The Politicisation of Culture and the Contestation of Iranian National Identity in Khatami's Iran

Holliday, Shabnam J.

doi:10.1111/j.1754-9469.2007.tb00106.x

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…On the other side, it highlights the local meaning-making of world cultural models, as evidenced in the case of nationhood in modern Iran. Indeed, such discursive politics in nationhood domestication have constituted further contestations on Iranian national identity [113][114][115]. That is to say, since the Islamic revolutionaries took forward one of the discursive variations, other Iranian forces appeal to different variations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domesticating the Global Discourse of Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Iran: A Sociological Institutionalist Account

Barjasteh

2023

Societies

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This article explores how nationhood was discursively constructed in early twentieth-century Iran. While most studies concentrate on micro-national causes, this study complements this literature by drawing on domestication theory to show how globally diffused nationalist discourse was localized and tailored to the Iranian context at the turn of the twentieth century. It employs the methods of critical discourse analysis and critical metaphor analysis to investigate politics in the construction of nationhood in Iran. The data include all editorials and articles in three highly influential Iranian periodicals: Qanun, Tarbiyat, and Kaveh. By analyzing the shared premises in this data, the study highlights the transnational nature of the discourse to indicate how Iranian nationhood was embedded in world society yet adapted locally. The analysis then identifies three variations of Iranian nationhood, each woven into a particular national narrative at the time. These findings attest to the meso-level approach that addresses the discursive side of diffusion mechanisms and calls attention to the discursive politics in localization processes of nationhood. They point to new directions to understand contemporary Iran, not as an outlier or exception, but rather as discursively connected to world society. Given the discursive opportunities arising from these contentious notions of nationhood, the study calls for further critical investigations of identity-based appeals, often by authoritarian actors, in Iran’s modern politics.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domesticating the Global Discourse of Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Iran: A Sociological Institutionalist Account

Barjasteh

2023

Societies

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“…It is in the field of presidential-led cultural diplomacy initiatives that one can observe a strong nationalist conception of identity coming to the fore. This was expressed through former president Mohammad Khatami's 'Dialogue among Civilisations' initiative, which saw a strong emphasis on civilisational inheritance and commonality as forming the basis of a kind of cultural foreign policy (Wastnidge, 2016), in which an 'Islamist-Iranian' conception of identity was key (Holliday, 2007;, which, like the example of Turkey ,shows how particular ideas of culture and civilisation may be (re)constructed through the communication of a strategic foreign policy narrative (Miskimmon et al, 2013: 183). Attempts at promoting civil society at home also helped improve Iran's image abroad during this period.…”

Section: Turkeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational identity claims, roles and strategic foreign policy narratives in the Middle East

Wastnidge

2019

Global Discourse

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The question of identity, not only framed within the context of the nation state, but also in terms of wider transnational identities, be they religious, ethnic or political, remains a key feature in the politics of the Middle East. Drawing on contributions from Foreign Policy Analysis and the concept of strategic narrative, this paper explores how identities beyond state borders are utilised as justification for a state’s foreign policy decisions. The states under investigation are Turkey and Iran. The paper shows how appeals to transnational identities have been used by each state in terms of their longer-term cultural diplomacy and ‘soft power’ initiatives, and then at the more immediate or ‘hard’ sense as seen in their recent, ongoing military engagements. It demonstrates how multiple and overlapping identities articulated at the transnational level serve as a vector in which to pursue strategic foreign policy narratives in each country’s perceived sphere of influence.

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“…74 The influence of these ideas has continued after the rule of Khomeini as his successor, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei often makes references to the concept of Gharbzadegi, defining Western culture as an "illness that corrupts the soul of the Iranian nation." 75 The role of cultural critiques has certainly been influential in shaping the mind-set of new generations in Iran, extending even to contemporary politicians such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the former Iranian President often made references to thinkers such as Shariati in his public speeches, however the role of cultural arguments as a "primary" source of Iranian anti-Westernism has so far been overstated in the scholarly literature on anti-Westernism. Shariati's ideas were very influential in mobilizing Shi'a 70 Kamyar Abdi, "Nationalism, Politics, and the Development," 67. for the widespread resentment and accumulated frustration that had been re-produced by nationalist discourses based on Iran's historical political events.…”

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confidence: 99%

Defying the System: The Origins of Anti-Westernism in the Non-Western World and the Case of Iran

Göksel

2019

Türkiye Ortadoğu Çalışmaları Dergisi

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Anti-Western sentiment is a common feature of politics in many non-Western societies such as China, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey, Iran and various Arab countries. Challenging the scholarly literature that depicts anti-Westernism as an “irrational, extremist and fundamentalist reaction to the cultural hegemony of the West”, this article conceptualizes anti-Westernism as a rational reaction to – and an unsurprising consequence of – the problematic political/economic interactions between non-Western societies (e.g. Iran) and Western powers (e.g. Britain, France and the US). Iran is a particularly noteworthy case because anti-Westernism played a key role in the formation of the modern state in the country. The foreign policy of behavior of Iran in our time and the historical trajectory that produced the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution cannot possibly be understood without acknowledging anti-Westernism. The origins of anti-Westernism in Iran are explored in this article through interpreting the path dependent historical experience of the country, with a particular emphasis on relations between Iran and Western countries. In contrast to works that attribute Iran’s anti-Western foreign policy to the Islamist ideology of the post-1979 era, I argue that hostility to the Western-dominated international political system should actually be traced to the way in which Iranian national identity evolved in the early 20th century.

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The Politicisation of Culture and the Contestation of Iranian National Identity in Khatami's Iran

Cited by 10 publications

References 2 publications

Domesticating the Global Discourse of Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Iran: A Sociological Institutionalist Account

Domesticating the Global Discourse of Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Iran: A Sociological Institutionalist Account

Transnational identity claims, roles and strategic foreign policy narratives in the Middle East

Defying the System: The Origins of Anti-Westernism in the Non-Western World and the Case of Iran

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