Shaping Modern Iran: Social and Cultural Trends

This panel was compiled by the Conference Program Team from independently submitted paper proposals.


Presentations

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In light of the incredible impact cigarette smoking has had on Iranian public health, this paper seeks to achieve a sharper understanding of the significance of smoking in Iran. Focusing on the cultural influence of the cigarette, this study will seek to synthesize a wide range of evidence in order to make the central argument that the cigarette was a fundamental primer for Iran’s encounter with modernity, especially as understood in context of European influence. Applying the dramaturgical theories of eminent sociologist Erving Goffman, we establish that the cigarette was a crucial example of the "sign-equipment" used to refashion the identity and subjectivity of Iranian men and women, drawing them into habitual behaviors that would alter the traditional patterns of social, economic and political ordering. The sociocultural significance of the cigarette has evolved over three distinct periods in Iranian history, which roughly correspond to the three pivotal population cohorts of Iran’s growing smoking prevalence. In the first period (1860-1930), cigarette smoking was a habit adopted by the Persian elite in an attempt to mediate the encounter with European colonial figures. In the second period (1930-1970), the cultural symbolism of cigarettes was leveraged by Iranians who wished to be seen as upwardly mobile with their transforming society. In the final and contemporary period (1970-present), cigarettes have become ubiquitous among the adult population, but smoking itself has become the act of youth rebellion sine qua non as experimentation occurs at increasingly young ages.While it may be difficult to establish a kind of strict causality for the role of the cigarette in fashioning the modern Iranian subject, it ought to be emphasized that the cigarettes were the first article of the European modernity that was widely consumed, and its iconicity and integration into daily life goes beyond any machine or marvel of modernity that was to follow in its wake. The cigarette permeates the cultural imagery of Iran: in film, fiction, poetry and in the routines of daily life. By offering Iranians a powerful means to signal their progressive attitudes, their upward mobility, and their rebellious natures at different junctures in Iranian history, the cigarette came to encapsulate the complex circumstances of Iran’s “cultural schizophrenia,” struggling to define itself as a thoroughly modern nation still rooted to its long history.

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It has been long recognized that the constitutional movement in early twentieth century Iran laid the grounds for a new political and cultural discourse in general. While on the one hand, the advantages of constitutionalism and the rule of law became hotly debated issues of concern, on the other, progress, and the role that learning in general, and the printed word, in particular, played in bringing it about gained increasing resonance among a growing number of people. It was in such a context that in the year that followed the promulgation of the constitution by Mozaffar al-Din Shah, newspapers proliferated in an unprecedented way, as did reading rooms that were established ostensibly to support reading and learning. In the pages of the newspapers that appeared following the granting of the constitution, for example, an increasing number of advertisements heralded the opening of new reading rooms and printing-houses.

However, in the studies that have been done on constitutional Iran, little attention has been paid to these reading rooms. What shape did these reading rooms take? Who frequented them? How popular were they? What kind of activities took place in them? What kind of reading material was provided in them? What was the nature of the link between reading rooms, newspapers, and the network of printing-houses? What became of their fate in the aftermath of the failure of the constitutional movement? Basing itself on a close examination of a selection of constitutional newspapers as well as memoirs and journals of the time, this paper hopes to put forth answers to some of these questions.

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The design of the first postage stamps of Iran (that time Persia) issued in 1865 – 1875 was both simple and elegant. It depicted the official Persian coat of arms: a lion holding a sword in its paw with the rising sun in the background. The appearing of this picture on the first Iranian stamps was determined by their specific perception as a legal tender, i.e. as a certain type of currency (it is not a mere coincidence that the forgery of postage stamps in the Qajar era was widely spread). This, in turn, attributed to Iranian stamps a dual role played by money in the Middle East since immemorial times: they become both a means of paying and a means of official political propaganda through which the authorities of the country declared their right to rule and influenced popular opinion. Thus, it is noteworthy that the issuing of its own postage stamps was one of the first moves of almost every revolutionary movement in Persia or Iran. For instance, there are so-called definitive stamps (as opposed to commemorative stamps they are used for everyday postage and are usually produced to meet current postal rates) left by Sattar Khan, Seyed Abdol Hossein Mojtahed, Mohammda Khiabani and Mirza Kuchek Khan movements. As a result, postage stamps became a very interesting historical evidence giving the detailed description of political developments in Persia and Iran during the last 150 years. This study traces the change and evolution of the main themes of pictures appeared on Iranian postage stamps during 1875 – 2000. The research comes to a conclusion that, irrelatively to the historical period, there were three main topics appearing on them: symbols of power, current achievements and images of glorious past. The rest subjects were concentrated around them.

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The reconstruction of Persian as the national language of Iranians, or more precisely--of the new Iranian nationality, in the sense defined by the Iranian intelligentsia-- has raised various cultural and political questions from the eve of the constitutional revolution up to the present, and has simultaneously been the source of theoretical answers and practical solutions for these problems and questions. These answers and solutions, ranging from education to the language of the media, all have been enforced by the center of political power, in conformity with the structure of distribution of political power in contemporary Iran, and in spite of adapting minor, infrequent amendments throughout decades, it’s dominant role has prevailed. Above all these debates, My Message to the Academy is a turning point and should be considered a pioneering text in theorizing modern Persian language. In 1936, when it was written and published, the Persian language, though belatedly, was gradually coming within reach of some kind of metalingual self-consciousness, and it was for the sake of developing a modern Persian language, in fact a national language, that the 1st Pahlavi government established the Academy. Foruqi’s treatise was written at the right time and to the purpose of providing a theoretical framework for decision-making and thus devising instructions for this newly founded legislative institute.
In this paper, the theoretical framework proposed by this treatise is studied by analyzing its brief foreword and by referring to the text, particularly chapters I and II. The concepts of Iranian ethnicity, Iranian nationality and national language, suggested in the foreword as the bases of this debate, are read with a critical approach, while the paper makes reference to the historical-political context of the treatise, constitutionalism, the decline of the Qajar Dynasty and the rise of Reza Pahlavi, and the implicit contradictions of these concepts and other aspects of the formation of Modern Iran are looked into. Finally the paper points that the Persian language constructed by the Academy is an artificial phenomenon, which ought to be shaped in the future by means of excluding foreign elements, mainly Arabic and European bits and pieces, and confirms that Foruqi’s treatise is a handbook for this suppression.
The author hopes that this paper succeeds in shedding light on the history of modern Persian language and its significant and uniqe role in the development of contemporary Iran as well as its political, social and cultural crises.