Rethinking Gender Ethnicity And Religion In Iran

Covering the Pahlavi modern nation-state as well as the Islamic regime, this book examines the crucial shifts that affected Sunnite and subaltern women once Shi'ism became the state religion after the Iranian Revolution. Focusing on women in the Baluchistan and Golestan provinces of Iran, Azadeh Kian analyses and explores issues of cultural racialization, ethno-centrism, Shi'a centrism, and patriarchal and chauvinistic ideologies in Iranian society propagated by the state and sustained by its policies. Based on quantitative and qualitative surveys taken throughout Iran, comprised of over 7,000 married women and 100 interviews with a sample of Sunnite and subaltern Persian women, Kian reveals how social hierarchy and power relations based on gender, class, ethnicity and religion operate. She argues that women have been at the heart of the process of national and ethnic re-construction as women, as potential mothers, are expected to reproduce national and ethnic boundaries. Kian argues that by examining the family institution as a site of power, analysing family dynamics as well as women's everyday lives, the politics of ordinary Iranians and the relationship between state and society can be better understood. Kian argues that the time is ripe to achieve a non-hegemonic definition of Iranian national identity, through acknowledgement of gender, class, ethnic, and religious diversity and plurality of experiences of oppression and injustice.

Covering the Pahlavi modern nation-state as well as the Islamic regime, this book examines the crucial shifts that affected Sunnite and subaltern women once Shi'ism became the state religion after the Iranian Revolution. Focusing on women in the Baluchistan and Golestan provinces of Iran, Azadeh Kian analyses and explores issues of cultural racialization, ethno-centrism, Shi'a centrism, and patriarchal and chauvinistic ideologies in Iranian society propagated by the state and sustained by its policies. Based on quantitative and qualitative surveys taken throughout Iran, comprised of over 7,000 married women and 100 interviews with a sample of Sunnite and subaltern Persian women, Kian reveals how social hierarchy and power relations based on gender, class, ethnicity and religion operate. She argues that women have been at the heart of the process of national and ethnic re-construction as women, as potential mothers, are expected to reproduce national and ethnic boundaries. Kian argues that by examining the family institution as a site of power, analysing family dynamics as well as women's everyday lives, the politics of ordinary Iranians and the relationship between state and society can be better understood. Kian argues that the time is ripe to achieve a non-hegemonic definition of Iranian national identity, through acknowledgement of gender, class, ethnic, and religious diversity and plurality of experiences of oppression and injustice.

Investigates how women, religion and culture have interacted in the context of 19th and 20th century Iran, covering topics as seemingly diverse as the social and cultural history of Persian cuisine, the work and attitudes of 19th century Christian missionaries, the impact of growing female literacy, and the consequences of developments since 1979.

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the re-introduction of Sharica law relating to gender and the family, women's rights in Iran suffered a major setback. However, as the implementers of the law have faced the social realities of women's lives and aspirations, positive changes have gradually come about. Here Ziba Mir-Hosseini takes us to the heart of the growing debates concerning the ways in which justice for women should be achieved. Through a series of lively interviews with clerics in the Iranian religious center of Qom, she seeks to understand the varying notions of gender that inform Islamic jurisprudence and to explore how clerics today perpetuate and modify these notions. Mir-Hosseini finds three main approaches to the issue: insistence on "traditional" patriarchal interpretations based on "complementarity" but "inequality" between women and men; attempts to introduce "balance" into traditional interpretations; or a radical rethinking of the jurisprudential constructions of gender. She introduces the debates among the commentators by examining key passages in both written and oral texts and by narrating her meetings and discussions with the authors. Unique in its approach and its subject matter, the book relates Mir-Hosseini's engagement, as a Muslim woman and a social anthropologist educated and working in the West, with Shii'i Muslim thinkers of various backgrounds and views. In the literature on women in Islam, there is no account of such a face-to-face encounter, either between religion and gender politics or between the two genders.

While recent books have explored Arab and Turkish nationalism, the nuances of Iran have received scant book-length study—until now. Capturing the significant changes in approach that have shaped this specialization, Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity shares innovative research and charts new areas of analysis from an array of scholars in the field. Delving into a wide range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives, the essays—all previously unpublished—encompass social history, literary theory, postcolonial studies, and comparative analysis to address such topics as: Ethnicity in the Islamic Republic of Iran Political Islam and religious nationalism The evolution of U.S.-Iranian relations before and after the Cold War Comparing Islamic and secular nationalism(s) in Egypt and Iran The German counterrevolution and its influence on Iranian political alliances The effects of Israel's image as a Euro-American space Sufism Geocultural concepts in Azar's Atashkadeh Interdisciplinary in essence, the essays also draw from sociology, gender studies, and art and architecture. Posing compelling questions while challenging the conventional historiographical traditions, the authors (many of whom represent a new generation of Iranian studies scholars) give voice to a research approach that embraces the modern era's complexity while emphasizing Iranian nationalism's contested, multifaceted, and continuously transformative possibilities.

"This collected volume is an attempt to create an overview of Iran's main religious and ethno-religious minorities in their relationship to the dominant political discourse. The diversity of the topics, the international and academic backgrounds of the authors as well as their contemporary orientation distinguishes this volume as an original one." -Behrouz Alikhani, Senior Lecturer, WWU Münster, Institute of Sociology, Germany. This book explores the experiences of the ethnic and religious minorities of Iran, such as Jews, Yarsani, Christian, Sabean Mandaean, Bahai, Zoroastrian, Baluch, Kurd, and others and provides a historical overview of their position in society before and after the 1979 Islamic revolution and highlights their contribution to the country's history, diversity, and development. It also focuses on the historical, sociopolitical, and economic factors that affected the minorities' development during the last century. Author Behnaz Hosseini has shaped this book with authentic material and has assembled the experiences and opinions of academics of diverse backgrounds who approach the minorities' issues in Iran in a constructive and ingenious way: from debating their efforts to preserve their identity and cultural heritage and ensure their survival to discussing their relations with the majority and other minorities, the role of religion in everyday life, and their contribution to the rich cultural history of Iran. S. Behnaz Hosseini is a visiting research fellow at Centre for Studies in Religion & Society, University of Victoria in Canada as well as minority researcher, project coordinator, and conference organizer at the mobilecultures team affiliated with University of Vienna. She is an Honorary Fellow in the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin College. She is also a Middle East media analyst with Persian media. Dr. Hosseini has conducted extensive research on minorities in the Middle East and has worked with the United Nations as an expert consultant on ISIS crimes against religious minorities in Iraq. .

Nima Naghibi makes powerful connections among feminism, imperialism, and the discourses of global sisterhood. Naghibi investigates topics including the state-sponsored Womens Organization of Iran and the involvement of feminists such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem in the Iranian feminism movement. She also examines the veiled woman in the films of Tahmineh Milani, Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Kim Longinotto, and Mahnaz Afzali.

While much has been written about the impact of the 1979 Islamic revolution on life in Iran, discussions about the everyday life of Iranian women have been glaringly missing. Women in Place offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies and women’s rights in contemporary Iran. Author Nazanin Shahrokni takes us onto gender-segregated buses, inside a women-only park, and outside the closed doors of stadiums where women are banned from attending men’s soccer matches. The Islamic character of the state, she demonstrates, has had to coexist, fuse, and compete with technocratic imperatives, pragmatic considerations regarding the viability of the state, international influences, and global trends. Through a retelling of the past four decades of state policy regulating gender boundaries, Women in Place challenges notions of the Iranian state as overly unitary, ideological, and isolated from social forces and pushes us to contemplate the changing place of women in a social order shaped by capitalism, state-sanctioned Islamism, and debates about women’s rights. Shahrokni throws into sharp relief the ways in which the state strives to constantly regulate and contain women’s bodies and movements within the boundaries of the “proper” but simultaneously invests in and claims credit for their expanded access to public spaces.