This study is an ethnographic account of the formation and development of anthropology in twentieth-century Iran. The history of folklore begins with the dramatic rise of European romantic nationalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. After the establishment of the new state, there was a strong zeal to Islamize everything concerning Iranian anthropology and ideology.
There are several reviews of developments in Iranian anthropology which confirm some of the ideas discussed in this study. Brian Spooner's two articles on 'Anthropology' and 'Ethnography' in Encyclopaedia Iranica together constitute the best bibliographic and historical survey of the field to date. First, this study is only one possible reading and interpretation of the history of Iranian anthropology among others.
In Chapter 2, I examine the historical background of the formation of Iranian anthropology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book concludes (chapter 7) with a concluding discussion of the nature of anthropology in Iran and its future.
2 Anthropology and Iranian cultures
The first section is an introduction to Persian travel narratives of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The final part is an introduction to Persian folklore studies and literature in the first decades of the twentieth century. Thirdly, the accounts of the Hajj, which became popular in the second half of the century.
In an unpublished paper, Jafariyan (2000) lists 29 Persian travel accounts of the Hajj written in the nineteenth century. The rule of law and the limitation of the king's powers in England was a new idea in the Iranian political realm. He drew attention to the limited powers of the English king, which affected all Iranians who visited Britain in the nineteenth century.
One of the most important Persian travel accounts of Western society was that of Mirza Saleh Shirazi (1983, written in 1819). As Cole clearly explains, two approaches to the self in the process of constructing national identities have been common.
3 Anthropology and nationalism
The first part briefly describes the prevailing political and intellectual discourses and circumstances of the country. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the government and independent intellectuals were very interested in anthropology. The last part of the article is devoted to "the utility and benefits of anthropology."
But applied anthropology is not a part of natural science; it is part of the social sciences and humanities. 1989 until the restoration of operations, with the shift of the current political direction of the Center towards Islamic politics. The quality of the plan shows the government's strong interest in folklore, which was unprecedented in Iran's history.
The CIANth's most important achievement in the 1930s and 1940s was the creation of an anthropological museum. According to a document in the archives of the French Ministry of War, he was a German spy (Ayati). In 1938 Hass gave a lecture at the Institute of Anthropology and issued a report on the state of the MIA, entitled 'The Great Ethnographic Museums and the Iranian Ethnographic Museum' (Amuzesh va Parvaresh.
In the lecture, Hass described some of the largest anthropological museums in European countries and their importance. MAI's architecture was one of the best examples of Reza Shah's nationalist politics. In this nationalist discourse folklore studies flourished and became one of the most popular subjects.
There is an irony in the title: it is indeed very close to the ideological nature of the book and deserves careful attention. It also analyzes the content of folk songs such as love, marriage, national holidays and children. 3 The lack of scientific attention was another weakness of the discipline in the studied period.
4 Anthropology and modernization
Was this a natural consequence of the development and changes in Iranian education and society, as happened in the West. The preference for ethnography over survey and quantitative methods stems from the experience of the Institute's researchers. This curriculum was based on the anthropology department at the Sorbonne at the time (Ruholamini interview 2000).
The Research Center of Excellence for the Planning and Budget Organization (RCPBO) was established in the 1960s. Social sciences in non-Western countries have gone through a very different path than those in the West. This movement was generally motivated by nationalist impulses and developed in the context of the modernization process.
Naraqi explained that the main objective of RSSB was to create an indigenous social science. However, it was the duty of the CIAnth and the CIF (attached to the National Broadcasting Organisation) to implement the government's policy on folklore studies. In the 1940s and 1950s, the campaign against superstitious customs and beliefs was one of the preoccupations of Iranian intellectuals.
The Pahlavi government felt that it was necessary for the country's modernization to include culture in the government's planning system. In the Statute of the Ministry, the main objective of the Ministry is described as The language of the villagers was Tati, a dialect of the old Azari language (hence the title of the book).
Published in 1964, it was the second prominent Persian-language ethnography of the Hajj within Islamic anthropology. As far as I know, it is the only published ethnography of the Iranian education system other than Al-e Ahmad's School Principal. Folklore was one of the favorite genres of cultural studies and publications in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ali Bolukbashi,56 one of the CIAnth officers in the 1970s, was among the most active professional folklorists. He was the editor of Mardomshenasi va Farhang 'Ammeh magazine published by CIAnth in the 1970s.
5 Anthropology and Islamism
In this chapter I provide a comprehensive account of the theoretical and ideological conflicts between anthropology and the forces of the Revolution. I will demonstrate that the culture of anthropology theoretically and ideologically contrasted and conflicted with the ideology of the Revolution in its early years. That culture was the common knowledge (ma'aref ammeh) or common sense and public culture of the war front.
The author classifies the components of warfront culture into 3 main categories and 25 subcategories. What shaped the culture of the war front and what goals did its authors pursue. The first volume of the monographs begins with an introduction to theory and method.
To demonstrate this point, I will discuss two aspects of the discipline: first, 148 Anthropology and Islamism. The moral effects of teaching social studies were one of his most important concerns. It is noticeable that the ideological conflicts between anthropology and the revolutionaries continued after the restoration of the discipline in the 1980s.
In this section, I argue that the ideology of the Iranian state was to some extent at odds with the culture of anthropology. According to their study, the political culture of the Islamic Republic consists of the following components: This is perhaps the most radical and intolerable part of the culture of anthropology from an Islamic point of view.
Given these contradictions between the culture of anthropology and the political culture of the Islamic Republic, the teaching of anthropology has involved severe political tensions. Similarly, secularism and liberalism were taken as openly opposed to the Islamic nature of the Revolution. As we will see, in the second decade of the Revolution the government began to implement socio-economic development programs.
6 Anthropology and Islamic modernization
One of the most striking points in the CPIRI is the particular focus on nationalism. An important institutional development was the establishment of the Iranian Anthropological Association (Anjoman Ensanshenasi Iran) in 2001. Overall, I argue that anthropology, as conceived by Iranians, is potentially compatible with the ideology of the Revolution and the political culture of the Islamic Republic.
One of the ambitions of the Revolution was to revitalize rural areas, and the state pursued a rural-oriented policy for about a decade. This close relationship between anthropology and tradition helped the discipline recover and develop in the context of the political culture of the Islamic Republic. Most students and academics are aware of the multitude of scientific perspectives in the West.
The study of the folklore, traditional technologies, handicrafts and local knowledge was part of this project. Although the origins of this trend can be traced back to the beginnings of anthropology in Iran in the 1930s, it is primarily a product of the Revolution's policy towards rural society. In the context of the discussions on local knowledge, one observes a trend aimed at collecting and using indigenous knowledge (danesh-e bumi) in Iran.
The task of Jahad was to deal with rural issues in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture. Another change in anthropology in the last decade has been the decline of ethnographic studies of nomads. In the 1970s, the Department of Anthropology of the Institute for Social Studies and Research (ISSR) was the most important center for ethnographic studies of nomadic tribes.
Safinezhad, head of the ISSR's anthropology department until 1995, stated that after the revolution it was almost closed. I interviewed Mr. Musavi-Nezhad about the research activities of the Office of Nomadic Studies and the status of recent studies of the nomads. The government's method of depoliticizing cultural heritage was the establishment of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization as a major scientific institution.