Vol. 7 · No. 2 · 2003

Mohammad Shahbazi

Download full article (50 KB PDF) [subscribers only]

Of all the revolutionary upheavals to date, none have received as much attention as the Iranian experience, when in 1979 the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown and an Islamic regime came to dominate all aspects of Iranian life.
Mottale (1995:1)

I shall start this paper where the above sentence ends, '... dominate all aspects of Iranian life'. This domination includes anthropologists and anthropological work in Iran as well. But to answer the question of why the social sciences in general, and anthropological work in particular, have been subjected to this domination, one needs to understand how this kind of work was perceived in Iranian popular culture before the revolution. This issue and my personal experiences in carrying out anthropological work in Iran in the 1990s are the main topics of this paper. By addressing these issues I hope to help anthropologists who want to work in Iran in the future.