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Goes beyond the media stereotype of fashionable parties in North Tehran to examine the quotidian realities of how society has evolved in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Mahnaz Kousha interviewed fifteen Iranian women in Tehran who originally came from cities and towns throughout Iran. The youngest was 38, the eldest in her 50s. Extensive excerpts from their dialogues form the heart of this remarkable book. With admirable candor the women explore their relationships with their mothers, fathers, husbands, and children. They reflect upon the institutions of courtship and marriage and address issues of childcare, housework, and women's employment. They talk openly about their concerns, ambitions, and frustrations. Finally, they discuss everyday personal problems and the solutions they devise to cope with such difficulties. Offset by telling commentary, these conversations offer significant firsthand insights into the life experiences of the modern Iranian woman and her brave search for identity. Because it covers previously uncharted ground, this volume fills a sizable gap in the study of gender and family relationships in Iran. Abundant footnotes on similar studies in the United States and other countries not only add sociological richness, but also make the book relevant beyond Iran and the Middle East.
Electronic Iran introduces the concept of the Iranian Internet, a framework that captures interlinked, transnational networks of virtual and offline spaces. Taking her cues from early Internet ethnographies that stress the importance of treating the Internet as both a site and product of cultural production, accounts in media studies that highlight the continuities between old and new media, and a range of works that have made critical interventions in the field of Iranian studies, Niki Akhavan traces key developments and confronts conventional wisdom about digital media in general, and contemporary Iranian culture and politics in particular. Akhavan focuses largely on the years between 1998 and 2012 to reveal a diverse and combative virtual landscape where both geographically and ideologically dispersed individuals and groups deployed Internet technologies to variously construct, defend, and challenge narratives of Iranian national identity, society, and politics. While it tempers celebratory claims that have dominated assessments of the Iranian Internet, Electronic Iran is ultimately optimistic in its outlook. As it exposes and assesses overlooked aspects of the Iranian Internet, the book sketches a more complete map of its dynamic landscape, and suggests that the transformative powers of digital media can only be developed and understood if attention is paid to both the specificities of new technologies as well as the local and transnational contexts in which they appear.
Shi'i Islam has been the official religion of Iran from the Safavids (1501-1732) to the present day. The Shi'i world experience has provided a rich artistic tradition, encompassing painting, sculpture and the production of artefacts and performance, which has helped to embed Shi'i identity in Iran as part of its national narrative. In what areas of material culture has Iranian Shi'ism manifested itself through objects or buildings that are unique within the overall culture of Islam? To what extent is the art and architecture of Iran from the Safavid period onwards identifiably Shi'i? What does this say about the relationship of nation, state and faith in Iran? Here, leading experts trace the material heritage of Iranian Shi'ism within each of its political, religious and cultural dimensions.
Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.
In this pioneering book, Negar Mottahedeh explores the central issues of vision and visibility in Iranian culture. She focuses on historical and literary texts to understand the use of visual culture and performance traditions in the production of the contemporary nation. Tracing the historical mediation and dissemination of ideas for national reform in the modern period of Iran, the book examines the various discourses that have constituted the image of the unpresentable “Babi” as the figure of Iran’s Other. In her exploration of gender and Iranian cinema, the author powerfully argues that this unpresentable image continues to haunt contemporary Iranian cinema’s representations of the nation. As cinema began to displace other forms of representation in Iran, Islamic culture attempted to keep the motion picture industry free from what it perceived to be the taint of foreign values and intervention. With insight and detail, Mottahedeh looks at the revealing ways in which contemporary Iranian cinema has dealt with representing an unpresentable national modernity articulated through traversals in time and space. These deeply national tropes of traversal shaped the image of the “Babi,” against which nineteenth-century Iran produced its own modernity. This highly original work, signaling a paradigmatic shift in Iranian studies and gender studies, will be an invaluable resource for scholars in cultural, Iranian, or film studies.
There is a saying in Arabic, me and my brother against my cousin, and me and my cousin against the outsider. Iran's Influence is the first comprehensive analysis of the role that Iran plays both in Middle Eastern and global politics. Expert Iranian author Elaheh Rostami Povey provides a much-needed account of one of the Middle East's most controversial and misunderstood countries. Based on several years of original research carried out in Iran and across the Middle East, this insightful guide presents not only a fascinating introduction to the country, but also essential new ideas to help the reader understand the Middle East.
The analysis of the impediments to political development is one of the most important discussions which has major theoretical and political consequences. This analysis has been controversial and many different aspects have been introduced as elements for political underdevelopment. In this study, Dal Seung Yu takes culture, a key element in this discussion, and explains the major cultural impediments to political development in Iran. He focuses on the historical attitudes of people towards the political management of the society and the effect these attitudes have on slowing the development of this political system in the society. Those concerned with Iran, the Middle East and political culture will be extremely interested in this provocative text.