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This paper explores the ever-shifting symbiosis between the village motif, social justice and populist politics in Iran over the past three decades. The village has remained a recurring motif in Persian literature, employed by a variety of writers and state institutions for a range of means. As a symbol, it has been a conduit into which any ideology can be poured; the village allegory can be manipulated to both condemn and support the official policies of the state. A comparison of Iran’s pre- and post-revolutionary literature sheds light on the ways the state literati perpetuated an idealized picture of the village as an authentic, sacred space, increasingly associated with religious nationalism during the 1980s. The paper examines the key socio-political influences on the evolution of the pastoral motif, the work of state-sponsored official poets, and the impact of the village on the cultural doctrine of the Islamic Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Graham Seal This paper probes the relationship between visual representations and visitation practices at Pasargadae, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Iran. Presenting a systematic analysis of publicly available online images of Pasargadae, the paper examines the complex relationship between the place and its visual representations. Through analysis, the paper elaborates on a sense of intimacy that, while grounding Pasargadae, is also a potential common ground in pre-Islamic heritage in which the Iranian state and society could at once meet and contest versions of identity. Examining this relationship facilitates reflections into both heritage and the peculiarities of its visual representation in the Iranian context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper incorporates a study of “re-ghettoization” among the Armenian Christians of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It focuses on how legal marginalization has led to the emergence of an entirely separate existence from the Muslim majority in Tehran among Armenians born after the revolution. By focusing on the spatial and social divisions of the hayashatner (Armenian neighborhoods) and the “social” ghetto of the Ararat Compound, this article addresses the question: what are the social implications for religious discrimination in the Muslim Middle East? This paper is based on three extensive blocks of fieldwork carried out in Iran from 2010 to 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the extent to which the modern historiography of Iran is indebted to a nationalist construction of Iran’s past, rather than proceeding from impartial and critical historical research. The paper pursues this aim by applying the distinction between history (as a scholarly discipline) and memory (as a nationalist construct) to one of the central tropes of the country’s historiography. According to that trope, Iranian history can be summarized as a succession of violent invasions by foreign “races,” which never stamped out Iran’s separate ethnic identity. This resilience is attributed to Iranian civilization’s inherent superiority, which Iranianized the invaders and thus ensured Iran’s survival as a primordial nation. The analysis shows that—counter-intuitively—twentieth-century Iranian historians, instead of subjecting this narrative to critical assessment, have in fact played a central role in developing it into a self-serving historiography. Special attention is given to Zarrinkub’s seminalTwo Centuries of Silence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Shi‘ism, perhaps more than any other current of Islam, places emphasis on numerous forms of commemorative culture. Throughout the history of Shi‘ism, commemorative rituals have provided a comprehensive framework for interpreting a wide array of historical encounters between the Shi‘a and the dominant Sunni culture, thereby allowing Shi‘ism to construct itself as a community of learning and remembering. This self-construction required both a high degree of institutionalization as well as specialists to preserve the religious identity of the Shi‘a and to transmit religious knowledge to the next generation. Madrasas (Islamic institutions of higher learning) as well as the shrines of the Shi‘i Imams and their progeny served as the best institutions to achieve these goals. This paper argues that Safavid madrasas were not only centers for disseminating religious knowledge and preserving Shi'a intellectual heritage. They also rearticulated and contemporized the community's past through the active memorializing of pivotal events in the religious calendar of the Shi‘a. More specifically, the paper delineates the nature and scope of religious rituals and rites carried out in the Madrasa-ye Sultānī and a number of other madrasa-mosque complexes of Safavid Isfahan in order to explore the process by which the Shi‘i past was contextualized or contemporized as salient to suit the needs of Safavid power and society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Iranian Green Movement emerged after the presidential election in June 2009. The paper tracks down its foundational origins through the concept of ‘fragmented collective action’, that points to the dispersion of a social movement's political energies and the fragmentation of its constitutive groups. It also addresses the significance of informal mobilizing networks and the widespread use of modern virtual space to bring together an intersubjectively constructed collective identity which was shaped by the movement’s interactions with political forces and with its interlocutors. Finally, the paper argues that the collective identity shaped the movement's strategies over the course of its evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the Middle Persian term agdēn, which is often problematically translated as “infidel.” By tracing this term of otherness through Middle Persian texts such as legal cases inThe Book of a Thousand Judgmentsand polemics in theDēnkardBook III, this article argues that the concept of the infidel frequently appears in discussions about slavery, intermarriage, and conversion to and from Zoroastrianism. Middle Persian legal and theological texts regarding infidels deal with cases in which Zoroastrian interactions with non-Zoroastrians impinge upon Zoroastrian boundaries of identity. Moreover, the term agdēn often refers to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, thereby offering insight into the ties between Zoroastrian self-identity and other groups which the Persian priests encountered. In the end, this paper demonstrates the need for further intensive studies into Middle Persian technical terms of otherness as they lie at the heart of questions of Zoroastrian self-definition and attitudes towards others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper consists of some of the findings of the authors during their research at prehistoric sites of Bampur and its surrounding areas in August 2011. These areas, which have been introduced as Bampur-related sites, comprise an area about of 5–10 kilometers and belong to the Bronze Age. The paper introduces, categorizes and analyzes the archaeological findings in relation to the Bampur collection. The archaeological findings show that: (1) unlike the previous belief, there existed a peak settlement dated back to the Chah Husseini period which was prior to Bampur I; (2) in fact, Bampur II–IV had larger populations due to growth of trade and commerce and their relations with Yahya and Mesopotamia; (3) the later periods of the Bampur collection show a decreasing number of sites at Bampur VI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political satire has had a prominent part to play in the social and political sphere of journalism in Iran since the appearance of an independent press in the country at the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper examines the problems of political satire in the Iranian press during the 2000s with respect to their historical context during the past century. The paper argues that, addressing the essential relationship between satire and criticism, and the primary role that criticism has in the freedom of press, what happened to political satire and satirists in Iran can be seen as an index of the freedom of the press and journalistic expression for an era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mashhad, the site in northeastern Iran of the shrine of the eighth Shiʻi imam, is arguably one of the largest and wealthiest sacred shrines in the world. The gilded dome over the imam's mausoleum stands amidst an expansive complex of courts, monumental gateways, libraries, museums, guesthouses, and administrative offices that cater to thousands of pilgrims each year. This paper examines the period, under the aegis of the early Safavid shahs, when Mashhad was established as the preeminent Shiʻi pilgrimage center in Iran. Appropriating the Timurid ecumenical vision for the shrine, the Safavid shahs refashioned the holy city into a site that celebrated the triumph of Twelver Shiʻism in the Safavid realm and reinforced Safavid claims of legitimacy. While highlighting Shah Tahmasb's personal devotion to Mashhad, and his privileging of the shrine within Safavid sacred topography, the paper focuses on Shah ʻAbbas's urban reshaping of Mashhad and the architectural and institutional expansion of the shrine during his reign, thereby enhancing its status as the leading spiritual center in the Safavid empire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the role of social entrepreneurship and the discourse of techno-nationalism in defining national selfhood in contemporary Iran. To examine the issue, this paper develops an in-depth case study of the development of stem cell research, and shows how an alliance between the leaders of the scientific community and Iran's politico-religious authority contributed to building technological capacity in the field of stem cell research in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The paper also highlights how the preliminary success of stem cell research, along with other knowledge-intensive technologies, has created a shared feeling of national pride and has served as the material base for the contemporary discourse of techno-nationalism. The paper concludes with the notion that the techno-nationalist discourse has the inherent potential to unwittingly help to redefine the dichotomy between Iran and the West in such a way that it becomes less antagonistic, should other factors permit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper consists of six parts. The first part discusses the major reasons for the presence of a conventional sociopolitical Baloch culture in Iran. The second part presents a profile of the Iranian Baloch elites, dividing them into four major groups: the Sunni clerics or molavis, tribal chiefs, the educated, and the wealthy. The third discusses the challenging relationship which exists among the Baloch elites. The fourth describes the elites' attitudes towards the Baloch society's norms. The fifth determines the elites' orientation towards state and politics. And finally the paper ends with conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the literature of the Iranian-American diaspora, the memoir genre has become a predominant lens through which Western audiences “read” contemporary Iran. While many bestselling life narratives have relied on hostage crisis-era tropes of gendered repression and subsequent liberation in exile, new amalgams of style and theme, distortions of perspective, and complicated renderings of the “subject” are now beginning to cross borders. One of these is Shahriar Mandanipour's 2009 novel,Censoring an Iranian Love Story,which this paper examines as an auto-fictional commentary on the memoir genre that both arises from and responds directly to censorship using a self-referential and layered text. Through three central dialectics—ambiguous violence, encoded desire and resistance to diachronic historicization alongside the nation—this paper demonstrates how Mandanipour's auto-fictional and often magical realist attempts elude what Gillian Whitlock terms the transnational “economy of affect” that publicizes, protects and ultimately drives the reception of memoir across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to understand the consequences of US-led sanctions on two important industries in Iran: the oil and gas industry and power plant construction. Using qualitative methods and providing empirical evidence, this paper demonstrates the shortcomings of the pro-sanctions argument in the Iranian context. This paper argues that pro-sanctions literature is more inclined towards American politics; it ignores socially recurring effects such as empowering self-reliance in the target country. In the Iranian context, while sanctions regimes are beyond the control or power of industry managers, they have acted as a double-edged sword. On one hand, the sanctions have imposed extra costs on domestic companies in acquiring technological knowledge. On the other hand, they have stimulated policy-makers' determination and empowered a self-reliance doctrine amongst them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the late nineteenth century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of colonialism and modernity. This paper considers the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period, Mirza Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848–1941), whose career bridged the late Qajar period and the early twentieth century. Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of academic painting, yet by the constitutional period his art had evolved into a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper's consideration of the evolution of his style from a European modernism to an authentic Iranian modernism includes Ghaffari's training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom when applied to the Muslim world is noted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi occupies a prominent place in the development of modern education in Iran. Yet, though not a politician, his influence exceeded far beyond education into the social and political life of contemporary Iran. Deeply convinced of the central role of education in development, his career made important contributions to changes in the landscape of modern education in Iran at both high school and university levels. Within this context, the paper traces the outlines of Mojtahedi's life and work from his birth in 1908 in the city of Lahijan in the northern province of Gilan, up to his death in 1997 in southern France. The paper's most seminal contribution covers the events of the period between the summer of 1964, when Mojtahedi was director of Tehran Polytechnic, and his dismissal in February 1967 by the shah as the head of Aryamehr (now Sharif) University which were closely related to the unsuccessful attempt on the shah's life in April 1965. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an account of the founding of the Arya-Mehr (now Sharif) University of Technology, and the role that Dr. Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi had in its creation in 1965. The paper describes the landscape of science and technology in Iran in 1965, the year in which Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi appointed Mojtahedi to establish this university. It describes the various challenges that Mojtahedi faced in establishing the university, such as avoiding crippling government regulations and bureaucracy, hiring qualified faculty, attracting top students, developing an appropriate milieu for the cultivation of scientific and technological culture and, most importantly, setting the course for the university to become not only Iran's leading institution, but also one of world's credible institutions in science and engineering. The paper also discusses Mojtahedi's unique approach to these challenges, and how, despite his best intentions, he created the animosity and intrigues that resulted in his ousting in 1967. The university did in fact become Iran's leading institution in sciences and engineering, a position which it holds even today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to surpass the genre of travelogue, three Americans-Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, and Marguerite Harrison-traveled to southwestern Iran to film the biannual migration of the Bakhtiari tribes and their flocks from winter to summer pastures. In Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925), Schoedsack's exquisite framing of long shots captured the vast movement of an estimated 50,000 people and 500,000 animals in desert caravans, grassy plains, icy river crossings and snowy mountain vistas. The technical requirements of Grass alone suggest its importance in early ethnographic and documentary film, but problematic elements, such as its flimsily contrived storyline and melodramatic and essentializing intertitles, have presented problems for its perceived importance in ethnographic film history and as a representation of Iran. In 1976, Anthony Howarth (with consulting anthropologist David M. Brooks and narrator James Mason) filmed People of the Wind, again following the Bakhtiari tribes along their migration, and employed cinematography emphasizing the great color and sounds of the movement of people en masse. This paper uses theoretical frameworks from visual anthropology and film theory to complicate the reading of these films, first by placing Grass within the context of the intentions and ideological imperatives of its filmmakers. This paper complicates the reading of both films, arguing that despite the fifty years of filmmaking between them, Grass and People of the Wind are actually limited in quite similar ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on an earlier one about James Baillie Fraser's trip to Khorasan in the 1820s, the first European to travel there in the Qajar era. But instead of focusing on Fraser's experience, the information given by him is used to view the circumstances in Khorasan from an Iranian perspective, which, in turn, is derived from a study of the three main categories of people met by Fraser. Through them and their careers, the paper analyzes the problems, both inherited and new, that the early Qajars faced from the outset. Each of the three categories is dealt with separately under the headings of Prince-Governors, Princes in Exile or in Obeisance and, finally, High Priests. Together these complete the overall picture in Greater Khorasan and, by extension, throughout Iran at that particular time. What emerges from a study of their careers are the seeds of some of the major trends that were to mark nineteenth-century Iran. Khorasan, with its size and position, was particularly well placed to afford a view of a society still dependent on tribal vagaries and the dominant role of the religious hierarchy. Above all, the geo-strategic location of the province affords a privileged view across to the outlying parts of Greater Khorasan which, although still viewed from inside as a part of Greater Iran, were, due to inherent instabilities, liable to manipulation by British and Russian imperialism. The most effective tool of the latter was a propensity to promote new national entities on the ruins of an empire struggling to sustain itself without means and with a dated mindset of which most people were sorely unaware. By projecting the circumstances of time and place onto the future, one can perceive a certain degree of inevitability in the upcoming history of Qajar Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an in-depth study of The Confessions of Dolgoruki, the purported memoirs of a nineteenth-century Russian ambassador to Iran, long adduced as a document proving the claim that the Baha'īs of Iran are spies of foreign powers. It unearths several early versions of the text, contextualizes the creation of The Confessions, exams the zeitgeist that produced it, and tracks the changes the text went through as the dominant socio-political discourse changed over time. In discussing the range of reactions The Confessions provoked, this paper traces the intriguing path through which this text created the masternarrative of Baha'ī espionage. Finally, a hypothesis regarding the identity of the original creator of the text is advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reconsiders the apocryphal stories regarding the Shahnama's initial reception to propose that it was only after long narrative poems gained currency that the Shahnama was recognized as a masterpiece. The paper analyzes the structure and themes of several histories written before and during the Samanid period and compares them with the Shahnama and the content of histories and epics produced immediately afterwards, to argue that the initial reception of the Shahnama did not depend on Sultan Mahmud Ghazni alone. It further argues that the Shahnama's aim, content, and execution differed from the histories and poetry produced in the decades immediately preceding and succeeding it, which would account for the lag in its acceptance and popularity. This led later biographers to superimpose their regret over Firdausi's treatment onto Sultan Mahmud Ghazni, who by their accounts denied him the fame and glory he deserved in his lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview to the documents concerning the Safavid period obtained from the Document Center at the Holy Shrine in Mashhad, Iran. It notes that the department of documents and publications started to operate as section for documents and publications in October 1998 with over 283,000 historical documents of the Shrine and 180,000 from learned families. Moreover, it was renamed the Directorate of Documents and Publications with the sections of Documents Section and Publications section. Several papers composing the Documents Section includes manuscripts of royal orders, papers from Martyr's Foundation, Hajj Hoseyn Aqa Malek collection and other miscellaneous collections.

This paper examines the transformation of the Iranian economy through the twentieth century within a global context. At the start of that century, the Iranian economy had long remained stagnant, poor, and largely agrarian, with a marginal role in the world economy. By the turn of the twenty-first century, Iran had transformed into a complex and relatively large economy with important consequences for the economies of the Middle East and other parts of the world. While the initial conditions and the evolution of domestic institutions and resources played major roles in the pace and nature of that transformation, relations with the rest of the world had crucial influences as well. This paper focuses on the latter forces, while taking account of their interactions with domestic factors in shaping the particular form of economic development in Iran. We study the ways in which the development of the Iranian economy has been affected by international price movements and by the ebbs and flows of trade, investment, and economic growth in the rest of the world. In considering these effects, we also analyze the role of domestic political economy factors and policies in enhancing or hindering the ability of domestic producers to respond to external challenges and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the possibility of a considerable undercounting of women's labor force participation in the official surveys in Iran. According to the official data, the proportion of females in the total active labor force was about 15.5 percent in 2006. Furthermore, according to the official data the share of female in total active labor in agriculture was about 10 percent in 1996. An examination of a large body of field research on the subject, however, suggests a much higher participation rate, about 40 percent of total agricultural labor. This paper will examine these studies and explore the reasons behind the underestimations. Pointing at the growing visibility of urban women in public space, the increasing share of skilled and educated women, rising cost of living, and the need for both male and female incomes to support an urban family, some observers have suggested that the official data underestimate urban female labor participation, as well. Informal urban labor, however, has not been adequately studied. Anecdotal information, however, suggests the existence of a significant female informal economy in both traditional and modern industries. In 2001, I undertook a micro study of 350 working age women in the affluent northern part of Tehran and found that a large number of educated upper and middle class women were active in the informal market. This finding was in sharp contrast to the studies in other developing countries in which informal participants are generally poor and unskilled and are unable to join the modern formal economy. This paper will also explore the reasons for undercounting of urban female labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of the mechanical clock, the printing press, and firearms in Western Europe during the Middle Ages is considered the precursor to many subsequent technological advances. This paper briefly reviews the introduction of these inventions to Iran, and the pace of their adoption in that country. Firearms were more readily accepted, but clocks and printing took a longer time to become prevalent. This paper will also examine some of the possible explanations for the contrast between the rapid spread of clocks and printing in Western Europe and the lack of their widespread adoption in Iran. This phenomenon cannot simply be attributed to scientific and technological backwardness, nor can it have been due merely to geographic or cultural differences. This underscores the significance of the overall social and economic conditions, which are in turn explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran have tended to ignore the role of the Baha'is in that event. This paper looks at the case of Sari, capital of Mazandaran province, where the Baha'is of the city played a major part in initiating the move towards Constitutionalism and in educating people about the reforms envisaged and about the modern world. They also led the way in carrying out some of these reforms. In particular, the Baha'is established the first modern schools in the town. In this process, they were opposed by the Muslim 'ulama in the town, who equated Constitutionalism and the Baha'i Faith, and persecuted the Baha'is of the town relentlessly for both reasons, leading eventually to the killing of five of the leading Baha'is of Sari in 1913. A brief account is also given of the attitude of the Baha'i leader 'Abdu'l-Baha (1844-1921) towards the Constitutional Movement and the role of the Baha'is in it. This paper follows the events of the seven years 1906-13 in Sari and describes seven swings of the pendulum of power in the town alternating between the Baha'is and Constitutionalists on the one hand and the 'ulama and the royalist forces supporting Muhammad 'Ali Shah on the other. It points out that the neglect of the Baha'i aspect of these events by historians has led to a failure to account adequately for some of the events of these years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the urban insertion of some Iranian religious minorities, focusing on three communities, all of which lived in separated neighborhoods: Armenians of Isfahan, Jews of Shiraz, and Zoroastrians of Yazd. After a discussion on the link between non-Muslims' spatial and social isolation and Iranian culture and Shiism, the paper goes on to describe the organization of these neighborhoods during the recent centuries and the recent - and contrastive - evolutions of two of them: while Zoroastrians view their quarter like a humiliating ghetto, of which they wish to go out, Armenians are proud of it, and try up till now to jealously preserve their isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of the issues of youth has made this broad subject a focal theme for a large number of researchers and scholars who have looked at it from different perspectives (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, and politics). Positioned in consumer culture theory, this paper is another attempt to explore a different dimension of the youth's world: cultural consumption among Iranian youth. The article, therefore, follows two objectives: First, within the context of cultural consumption among young Iranians, it seeks to demonstrate the complexity of consumption as a creative process of reflecting and constructing identities, meanings, and values. Second, it examines the impact of cultural globalization on the identity of such consumers and the varying relationships between their consumption patterns and identity construction. In so doing, the first part of the paper will concisely elaborate on consumer culture. Then, cultural globalization will be briefly defined and, within this framework, consumer culture among Iranian youth will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the impact of Jürgen Habermas' ideas on Iranian intellectuals who live in Iran. The upshot of the paper is that in present day Iran, where the society is going through a significant transitional period, various intellectual groups have reacted differently towards the ideas of the German philosopher-sociologist. While the orthodox left-wing (ex-Marxist) intellectuals and the conservative right-wing writers have, by and large, tended to ignore his views, a younger generation of the left-wing intellectuals and a number of the Muslim intellectuals with left-wing/socialist tendencies, have tried, each in their own ways, to 'adopt' Habermas' ideas in pursuit of their own projects/research programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the author's original research, the paper will offer a glimpse into the frontal theory of Mostafa Sho'aiyan. The paper draws on his life and experience of the National Front in the 1950s as a model for political thought. Next, the paper will show how he tried, through his unique and uncanonical revolutionary theory, to make a revolutionary praxis compatible with frontal thinking. Analytically, Sho'aiyan's work proves that an ideologically driven concept of national liberation becomes an impediment for frontal politics in a truly democratic way. Sho'aiyan's works represent a theoretical and existential response to the national liberation dilemma which the Iranian Marxists faced in the 1960s and 70s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iran has one of the world's largest refugee populations, comprised primarily of Afghans and Iraqi Kurds.1 As of 2001, there were approximately 2.5 million Afghan refugees living in Iran. About 1.8 million of those were documented and the rest undocumented. With aggressive repatriation efforts under the supervision of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the Afghan population in Iran in 2004 dropped to around one million documented and another 500,000 undocumented migrant workers.2 Based on ethnographic research among Afghans and low-income Iranians in urban and rural Isfahan, this paper examines how Afghans who access Iran's health services interpret health and family planning education in the face of Iran's repatriation efforts and increased social tension. Further, I investigate divergent views toward Afghan repatriation and notions of home, self, and identity. Ultimately, this paper addresses the various borders - physical, national, ethnic, religious, gendered, urban/rural - and how these borders can be redefined through the refugee experience, leaving hope for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explain the emergence and development of para-governmental organizations ( bonyads ) in Iran and demonstrate their contradictory position in the Iranian political economy. These organizations represent the dual power structure in Iran which reinforces the financial authority of religious leaders without accountability. By analyzing the functions of these organizations, the paper sets out to probe their economic policies in line with the government's populist macroeconomic policies. The paper demonstrates the adverse effects of these organizations on political development and economic reforms in the post-Khomeini era when the struggle for accountability soared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a range of post-revolutionary Iranian art films, mostly those watched primarily outside the country via festival screenings, in the context of the relationship between the tropes of peripherality and humor. It argues for the significance and complexity of both terms in the context of this cinema and of the global image of Iran and its peoples. Having examined a kind of humor based on the geographic periphery, specifically derived from relationships between technology, car, and camera, it concludes by reflecting on the advent of new technologies, and social constraints and opportunities in the Iranian art cinema today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explore and analyze Iran’s “Republican Moment” of 16‒19 August 1953, arguably the last concerted effort to abolish the monarchy and establish a republican order in the county prior to the Revolution of 1978‒79. By drawing on a broad range of primary source materials that have thus far remained relatively understudied by existing scholarship, such as the political press of those crucial days, the essay will attempt to shed light on a number of significant domestic developments which impacted the outcome of the actual coup of 19 August 1953. A further attempt will be made to explain the importance of calls in favor of the Republic and the premier Mohammad Mosaddeq’s refusal to take heed of them. The paper will also explore the diverse origins of the Republican platform and its impact on both the urban crowd and the political elite. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a monographic study of the illustrated copy ofṢafvat al-Ṣafā, the life of Shaykh Ṣafī al-Dīn, by Ismāʿil bin Bazzāz, completed in Shaʿbān 990/September 1582 in Shirāz. It begins by giving information on the original text and its sources; then examines the unique illustrated copy. The features of the illustratedṢafvat al-Ṣafāare discussed while each of the fourteen images are explored in terms of the text-image relationship. The themes are also briefly analyzed according to a stylistic and iconographical approach in order to further exhibit the manuscript's uniqueness. The article concludes by emphasizing the significance of this copy at the Aga Khan Museum collection regarding its general condition, the illustration cycle and its records. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Iran is currently experiencing serious water problems. Frequent droughts coupled with over-abstraction of surface and groundwater through a large network of hydraulic infrastructure and deep wells have escalated the nation's water situation to a critical level. This is evidenced by drying lakes, rivers and wetlands, declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, water quality degradation, soil erosion, desertification and more frequent dust storms. This paper overviews the major drivers of Iran's water problems. It is argued that while climatic changes and economic sanctions are commonly blamed as the main drivers of water problems, Iran is mainly suffering from a socio-economic drought—i.e. "water bankruptcy," where water demand exceeds the natural water supply. In theory, this problem can be resolved by re-establishing the balance between water supply and demand through developing additional sources of water supply and implementing aggressive water demand reduction plans. Nevertheless, the current structure of the water governance system in Iran and the absence of a comprehensive understanding of the root causes of the problem leave minimal hope of developing sustainable solutions to Iran's unprecedented water problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iran has a long history of effective and sustainable water resource management under arid and semi-arid conditions. However, today the country is faced with serious challenges in the water sector, including rising water demand and shortages, declining groundwater levels, deteriorating water quality, and increasing threats to the environment and various ecosystems. If these issues persist, tragedy will be the inevitable result. Over the last three decades tremendous efforts have been made to supply water, primarily through an extensive program of development, with dam building at the forefront. This paper offers an introduction to the different factors and elements influencing the water balance in today's Iran and presents a perspective on the trend of dam building in recent times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uniquely among the world's temperate forests, much of the vegetation of the Caspian forests is now endangered. But while deforestation has accelerated in Iran, these processes were actually underway in the nineteenth century. This article offers a brief introduction to the history of forest exploitation and concessions during the Qajar and Pahlavi periods, addressing actions taken by the Iranian state to protect and extend forest cover, but also the deficiencies of that legislation and the reasons for its failure. Though it is one of the most forested countries in the Middle East, Iran's forests remain understudied. Existing scholarship mostly addresses the contemporary period; this paper extends the scope of our knowledge, offering a deeper history of forest exploitation in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Iran, national parks were originally created to protect wildlife and natural expanses. Over time, the exigencies of handling conflict with the locals and a worldwide shift in management approaches from strict protection to newer participatory approaches led Iranian conservationists to adopt the discourse of participatory conservation. However, serious institutional and attitudinal obstacles have prevented policy makers and officials from developing good relations with local communities, making it difficult to serve the interests of conservation or accommodate tourists. Based on interviews with past and present officials of the Department of the Environment of Iran and other field observers, this paper discusses approaches to conservation that reconcile the requirements of conservation with the needs of the people who benefit from reserves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homa Katouzian's exceptionally perceptive, influential, and wide-ranging scholarship has been marked by three mutually reinforcing characteristics: a profound and detailed mastery of Iran's multi-civilizational heritage; a comparatively informed focus on the country's distinct historical trajectory; and an existentially grounded pluralist perspective in examining and evaluating the country's major political turning points and actors. These features are already fully displayed in his early magnum opus,The Political Economy of Modern Iran(1981), whose historical and political conclusions have been underlined time and again by the subsequent and often shocking national and international turns. In the intervening period, Katouzian has developed the cyclical theory of Iran's history as an “aridosolatic,” “pickaxe” or “short-termist” society. Of the important questions that his contributions raise or address, this paper examines the long-term continuity of Twelver/Imami Shi‘ism's trajectory which uniquely in the twentieth century Muslim and other worlds produced the leaders of two great revolutions. The result entails the addition of a still unfolding evolutionary-institutional layer within Katouzian's research program which may enhance its explanatory power and reinforce its political vision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on the cultural influence of the cigarette, this paper synthesizes a wide range of evidence to argue that the cigarette was a fundamental primer for Iran's encounter with modernity, especially as understood in the context of western influence. Applying the dramaturgical theories of sociologist Erving Goffman, it is argued that the cigarette is an instantiation of the “sign-equipment” of modernization used to refashion the identity and subjectivity of Iranian men and women. This refashioning has occurred in three distinct periods. 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 (1930–70), cigarettes were leveraged by Iranians who wished to be seen as upwardly mobile. 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 as experimentation occurs at increasingly young ages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Iranians were aware of Sasanian history through traditional historical writings, but they knew nothing about Achaemenid history. Following European travelers to Persia from the fifteenth century, who were well prepared by reading the classical and biblical texts, Persepolis and Pasargadae were rediscovered and Achaemenid history re-established in the nineteenth century. The rise of Reza Khan to power and his grand emphasis on nationalism and ancient Iran that characterized his reign also left a deeper impact on Achaemenid studies in this period. In this paper the re-establishment of Achaemenid history and its development in nineteenth and twentieth centuries are discussed and reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Iran is the largest economy that is not currently included in the World Trade Organization (WTO). This paper addresses why Iran has not yet joined the WTO and whether it is ready to join. Iran's interaction with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948 marks the beginning of the relationship between Iran and the WTO. To determine why Iran has not yet entered the WTO, the role and penetration of powerful members of the WTO and Iran's economic position are examined. To determine whether Iran is ready to join the WTO, literature is reviewed concerning the effects of joining for the five most-affected major industries in Iran. The major disadvantages of joining the WTO are described as short-term effects, and the advantages of joining are described as long-term goals. Currently, no clear scheme has been offered to handle the negative effects on the Iranian economy. As the major player, the Iranian government could achieve the long-term goals with a realistic and well-planned strategy or miss the mark through its inattention to the critical economic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the 1990s, Russia and Iran successfully laid the foundations for interaction and expanded their spheres of cooperation. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, their relations developed unevenly. These fluctuations depended on the combination of global and regional factors, as well as on the internal circumstances in each country. Russia's participation in international sanctions has aroused discontent in Iran. Despite this, the political establishments of both countries continue to demonstrate an interest in developing bilateral relations and to reaffirm their shared geopolitical interests. This paper analyzes foreign policy documents and the latest research by Russian and Iranian scholars. It strives to shed light on the question: “To what extent and in what areas do the interests of Russia and Iran coincide, and what is the foundation for their potential future development?” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Isabella Bird Bishop's Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan is presented as an objective picture of Persia, purportedly reflecting eye-witness accounts. Setting the narrative in its historical context and employing the concept of exoticism, this paper aims to unearth its subtle imperialist underpinnings. It argues that Bird's portrayal of Persian women and their mores and manners as exotic is an effect of a mode of representation which depicts and constructs difference based on a British-oriented system of evaluation, in line with its imperialist interest in Persia. As such, the exotic representation of Persian women in need of British benign tutelage and a chivalric mission could be interpreted as lending implicit support to Britain's colonial intervention in and imposition on Persia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The establishment of Jami‘at al-Zahra, the first official female seminary in post-revolutionary Iran, opened new possibilities for women to enter the male-dominated clerical hierarchy. The rapid growth of female seminaries increased the presence of seminary-educated women in the official religious sphere. However, as opposed to the male seminaries whose dominant role is to train mojtaheds who can issue a competent legal opinion, the primary role of female seminaries is to train educators and propagandists. Drawing on interviews, documents issued by seminaries and secondary sources, this paper concludes that in spite of the rapid growth of female seminaries, very few women reach the rank of a mojtahed, and thus, in no way weaken the male-centric seminary system in contemporary Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The overthrow of the government of Mosaddeq has received considerable attention, scholarly and otherwise. The scholarly explanations differ in emphasis, but not in the general contours, particularly regarding the significant role of the Anglo-American secret services. There have also long been attempts to portray the overthrow of Mosaddeq as an isolated event taking place on 19 August 1953 and representing a conflation of royalist and traditionalist sentiments among soldiers and civilians. More recently it has been contended that it was not the Anglo-American secret services but the clerical nexus—prompted by Ayatollah Borujerdi, the highest religious authority in the country—which played the crucial role. This paper argues against reducing the overthrow of Mosaddeq's government to the events of 19 August, and views it as a protracted process. It further argues that assertions regarding the crucial and active role of Borujerdi are, on the basis of available evidence, untenable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the decades that followed the overthrow of Mosaddeq in August 1953 a narrative attributing the fall exclusively to foreign conspiracy has taken hold and become institutionalized. In this narrative the internal factors are reduced to the simplest level of abstraction. They do not exist outside foreign conspiracy! This narrative is premised on an Anglo-American coup plot code-named TP-AJAX that was attempted in the late hours of 15 August but failed. The ensuing flight of the Shah generated dynamics which led to the fall of Mosaddeq four days later. The CIA chief operative in Tehran Kermit Roosevelt was quick to take credit claiming that these dynamics were inseminated by his ingenious and spontaneous planning. For abiding internal reasons both the CIA and the MI6 headquarters preferred to claim victory rather than admit failure. Evidence that emerged following the declassification of the State Department papers in 1989 and the leak of a secret CIA internal history in 2000 produced glaring evidence that the fall of Mosaddeq on 19 August 1953 had taken Washington, even its embassy in Tehran, by complete surprise and that post facto claims by Roosevelt were inconsistent both with Washington's explicit policy directives and Roosevelt's own situation reports filed with the CIA Washington during the interval between the two events. Roosevelt later published a phantasmagorical account of the event which, together with reminiscences of a few unnamed former operatives, was given credence by Professor Gasiorowski and associates, who curiously chose to ignore archival evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the relationship between remediation and intertextuality in Abbas Kiarostami's Shirin (2008), arguing that the act of absorbing and transforming other texts and media within one film creates new conditions for collective vision within the post-revolutionary Iranian discourse of visuality. Focusing on the faces of 114 actresses as they watch a film adaptation of the story of “Khosrow and Shirin,” Kiarostami challenges the post-revolutionary modesty laws and their emphasis on not looking at women and at avoiding a spectator–image relationship based on the fulfillment of the desiring male gaze. By making women the spectators, the film suggests that there is no collective vision without women's vision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]