contrast to this precedent, I argue that we are witnessing the emergence of a newly formulated parallel discourse in the trajectory of sectarian polemic that is rooted less in such age old concerns and instead couches difference more as a matter of the supposedly problematic contemporary social behaviours of the maligned community. In demonstrating this, I focus on two elements—efforts to associate the Sunni populations at large with fanaticism and violence, and the construction of Sunni Muslims in Iran as hyper-fertile. Drawing on a mixed methodology of media analysis and anthropologically informed ethnographic fieldwork in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, this paper concludes by pointing to the origins of this rhetoric in a confluence of the weakening of traditional mythopoetic discourse among the youthful middle-class, their replacement by a new ‘nationalist Shi’ism’, and its subsequent receptivity to a globally circulating anti-migrant and nativist ideology.

The Persianization of English in multilingual Tehran

AbstractThis article examines the uses of English in the multilingual cityscape of Tehran, the capital city of Iran. Drawing from photographic data of 400 publicly visible signs in Tehran, this study aims to understand the various ways in which English, as both a linguistic and cultural resource, operates in tandem with emergent Iranian cultural practices in the context of globalization, especially in relation to the centrality of Persianness to contemporary Iranian national identity. The article, in addition to offering a sociolinguistic history and contemporary portrait of English in Iran, demonstrates how English is used not only to index Western cultural influences and ideals but also how English is relocalized in accordance with the local communicative needs of contemporary Iranians in Tehran. We refer to this phenomenon as the Persianization of English, in which English operates in a discursive field delinked from its indexes to Western culture.

Demographic analysis on social perceptions of Hijab in contemporary Iran: dimensions and determinants

ABSTRACT While a large body of the literature confirms the existence of diverse styles of the hijab and attributes this diversity as a consequence of religious authorities’ socialization mechanisms across the Islamic world, the literature still lacks sufficiently fresh research-based evidence to assess the actual effects of these official mechanisms on individuals’ perceptions towards the hijab. This crucial research gap is the central focus of this study and I present research-based evidence in this paper to contribute to filling this gap from a demographic perspective. Generally speaking, the results of this analysis have shown that the social perceptions on the hijab are substantially affected by the main demographic determinants. Of them, age composition and education play overwhelmingly a more important role: while the high-educated younger cohorts hold substantially modest and liberal perceptions towards the hijab, the opposite applies to the low-educated older cohorts. In sum, the results of this analysis not only cast a revolutionary doubt on the success of the authorities’ long-term religious bombardment strategy but also argue that such a failure will become increasingly a more visible observation due to the country’s demographics particularly a growing university educated youth bulge fuelled by the global modern communication technologies.

Shaw and Legacy: Introduction

Shaw and Legacy: Introduction

The Sociocultural Function of Translation: A Study of Simin Daneshvar’s Stories Sociocultural Aspects

The term “gender” is a load concept in translation studies. The present study focuses on stories written by Simin Daneshvar (1921-2012), a contemporary Iranian female translator and novelist, in order to explore how the visibility of women in the Iranian culture and community after a long patriarchal era has changed the community’s thoughts about women. The method used for this study was qualitative with the interpretive approach. The corpus consisted of five Persian stories, Wandering Island, Wandering Cameleer, The Quenched Fire, Ask from Birds of Passenger and Suvashun by Daneshvar, who has contributed to the promotion of Iranian women’s sociocultural status during the contemporary era. The results proved that women translators and novelists had endured the hardships of sociocultural changes and made it possible for the modern Iranian women to make themselves visible in their social context.

From Sherwood Forest to Tehran: Robin Hood’s Implication in Iranian Politics

Disney’s Robin Hood produced by Wolfgang Reitherman in 1973 is probably the best-known representation of the personage in contemporary Iran. Set in the medieval times, the animated movie recounts –...

Literature and Medicine: Clinical Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Contemporary Iranian Fictions

Background: Some studies indicated that the study of stories in which physical or mental illnesses are described helps to better understand the patient and his/her sickness; but unfortunately, this approach is neglected in the Persian literature. Paying attention to this issue can increase the attractiveness of studying such literary works for the Iranian and non-Iranian audience and can grant new sights to readers, as well. Objectives: This research is conducted to describe and explain the symptoms of the PTSD in the characters of modern Persian fiction, based on the clinical symptoms. Methods: This is qualitative research. Seven characters from the seven stories were selected purposefully to fit the researcher’s goals. Then, they were analyzed according to the DSM-5 criteria. Results: The results indicated that the selected stories represent individuals with PTSD consistent with the clinical criteria for the diagnostic of the disorder. In these stories, the authors, in addition to describing clinical symptoms, have considered inheritance, gender, and cultural factors to create characters in accordance with the specifications of the people who have been damaged in the real world. Conclusions: Reading these stories can be useful due to applying descriptions based on clinical criteria for the diagnosis of this disorder (PTSD), and thanks to the use of literary language in representing the victim’s inner and spiritual status, are useful in creating an engagement resulting from a proper understanding of the person who is suffering from such disorder.

New Perspectives on Retranslation: The Case of Iran

This paper examines the social aspects of retranslation in contemporary Iran. Foreign classics and award-winning literary books have attracted multiple translations into Persian within a short period of time. For instance, George Orwell’s novella, Animal Farm, has received more than one hundred retranslations in the last 40 years. The aim of this paper is to investigate possible reasons for such an unusually high number of retranslations. By analysing sixteen interviews with Iranian translators and publishers and performing paratextual analysis of four retranslations of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, this paper sheds light on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of retranslation. It does so by drawing on the trust-based approach to the study of translation proposed by Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, and by offering sociological insight into retranslation in contemporary Iran. Four groups of translators are identified: amateur, early career, mid-career, and senior translators. Retranslation for the former two groups is viewed as profitable trade in literary translation market. For the latter two, retranslation is the process of reinforcing trustworthiness at the institutional level that means trust in professionalism of certain Iranian translators and publishers.

Analyzing Key Categories in the Literature of Contemporary Iranian Architecture; 1946 – 2016

از حدود هفتاد سال پیش تا امروز دربارۀ معماری معاصر ایران متن­هایی به زبان فارسی نوشته شده است. پژوهش حاضر دربارۀ این ادبیات و مقولاتِ کلیدیِ مندرج در آن است. به بیان دقیق­تر، در پژوهش حاضر هدف بررسی مهم­ترین مقولات طرح­شده در ادبیات معماری معاصر ایران در طی سال­های 1325 تا 1394ش است. برای نیل به این هدف، 389 منبع از مهم­ترین منابع مربوط به معماری معاصر ایران گزینش و مقولاتِ مندرج در آن­ها مشخص شده است. درنهایت، این متن­ها بر اساس 37 مقولۀ پربسامد، در قالب نُه دستۀ کلی، تحلیل محتوایی کمّی شده است. فهرست این دسته­های کلی چنین است: نسبت معماری امروز با معماری گذشته، معماران، مفاهیم و زمینه­ها، سخنان هنجاری، نسبت معماری معاصر ایران با جهان، طرز پرداختن به آثار معماری، مقاطع زمانی، طرز پرداختن به تاریخ، و مدرنیته. نتایج حاصل از این بررسی حاکی از آن است که در طی هفتاد سال گذشته، مباحث مربوط به آثار معماری و معماران و روایت تاریخی و آسیب­شناسی پربسامدتر از بقیه بوده است. از این بین، برخی مباحث همچون آثار معماری و معماران از همان ابتدا تا کنون، با بسامدی تقریباً ثابت، محل توجه مؤلفان بوده است؛ اما برخی دیگر، همچون آسیب­شناسی و روایت تاریخی، از زمانی به بعد در کانون توجه نویسندگان بوده است.

A Gift of Compassion: Welfare, Housing, and Domesticity in Contemporary Iran

Abstract This article examines the largest welfare housing project in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979–2020). It sets out to present a particular method of research that, borrowing from the discipline of anthropology, takes planning documents as a point of departure. I will inquire into the ways state-initiated architectural projects intersect with the demands and realities of domesticity and residents' everyday habits of living, giving particular attention to the gender roles and class identities in welfare housing projects and the position of female beneficiaries in relation to their family as well as the larger society. Using the example of the Mehr project in Iran, I demonstrate how housing operated for government officials as a means for re-organizing society along the axes of patronage and patriarchy. Moving to the field of everyday life, however, and building on the discourses of domesticity and women's struggle, I unpack how, starting from the intimate scale of the domestic, welfare can serve as the basis for a newly empowered beneficiary to conceive her rights and exercise them. The research that is presented in this paper challenges the negative conception of welfare housing as mere charitable aid devoid of any potential for supporting the social rights of a people.

A Model for Studying Socio-political Key Concepts in the History of Contemporary Iran

انبوه و شتاب رخدادهای صد سال اخیر ایران، زمانِ ایرانی را دچار فشردگی و مفاهیمِ زبان فارسی را دچار آشوب کرده است. این آشوب معنایی در میدان واژگانیِ یک مفهوم و رقابت واژه‌های هم‌خانواده به‌خوبی نمایان می‌شود. «رنجبر»، «مستضعف»، «زحمتکش»، «تهی‌دست» و «قشر آسیب‌پذیر» را می‌توان متعلق به میدان واژگانی «فرودستان» دانست و این پرسش‌ها را مطرح ساخت که دلایل پدیدآیی هر کدام از آنها چه بوده است و چه طور در دوره‌ای خاص به واژگانی کلیدی در رویدادها و دوره‌های تاریخ معاصر بدل شده‌اند؟ روابط قدرت و ایدئولوژی پنهان در پسِ گفتمان‌های مولّد و مبلّغ این واژه‌ها کدام­اند؟ چه بینامتنیتی در این میان وجود دارد؟ هر واژه چه طور هژمون شده است؛ چه مدلول‌هایی داشته و در طول زمان چه چرخش‌های معنایی­ای را از سر گذرانده و این چرخش‌ها و اوج و افول‌ها در چه شرایطی ممکن شده است؟ در این موضوع مطالعاتی، که هم سویه‌های تاریخی دارد و هم زبانی، پیش از همه، روش و الگوی پژوهش است که خود بدل به مسئله می‌شود تا از خود بپرسیم کدام رویکردهای تاریخی و زبانی می‌توانند به پژوهشگر در یافتن پاسخی دقیق‌تر به این پرسش‌ها یاری رسانند؟ از این رو، پیشنهاد پژوهش نظری حاضر ساخت الگویی ترکیبی از رشته‌های زبان‌شناسی و تاریخ است که در آن تحلیل انتقادی گفتمان فرکلاف در مرکز قرار می‌گیرد و تلاش می‌شود با کمک ‌گرفتن از دو رویکرد دیگر از حوزه‌های تاریخ و معناشناسی، یعنی تاریخ مفهوم‌های رینهارت کوزلک و میدان واژگانی یوست تریر، یک الگوی نظری فراهم شود که هم به کارِ مورخانی بیاید که دغدغه‌های زبانی دارند و هم یاریگرِ زبان‌شناسانی باشد که تاریخی فکر می‌کنند

The Legal Debate on the Phenomenon of ‘White Marriages’ in Contemporary Iran

The rising popularity of ‘white marriages’, relationships between a man and a woman who live together but are not married, has caused a commotion in the Iranian public sphere in the last few years. The debate includes state institutions and religious circles, who feel anxious about the change in gender relations among Iranians, but also academics who elaborate on the causes and consequences of the phenomenon. An important aspect of this controversy concerns legal issues, since according to Shiite law any intimate relationship of an unmarried couple is considered illegal. This article analyses this key aspect of the ongoing dispute and attempts to elaborate on the question of how the gap between people’s expectations and desires and the legal capacity of Islamic rulings is addressed in contemporary Iran.

Systematization and the Model of Political Management in Contemporary Iranian Thinker’s Idea

The present article, with its analytical-descriptive method, will consideration the thought of the most prominent systematization thinkers of Iran in the contemporary era. Examining the opinions of some thinkers throughout history, it will be shown that some of them have always sought political systematization and a model of political management for the societies. Their goal and aspiration from the past to the present was achieve the societies and human beings to the happiness. The efforts of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Farabi, Khajeh Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Moore, Will Durant, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Popper, Russell, etc., indicate this situation. Among Iranian thinkers of the contemporary era also many efforts were made to achive the political systematization and the model of political management. Akhundzadeh, Malek Khan, Talibuv Tabrizi, Ayatollah Mirza Naeini, Ahmad Kasravi, Mohammad Ali Foroughi and Ayatollah Khomeini are among the thinkers who have theorized in this field and each of them has provided a model of political management for Iranian society. In the following, their thoughts will be investigated.

Civic Culture and Spatial Politics in Contemporary Iran

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