THE HUMBLE WORLDS OF GOLPAYEGAN
The two formative decades preceding the 1979 Iranian Revolution were a time of intense and widespread public activism, revealing threads traceable through my youthful experiences in the city of Golpaygan. In this paper, I will discuss my last three years of high school in Golpaygan, to give a fuller ambiance and more ‘local’ context for explaining Iran’s 1960s-70s ‘national-transnational’ dynamic. The story of political activism and intellectual life in a small Iranian town, far from the ‘all important center’ Tehran, better illuminates the fuller historical texture of the pre-Revolutionary period. It provides a comparative or inter-regional perspective upon wider discussions on Iranian politics and culture. There were striking similarities between political and cultural sensibilities in the modernizing Capital and a ‘religious’ town such as Golpaygan. Even in late 1960s, young high school students were passionately involved in transnational experiences. These experiences occurred sometimes through older educational mediums: books, newspapers and magazines, foreign languages (I studied Arabic, which was important in Golpaygan) and translation. Other institutional mediums for these experiences included schooling, transnational religious exchanges, and technology (radio and cassettes recordings). Golpaygan was a fertile zone of dynamic transnational and transregional exchanges.
