Nomads in Postrevolutionary Iran

The Qashqa'i in an Era of Change

Lois Beck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317743866
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Examining the rapid transition in Iran from a modernizing, westernizing, secularizing monarchy (1941-79) to a hard-line, conservative, clergy-run Islamic republic (1979-), this book focuses on the ways this process has impacted the Qashqa'i—a rural, nomadic, tribally organized, Turkish-speaking, ethnic minority of a million and a half people who are dispersed across the southern Zagros Mountains.

Analysing the relationship between the tribal polity and each of the two regimes, the book goes on to explain the resilience of the people's tribal organizations, kinship networks, and politicized ethnolinguistic identities to demonstrate how these structures and ideologies offered the Qashqa'i a way to confront the pressures emanating from the two central governments.

Existing scholarly works on politics in Iran rarely consider Iranian society outside the capital of Tehran and beyond the reach of the details of national politics. Local-level studies on Iran—accounts of the ways people actually lived—are now rare, especially after the revolution. Based on long-term anthropological research, Nomads in Postrevolutionary Iran provides a unique insight into how national-level issues relate to the local level and will be of interest to scholars and researchers in Anthropolgy, Iranian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

1 Introduction

In this book, I examine the rapid transition in Iran from a modernizing, westernizing, secularizing monarchy (1941–79) to a hard-line, conservative, clergy-run Islamic republic (1979-) and the ways this process has impacted the Qashqa’i—a rural, nomadic, pastoral, tribally organized, Turkish-speaking, ethnic minority of one and a half million people who are dispersed across the southern Zagros Mountains. I focus on the relationship between the tribal polity and each of the two regimes, and I explain the resilience of the people’s tribal organization, kinship networks, and politicized ethnolinguistic identities to show how these structures and ideologies offered the Qashqa’i ways to confront the pressures emanating from each of the two central governments.

Scholars often write about the rigidity of the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its citizens. Yet state officials were remarkably lax about some social and cultural dimensions of these nomads’ lives. They empathized with the nomads whom they viewed as the exploited and oppressed victims of the ruling shahs (kings) (1925–79), they regarded them as worthy of lucrative government services, and they praised them as “original” and “genuine” Muslims (whom they compared with Iranians who did not respect Islamic values, who did not observe Islamic rituals, who violated the Islamic regime’s edicts, and who resisted the state’s control).

I demonstrate how scholarly works on politics in Iran often differ from my descriptions of the local-level dimensions of life for these nomads. Many writers seem unaware of or unconcerned about Iranian society outside the capital (Tehran) and beyond the machinations and details of national politics, even though they imply or say that they generalize for the country as a whole. Local-level studies on Iran—accounts of the ways people actually lived—are now rare, especially after the revolution.¹ (The Islamic Republic has prohibited or restricted the work of foreign researchers since 1979, especially Americans, and Iranian researchers have experienced other constraints and have conducted other kinds of studies.) Scholars continue to write in broad terms about the revolution and its causes and effects and subsequent developments, but little has yet been published about places outside Tehran, about people other than the Persian ruling elite (which includes most ayatollahs as well as the shahs), and about postrevolutionary society in general. As a possible exception concerning society as a whole, writings on Iran’s women are plentiful but are still limited by their persisting emphasis on the secular, modern, West-oriented, professional, upper-middle and upper classes of Tehran, most of whose members do not back the Islamic Republic or rule by clergy.² I urge a closer look at the diversity of Iran’s societies and cultures so readers can understand the ways that different sectors of the population support, comply with, challenge, oppose, or resist the policies and practices of the Islamic state.

This work is not an ethnography about Qashqa’i nomads, although it contains ethnographic aspects. While the study is based on my long-term anthropological research in Iran, it also presents an account of the nation-state as it transitioned from the rule of the last shah to that of the ayatollahs, and it draws on the large literature on the topic. While this literature concerns macropolitics, the current work emphases micropolitics and the ways in which people at the local level faced, responded to, and resisted the impact of the state. General political studies as well as works on specific topics, such as Iran’s constitution, parliament, and conservative politico-religious ideologies, do not demonstrate how these institutions and ideas affected Iranians nationwide in their cities, towns, villages, and nomadic camps. Such topical discussions are necessary for understanding circumstances in Iran and the ways they have changed from one regime to the next, but readers also need to know how national-level issues relate to the local level and to people’s lives.

What difference did it make to Iranians that a popular revolution overthrew the shah’s regime and that hard-line conservative Muslim clergymen took control? This book addresses that question. The multiple answers provide information about the Qashqa’i but also extend beyond them to Iran as a whole. In some ways, local-level facts offer more insight about the Islamic Republic than do generalized studies about a particular facet of the new regime. The new government adopted a code of penalties for criminals, based on Islamic law, but how did the courts handle a Qashqa’i man who loaned his rifle to a Persian peasant, who then murdered a rival with the weapon?

Interlinking perspectives

In this book, I describe, discuss, and analyze the transformations experienced by people of the Qashqa’i tribal confederacy brought about by Iran’s revolution in 1978–79 and the subsequent formation of an Islamic republic. I base this study on long-term anthropological research and personal observations and interactions in Iran and among Qashqa’i nomadic pastoralists there. My book Nomad: A Year in the Life of a Qashqa’i Tribesman in Iran details the same people during the annual seasonal cycle—autumn, winter, spring, and summer—of 1970–71 and includes historical information. In some ways, this new book begins where Nomad leaves off. Nomads in Postrevolutionary Iran also stands as an independent study but readers interested in the same group during the earlier period will find Nomad informative.

The general aims of this anthropological study are threefold and interrelated. They concern a longitudinal focus, an analysis of the impact of changing regimes in Iran, and a perspective from the local level.

First, the account presents a longitudinal perspective on current and former nomadic pastoralists in Iran. Seasonal and annual fluctuations in their lives were common, and a long-term view provides a representative account of these nomads and the ways their lives have altered. I conducted research with a single group on many occasions over a span of 44 years and have a broader view of its circumstances than if I had visited only once during this period.

The mobility and dispersal of the Qashqa’i and their frequently varying seasonal patterns of livelihoods, migrations, and residences complicate the issue of observing, documenting, and interpreting transformational processes. A settled community also engaged in seasonal activities but nomads usually experienced a wider range of differing patterns throughout a year. A researcher present for only a short period would have difficulty sorting out such diversity, understanding the complex processes of change, and concluding about general political, economic, and social patterns. Which variations were due to seasonal differences, ecologically diverse territories, mobility, widely dispersed people, and often changing livelihoods and residences? Which were due to broader processes such as a national revolution, a change in central governments, new market demands, environmental degradation, and expansion of settled populations in the region? How did these diverse variations interconnect? How did the decisions of individuals, families, and local and wider groups figure into the emergence of this diversity?

Anthropologists and other social scientists rarely have opportunities outside their countries of origin and residence to conduct longitudinal research on multiple occasions in a single location or with a single group, especially in the Middle East and particularly in Iran. Many researchers spend a year or so in one place or with one community and then never return. Changing, sometimes volatile, political conditions may make subsequent visits difficult or impossible, and individual careers and choices also often figure against further work there. Many anthropological studies on the Middle East are based on a scholar’s single visit.³

When a researcher spends only a year or so in one locale or community, she or he has difficulty discerning if changes have happened during that brief period and if any such changes are short term or long term, minor or major, non-recurrent or recurrent, or locally induced or responses to wider processes. The person will not know how each of these different kinds of change relates to the others. A minor, seemingly idiosyncratic, incident one year, for example, may prove to mark the beginning of a fundamental transformation connected to national, even international, circumstances. Without having prior experience there, the researcher does not know what occurrences are usual or unusual, significant or insignificant, and why. The person may not comprehend situations as being anomalous or extraordinary. Some parts of society and culture may experience major alterations over the short or long term while other parts of the same society and culture may not. Certain continuities in political, economic, social, and cultural life exist and are eventually discernible, but a short-term researcher may not be able to separate them from other aspects, some or all of which may be undergoing change. Readers of a monograph based on a single, short-term visit may be uncertain if the situation described is specific to that year (which could have been typical or unusual) or more general.

Historical and comparative research of diverse kinds solves some of these problems. A scholar focusing on contemporary Shi’i Muslim passion plays in a village or urban quarter, for example, benefits by reading accounts of such performances in other historical periods and in different places and can judge how past events compare with the ones he or she observes.⁴ A researcher can also draw on the perspectives of individuals who remember or heard about past performances and who can explain why they are or are not currently different. Confronting the past in this way, a writer is more likely than not to specify the dates of his or her research in the community and to employ the past tense (as compared with the “ethnographic present” tense) in publications. Anthropologists increasingly rely on various kinds of historical and comparative research, and the insights they derive from the effort assist them in comprehending current societies and cultures. They do recognize the limitations in understanding past events and similar occurrences in other locations when the circumstances in their own sites have changed or are changing dramatically. For many anthropologists (including me), historical documents of any kind are lacking for the specific people or group they study.⁵

This work’s second aim is to offer information and analysis about the impact of changing regimes in Iran. When I first began research among the Qashqa’i in 1970, the centralizing, modernizing, and secularizing government of Mohammad Reza Shah exerted power and authority over some dimensions of the nomads’ lives. The book Nomad emphasizes the relationships between the state and the tribe at the time. When revolutionary forces threatened the shah and his supporting regime in 1977–78, change for the nomads seemed likely. When the shah and his regime toppled in 1979 and new figures of power and authority seized control and declared an Islamic republic, further alterations for the nomads appeared imminent. The Iraq-Iran war in 1980–88 and the state’s continuing attempts at consolidation and stabilization exerted far-reaching impact. Despite these dramatic events, many aspects of the nomads’ lives have continued in ways similar to the past. I describe and analyze the extent of transformations occurring over four decades as I focus on the ways that the nomads and two different kinds of regimes interacted.

My third aim, related to the first two, concerns life at the local level in Iran during the shah’s last years and the Islamic Republic’s first 35 years. In reading scholarly publications on the revolution and the Islamic regime, I saw how general the accounts often are and how infrequently their authors consider the ways these generalizations relate to people in their local communities. Many writers had not lived in Iran recently, if at all, and lacked detailed and personally derived information to supplement their accounts, which they drew primarily from newspapers, other publications, wire-service reports, and, later, the Internet.⁶ They wrote many hundreds of books and thousands of articles— on the revolution, the collapse of the shah’s regime, the rise and fall of leftist movements, Shi’i Islam in Iran, power and authority in the Islamic Republic, politico-religious ideologies, Islamization of the state, American hostages in Iran, the Iraq–Iran war, struggles between conservatives and reformists, the personalities and outcomes of national elections, Iran’s nuclear industry, and international economic sanctions. Yet these works offer readers little information about how Iranians lived during this tumultuous period. Few of these texts address the essential question of this study. How did these national and international events affect Iranian society at the local level and impact the lives of ordinary citizens?⁷

Given the focus here on one regime in Iran ending and a new one emerging, I examine how state policies are “carried out, contested, reshaped, resisted, or revised” at the local level.⁸ This level is “a crucial arena of social struggle … and a unit of analysis to examine social change. It is the local that serves as the essential criterion and locus of change. … It is in the localities that oppression is felt and resisted, where the people actually experience the effect of national policies.”⁹ An investigation of a small town in the provinces, for example, illuminates the “interconnected processes that may otherwise be overlooked if one were to focus exclusively on macronational events.”¹⁰ “What takes place in the provincial periphery of Iran today can tell us a lot about what takes place in the country as a whole.”¹¹

Even specialized scholarly studies, such as one on Iran’s parliament and another on modern formal education in Iran, rarely provide a local-level perspective.¹² Their authors seem disinterested in offering such an outlook, which perhaps falls outside their academic disciplines and the research they conducted. Still, readers would benefit by learning about the ways that national institutions and programs affected people across Iran in their urban quarters, large and small towns, villages, and nomadic camps. In the case of the parliament, how did electoral candidates emerge from local districts? How did these individuals relate to local and national political groups and movements? What categories of people were their local backers? What local and wider factors motivated citizens to vote for one or another candidate? What impact did the winners have on these districts? In the case of formal education, how did local Islamic schools give way to modern, secular ones? How were new teachers trained, and what impact did they have on their students? What opportunities were available for the newly educated, and how did the expanding choices affect local communities?

In both of these cases, what changes occurred when the shah’s modernizing, secularizing regime collapsed and a new (or renewed) coalition of forces led by hard-line Muslim clergymen formed a conservative Islamic state? How...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of terms
• List of identities
• Timeline
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Past and present: Forty-four years of transformation
• 3 The revolution and the Islamic Republic: Reflections on 1978–2013
• 4 Reclaiming culture: The politics of resistance and defiance: Reflections on 1992
• 5 The hope of spring: Reflections on 1995—winter and spring
• 6 Death and memory: The end of the life of a Qashqa’i tribesman in Iran: Reflections on 1995—summer
• 7 Life moves on: Reflections on 1996
• 8 Decisions and consequences: Reflections on 1997 and 1998
• 9 Facing the future: Reflections on 1999
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index