Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran

Author: David N. Yaghoubian

Series: Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East Hardcover: 420 pages Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd) (April 15, 2014) Language: English ISBN-10: 0815633599 ISBN-13: 978-0815633594

Book Description

Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran investigates the ways in which Armenian minorities in Iran encountered Iranian nationalism and participated in its development over the course of the twentieth century. Based primarily on oral interviews, archival documents, personal memoirs, memorabilia, and photographs, the book examines the lives of a group of Armenian-Iranians—a truck driver, an army officer, a parliamentary representative, a civil servant, and a scout leader—and explores the personal conflicts and paradoxes attendant upon their layered allegiances and compound identities. In documenting individual experiences in Iranian industry, military, government, education, and community organization, the five social biographies detail the various roles of elites and nonelites in the development of Iranian nationalism and reveal the multiple forces that shape the processes of identity formation. Yaghoubian combines these portraits with theories of nationalism and national identity to answer recurring pivotal questions about how nationalism evolves, why it is appealing, what broad forces and daily activities shape and sustain it, and the role of ethnicity in its development.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich work that adds an entirely new dimension to the study of Iranian nationalism, making it required reading for both specialists and general readers."—Afshin Marashi, author of Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940

"The reader gets a vivid portrait of what it has meant to grow up Armenian in Iran. . . . a nuanced view of how these individuals experienced the small and large events of their lives in relation to the main questions that characterize twentieth-century Iran."—Setrag Manoukian, Institute of Islamic Studies and Department of Anthropology, McGill University

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Nationalism, Theory, and Social BiographyPart One: Experiences with Iranian Nationalism 2. Iskandar Khan Setkhanian 3. Hagob Hagobian 4. Sevak Saginian 5. Lucik Moradiance 6. Nejde HagobianPart Two: Learning from Theory and Social Biography 7. Learning from Theory and Social BiographyConclusion

About the Author

David N. Yaghoubian is associate professor of history at California State University in San Bernardino. He is coeditor with Edmund Burke III of Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East, second edition.