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.

As a collectively acting subject, the Pahlavi regime constituted itself through a functional memory by construing a particular past. In this way, the official or political memory served as the regime's key legitimizing factor. Both Pahlavi shahs attempted to appropriate the Iranian past as well as its future; that is, they legitimized their rule in retrospect and sought to immortalize themselves prospectively. In contrast to the official historiography, ‘counter-memories’ are often established. The motive in producing such a ‘counter-memory,’ whose founders are usually the conquered and oppressed, is to delegitimize the perceived oppressive balance of power. An outspoken critic of the Pahlavi regime, the Iranian teacher and writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad ‘wrote back,’ trying his hand at a ‘counter memory’.

Emigration from Afghanistan is the product of socio-political circumstances—drought, regime changes, wars—and economic structures—pastoralism and agricultural seasonal cycles—but it is also situated in a historical continuum of recurrent population movements on a regional scale. As a phenomenon, it has been well-researched in Pakistan, but has been less well understood from the Iranian side. However, many Afghans, notably but not exclusively Hazaras, have settled there since the end of the nineteenth century. Immigration from Afghanistan intensified from the 1970s onwards following the Iranian oil boom and drought in Afghanistan and the political turbulence in that country after 1978. The policies of the Islamic Republic towards this population have been both variable and inconsistent. Recently, their main priority has been the repatriation of Afghans in an atmosphere of both official and popular xenophobia. The experience of exile has resulted in important social changes, in particular with respect to education and the position of women. Moreover, the Afghan presence on Iranian soil appears to be irreversible: it satisfies economic needs, reflects the intensity of commercial exchanges between the two countries, and in itself constitutes a complex trans-border reality. Finally, it sustains a public and juridical debate on the definition of citizenship and appears to be inherent in the idea of the Iranian nation itself.

This article deals with the emerging discourses and concerns that have dominated the Iranian art community mainly since 1997. It discusses the existing, or rather conflicting, views of the current situation of the visual arts in Iran as expressed in recent artistic events, productions, and exhibitions as well as in critical reviews. It does not fully discuss the variety of artistic genres in Iran, but examines the dominant ideas from the main opposing factions of cultural and artistic thought. It also aims at identifying the structural changes in Iranian art as well as the prevailing artistic policy of recent years.

One of the most remarkable developments in international film of recent memory is the emergence of a vibrant and creative film industry in Iran following the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In light of worldwide acclaim for the work of Iranian filmmakers, scholars have pointed to a strong similarity between the style of these films and those of post-war Italian Neorealist filmmakers. By analyzing the works of three of Iran's leading directors, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Majid Majidi and comparing them with the greatest Italian Neorealist film, The Bicycle Thief, this study will attempt to show how Iranians are working within the Neorealist tradition while at the same time making it distinctively their own.

Despite the fact that during the 1930s some Kurdish novels were published in the former Soviet Union, it was only towards the end of the twentieth century that this literary genre became an established literary tradition among the Kurds. Due to various political factors, the Kurdish novel has not been identified with any nation-state. In fact, the concept of the Kurdish novel refers to all such literature written in Kurdish, regardless of different orthographies and dialects. Alongside the published novels in Kurdish, there have been some Kurdish writers who have written their novels in other languages. This article aims to look for a novel that contributes to the representation of the Kurds and their identity and political condition.

As far as written records and oral traditions indicate, entertainment in the Qajar era touched on all aspects of life, both public and private. Contrary to Western opinion about this period, Qajar society exhibited a great variety of entertainments, many of which (even when public) were not visible to the outsider, given the constraints of a strongly traditional society and of the class-bound nature of many of the entertainments requiring access to the court, the aristocracy or the inner sanctums of the houses of the grandees. Nevertheless, the picture that now emerges is one of plenty rather than penury, and a closer look at the variety of entertainments is thus eminently relevant and in order.

Migration is part of the Afghan social and cultural landscape. In spite of the unprecedented wave of returns following the fall of the Taliban regime and the establishment of a government backed by the international community, multidirectional cross-border movements will not come to an end. This paper focuses on the case of Hazara male migrants moving between the mountains of Central Afghanistan and the cities of Iran. For many young men, migration offers the opportunity to broaden their social networks beyond narrow kinship and neighborhood ties. It may be conceived as a necessary stage in their existence, a rite of passage to adulthood and a step toward manhood: the perilous journey may be understood as a spatial and partially social separation from the families and homes which contributes to cut the links with the period of childhood; their stay in Iran, during which they have to prove their capacity to face hardship and to save money while living among itinerant and temporary working teams, represents a period of liminality; at their return to their village of origin, they will be reincorporated as adult marriageable men, although they will keep commuting between Afghanistan and Iran for part of their life.

The establishment of Qajar rule by Agha Muhammad Khan in 1786 initiated a period of relative stability in Iran which lasted through the nineteenth century to 1925. His two most important successors, Fath ‘Ali Shah (1797–1834) and Nasir al-Din Shah (1848–1896), during their long reigns, saw the stabilization of Iran's borders to their present limits and maintained a cautious balance in domestic policy with the religious, administrative, and commercial authorities, and in international relations with European powers. One of the main results of Qajar foreign policy was increased contact between Europeans—such as diplomats, military personnel, technical and educational experts, merchants, archaeologists, and curious travelers who spent long periods of time in Iran, and the Iranians who received them. As hospitality is one of the main features of Iranian social culture, receptions and entertainment played a major role in both formal diplomacy and at private picnics and parties.

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.

Religious authority in the Shi‘ite world is often claimed and justified by drawing on national ideologies. Examining the relations between the ruling religious elite in Iran and Lebanese Shi‘ite party of Amal and followers of the Lebanese Shi‘ite scholar Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, this article shows how the latter two actors seek to break official Iran's hegemonic claim to lead the Shi‘ite world through parody and critical narratives about the history and society of Iran. This politics of religious authenticity is not limited to debates among Shi‘ite scholars but also involves other actors such as political party members, students of religion, and pilgrims as they take part in shaping claims to seniority and authenticity in Shi‘ite tradition.

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.

This paper will discuss the role of the jesters at the court of Nasr al-Din Shah, with more particular reference to Karim Shire′i, whose humor gained a lasting place in popular memory. It will look at the jesters in the context of their essential role, to remind the king that he was human. This poses a number of questions with regard to who the jester was and how he carried out his function. First, there is the question of the relationship between the Shah and jester, the degree to which it could become personal and why. Second, the paper will look at the jester's identity and the way it is defined by his relationship with the Shah. Third, it will consider the jester's relationship with the court as a whole and his function within a strictly related hierarchical environment. All of these required that the jester constantly maintain a delicate and sometimes dangerous balance, which could only be carried out by one who inherently possessed a particular kind of wit. Consideration will be given as to what the jester represented both to the court and to the public, specifically with reference to the widely held concept of the wise fool, and its religious implications. This relates to the issue of ‘innocence,’ (‘the mad have cast upon their tongues words from the unseen’) whether natural or assumed and its purpose in allowing freedom to the jester to draw the ruler's attention to unpalatable truths. Further points to explore are the relationship between the jester and chaos in an ordered environment and how far the jester pressed the boundaries, or even exerted political influence, and how far his function was in fact conservative and destined to help preserve the existing order. Last, the paper will look at the origins of the court jesters as far as they are known and consider their implications for the rise of these individuals. It will attempt to establish if each was characterized by a particular kind of buffoonery by comparing and contrasting them. In particular, the jokes attributed to Karim Shire'i will be discussed both in terms of how far it is possible to identify him as their author with any certainty and how far they may be considered as constituting a genre of humor. Finally, the legacy of this humor within the popular memory will be assessed.

Many Shi'a Afghan refugees and migrants—most of whom are Hazara—have intentionally settled in Mashhad, Iran, the home of the Shrine of Imam Reza. Hazara also make pilgrimage to the Shrine of Imam Hossein located in Kerbala, Iraq. Hazara comprise nearly half of all documented Afghans in Iran, yet until mid-2005, their returns comprised only one quarter of the total UNHCR-assisted return figures to Afghanistan. Drawing on literature from anthropology and refugee studies on the affect of religious practice in a context of displacement, this article considers whether pilgrimage aspirations and practices of Hazara Afghans in Iran might constitute a factor in their decision making about repatriation to Afghanistan. The study proposes that the decision to return to Afghanistan for certain categories of Hazara is influenced by their pilgrimage practices and attachment to Shrine locations in Iran.

In this article by one of the founders of the Georgian school of Oriental Studies, the role of the gholams in Safavid service is highlighted by focusing on the career of Allahverdi Khan and his children. First, it is shown that Allahverdi Khan was not an Armenian, but a Georgian of the noble Undiladze family. Second, the rise of the Georgian slave in the Safavid administration and that of his children is discussed, both their political and cultural roles within the Safavid kingdom as well as their continued relations with Georgia. Finally, the cause of the family's downfall, due to too much success, its continued involvement in the affairs of Georgia, and its rivalry with fellow-Georgian Rostam Khan, is analyzed with emphasis on the use of Georgian sources.

The Afghan poppy cultivation is presented here as a case in point to exemplify the linkages between external influences and local effects. World market and power relations have influenced cultivation patterns, processing, and trafficking. At the same time, poppy cultivation pinpoints an internal development which is strongly linked to deteriorating state control, warlordism, and regional power politics. Opium production has served as a major source of revenue for the upholding of disparate political structures which reflect the present political map of Afghanistan. Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan gained a substantial push during the last quarter century, from an annual production of 200 tons in 1979 to 4,200 tons in 2004, making use of former development efforts in creating irrigated oases in Helmand and Nangarhar. Prices rose after the Taliban's 2001 ban on production, raising farmers' incomes substantially and turning opium into an unrivalled cash crop. Fairly new production zones have been added in recent times; for example, Badakhshan—the stronghold of the Northern Alliance—has gained the third position with major increases in the last few years. Afghanistan's poppy cultivation and opium production has to be interpreted in terms of globalization and fragmentation. Drug trafficking affects the neighboring states, namely, Iran, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, as they function as consumer markets as well as trade routes for contraband drugs heading towards the West. Consequently, the Afghan poppy cultivation is interpreted in a holistic manner.

Pre-Islamic beliefs and practices abound in Iran, albeit with an Islamic veneer, have been entirely islamicized. One kind of such surviving practices is that of rain making ceremonies. In this article, seven major rain-making ceremonies are categorized, described, and interpreted, including some regional variants thereof. Attention is paid to the fact that these ceremonies are not limited to Iran, but are also found in neighboring countries (Iraq, Turkey, India, Central Asia), thus showing that these are all survivors of common ancient religious archetypes.