Precarious Lives

Waiting and Hope in Iran

Shahram Khosravi

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780812248876, 9780812248876
• eBook ISBN: 9780812293692
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Social Sciences

In Precarious Lives, Shahram Khosravi attempts to reconcile the paradoxes of Iranians' everyday life in the first decade of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, multiple circumstances of precarity give rise to a sense of hopelessness, shared visions of a futureless tomorrow, widespread home(land)lessness, intense individualism, and a growth of incivilities. On the other, daydreaming and hope, as well as civility and solidarity in political protests, street carnivals, and social movements, continue to persist. Young Iranians describe themselves as being stuck in purposelessness and forced to endure endless waiting, and they are also aware that they are perceived as unproductive and a burden on their society. Despite the aspirations and inspiration they possess, they find themselves forced into petrifying social and spatial immobility. Uncertainty in the present, a seemingly futureless tomorrow: these are the circumstances that Khosravi explores in Precarious Lives.Creating an intricate and moving portrait of contemporary Iranian life, Khosravi weaves together individual stories, government reports, statistics, and cultural analysis of art and literature to depict how Iranians react to the experience of precarity and the possibility of hope. Drawing on extensive ethnographic engagement with youth in Tehran and Isfahan as well as with migrant workers in rural areas, Khosravi examines the complexities and contradictions of everyday life in Iran. Precarious Lives is a vital work of contemporary anthropology that serves as a testament to the shared hardship and hope of the Iranian people.

CHAPTER 1

THE PRECARIOUS FAMILY

Between the family and the state, there is only a bare wasteland.

—Omid Mehregan (1388/2009: 16)

At the close of March 2015, Iranians were celebrating Nowrouz, the Iranian New Year, a time they gather together to praise the family and family kinship. The intensive ritualized practice of “see and resee each other” would strengthen family affections and bonds. While the ancient tradition and rituals were at work to guarantee the stability and continuity of family values, a shocking family drama reminded Iranians about current social changes, the break and discontinuity of family values and norms that are supposed to be transcendental. The murder on the Italy Street in Tehran was soon all everyone talked about, mixed with worries and horror during the Nowrouz rituals.

The news reported that a twenty-seven-year-old man first strangled his sister to death and then cut his father’s throat. Afterward he spent the whole night meeting friends and going to the theater to see a movie. This is only one among many news stories, reports, and rumors that reveal the crisis within the family. A panic over the “family crisis” and “collapse of the family” has entered not only the daily life of ordinary people but also official discourse and public debates. In this chapter, I explore how the family has been drastically weakened by structural transformations such as the political turbulence after the Revolution, the eight-year war with Iraq (1980–1988), mass emigration, long-term economic hardship, controversial family policies, and discriminatory politics that have particularly targeted women.

Revolutions and the Family

The Islamic Republic values the family as the core foundation of Islamic society. Since the Revolution of 1979, the main focus of the state, on both a rhetorical and a practical level, has been to promote and strengthen the family as an institution. In official discourse, the ideal Islamic family is crucial for a harmonious social order; a “healthy society is built on a healthy family.”¹ The Iranian Constitution, in the Preamble and Article 21, praises the family as “the fundamental unit of society and the main center for the growth and edification of the human being” and mandates that the government protect and support the family.² The family thus has become a central focus of legislation and regulation in post-revolutionary Iran (Osanloo 2012). The new Republic aimed to recreate the society built on the fundamentals of Islam, according to the pattern of the charismatic community of “early Islam.” The lifetime of the Prophet appears in post-revolutionary political discourse as a temporal frame of reference, against which the present is measured. The original Muslim community led by the Prophet is seen as the most authentic form of an Islamic community. Since the Revolution, the regime has made attempts to legitimize its policies by utilizing the myth of the early Islamic era. Based on Quran verses and hadiths (reports of statements or actions of Muhammad), the official discourse endorses “a true family” (khanevadeh oswah; oswah is an Arabic word that means symbolic and true representative). One historical feature of Shiite Islam is the family tie between the first imam, Ali, and Fatemeh, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Their marriage has been used as an allegory of an ideal family in school books, official sermons, and the media by the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the birthday of Fatemeh became Mother’s Day, and the birthday of Ali became Father’s Day. In the manifest of the state-run Family Studies Association, a true family is presented with a heterosexual, patriarchal family structure in which the man is the breadwinner and head, while the woman is responsible for the education and upbringing of the children.³ A huge propaganda apparatus has sent patriarchal and heteronormative messages through the mass media and educational system to maintain and support the ideology of the Islamic family. State-sanctioned television series, weekly magazines, films, radio and television talk shows, as well as the school curriculum, have all been used as means “to strengthen the family system.” However, over the three decades since the Revolution in Iran, the family as an institution has never been as weak and fragile as it is now. Iranian families are struggling with enormous crises. In the official discourse, the crises have resulted in an escalating divorce rate, fewer marriages, a generation gap, “runaway girls,” “sexual anomie,” an increasing number of street children, and domestic violence. Rapid political and social changes have created huge challenges for the family, gradually resulting in structural changes of this institution.

The Revolution

Revolutions weaken the family. There are several historical examples, from the French and Russian Revolutions to the Chinese Revolution. Not an exception, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 changed family structures in Iran as well. Power relations within the family shifted enormously as a result of the rapid social changes. Ideational changes and changes in cultural goals followed the Revolution. Some unintended consequences of the Revolution have been more autonomy in terms of choice of spouses, higher demand for gender equality within the family, controlled fertility, increasingly independent nuclear families, emergence of new forms of partnership, and children challenging their fathers’ authority.

A good example of the impact of revolutions on the family is the Russian October Revolution of 1917. “Bolshevik feminism” transformed the family and liberated women from the bourgeois patriarchal household. The Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship in the Soviet Union in 1918 aimed to improve women’s legal and social situation. Simple divorce was an outcome of the code, resulting in an accelerating divorce rate. In less than a decade the divorce rate soared and by 1927 two-thirds of all marriages ended in divorce (Goldman 1993: 297). Improved childcare facilities contributed to the entrance of more women in the male-dominated industries. The Bolshevik emancipation of women even had an impact on urban planning and architecture. For instance, small apartments were built for single people. The radical transformation of the family in the Soviet Union meant that a huge number of children were forced to the streets. Poor and neglected by both the family and the state, homeless children became a phenomenon. The growing number of homeless children (besprizornost) and single mothers, as well as the so-called “sexual anarchy,” reached alarming levels in the second half of the 1920s. As this chapter shows, similar “social harms” succeeded the transformations of the family that occurred in post-revolutionary Iran. Although entirely opposite in their approach to the family and women’s roles, there are similarities in the changes of the family structures after the 1917 October Revolution and the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Revolution, however, is always a protest by young people against what they perceive as the old. Therefore, a generational conflict is inherent in revolution. In general, revolutions deflate the family. They demand loyalties. A revolutionary state requires total loyalty from its citizens; it should stand above all other kinds of loyalties such as ethnic, religious, or familial. I myself have experienced this. One year after the Revolution, my father was arrested, accused of anti-revolutionary activities. I was fourteen years old and a zealous devotee of the Revolution. When my mother told us that my father had been arrested, in a time of political chaos and mass execution, my reaction surprised everyone. I just said, “he is probably culpable.” For me at that time, the newborn revolution came before my family. In the presence of the charismatic symbolic father of the Revolution, my own father’s authority faded away.

The leaders of revolutions usually turn into father figures and become the father of the nation, such as Mao and Stalin. Theodor Adorno used the term “fatherless society” to explain how, both in Nazi Germany and later in socialist East Germany, the state entered family life and took over the father’s (and mother’s) roles (Adorno 1969, quoted in Abazari 1381/2002). Drawing on Adorno’s argument, Iranian sociologist Yousef Abazari believes that, in post-revolutionary Iran, a “patriarchy without father” emerged. The state replaced the father. A consequence of the emergence of the state as a powerful father has been the “child-becoming” process of the nation (1381/2002). As I have discussed elsewhere, the art of government in Iran is characterized by connecting the father’s government of the family to the science of ruling the state, continuity and transmission running from the family to the state. The art of government is thus the extension of the “pastoral power” of the father over his household and wealth into the organizing technicalities of the state (Khosravi 2008).

The replacement of household fathers by the state affected the relationship between parents and children. Loyalty to the state weakened family ties. Children were asked to report on their parents, and zealous revolutionary parents assisted police to arrest their children, who were persecuted because of their political opinion. The Revolution politicized the whole nation. Conflicting political ideologies within families, particularly between children and parents, caused families to split, something that also happened among the highest ranks of power.

The War

Beside conflicting ideologies, another factor that destabilized the family drastically was the eight long years of war with Iraq (1980–1988). More than half a million young Iranian men are estimated to have lost their lives in the war (Amani 1992). Hundreds of thousands of young war widows with small children faced serious social and economic difficulties. Furthermore, the war radicalized revolutionary young people to break with their families. The war propaganda apparatus encouraged young men, often teenagers, to go to the front with or without parents’ permission (see Golkar 2015). One of these was Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh, a thirteen-year-old boy who joined the basij at an early stage of the war. In October 1980, while the Iraqi army was on a forward march and the border city of Khoramshahr was besieged, Fahmideh jumped under an Iraqi tank and pulled out the pins of grenades. His self-sacrifice became a legend, and Ayatollah Khomeini called him “the true leader of the Revolution.” Fahmideh was turned into iconic propaganda of total loyalty to the Revolution, commemorated in official ceremonies and textbooks. His portrait appears in murals in almost all cities, and a postage stamp in his memory was issued in 1986. Choosing the Revolution before his parents, he responded to the call by the authorities, rather than asking his parents for permission. Prioritizing the revolutionary state before the family has been part of all revolutions, which need legends like Fahmideh who choose the state over family. The revolutionary state of the Soviet Union created its own legend: Pavel Trofimovich Morozov. Like Fahmideh, Pavel was a thirteen-year-old boy; he collaborated with the authorities to arrest his father, accused of antisocialist activities in 1932. The father was executed; later Pavel was killed by his own grandfather. The Soviet state declared Pavlik a national hero: a thirteen-year-old boy who sacrificed his family and himself for the Revolution. As an icon of a true revolutionary, statues of him were erected in cities, streets and parks were named after him, and books, songs, and even a symphonic poem have been written about him.⁴

The war caused enormous pressure on Iranian families. Over 2.5 million people were forcedly displaced, which meant families splitting, the loss of properties, economic pressures, death of family members, and psychological stress. Consequently, the number of families breaking up soared. During the war, the divorce rate among displaced families was about 40 percent higher than the national rate (Aghajanian 1990). The war also accelerated the mass emigration from Iran following the Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of young men escaped the country to avoid military service, resulting in family members dispersed throughout the world.

Economic Pressures

The family as a unit was severely struck with enormous economic hardship following the Revolution and the war. Financial insecurity affected a majority of households. High double-digit inflation, lack of foreign investment, the U.S. embargo, and later the international sanctions against Iran have resulted in the drastic deterioration of the household economy. Iranian sociologist Yosuf Abazari (1381/2002) believes that the newborn Republic, busy with various political conflicts that emerged soon after the Revolution and the long and devastating war with Iraq, left families to manage on their own. Furthermore, there were few independent civil organizations to assist families with their problems. The family, then, had no choice but to take over the responsibilities of the state. One example of this is education, which is free in Iran from the elementary school to university level, at least according to the Constitution. Nevertheless the huge burden of education has been and still is put on Iranian families themselves. In reality, a large part of the household budget is invested in children’s education. Due to the economic pressures, even public schools, not to mention private ones, demand that parents pay school fees. The poor quality of education in public schools has been the main cause for growth of private schools in the large cities. Upper-middle-class families send their children to private schools, which demand fees unaffordable by lower- and even many middle-class families. The poor education standards in public schools push parents to provide extra tutoring and activities to prepare their children for the annual university entrance examination. The competition for limited seats at state universities is fierce. In 2011, only 10 percent of the 1.3 million people who took the konkur were admitted to free universities. Others try to find a place at semiprivate Islamic Azad Universities, to which students have to pay high fees. All this has resulted in the explosion of the private education sector in the past two decades. The documentary Countdown (by Khatereh Hanachi, 2008) is about an eighteen-year-old woman struggling with the demands for and expectations of educational successes. The film illustrates not only the severe psychological and emotional pressure on young people facing the konkur, but also the devastating consequences of such a burden on the household.

Investing a huge amount of money and time in children’s education with no guarantee of employment or a job matching the education causes emotional and financial crises within the family. The family, supporting their children through education, military service, unemployment, marriage, and frequently even after marriage, are bent under the financial and social burdens. Young people are sent back and forth between the state and the family. Betrayed by the state, the young see the family as the only source of support and hope. Parents, meanwhile, believe that the younger generation is too demanding, careless, incompetent, materialistic, and indolent. There is a similar discourse blaming young people for being lazy, demanding, careless, and superficial in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (see Hasso 2011). Not many families, however, can afford to support their children for a long time, and this causes additional tension. Children, disappointed and failing to achieve full adulthood (that is, marriage and employment), blame their parents for their situation.

Pir Pesar (Reluctant Bachelor, by Mehdi Bagheri, 2011), a documentary film about the director himself, illustrates how economic pressures on families damage this core institution and result in mutual mistrust between parents and children. The film conveys frankly the director’s conflicts with his father. Bagheri, a thirty-year-old man from a low-income family, lives in a suburb of Tehran. He is educated but has only temporary jobs. Underemployed, reluctantly single, and unable to build an independent life, he blames his father for his “failures” in l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on Transliteration and Dates
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Precarious Family
• Chapter 2. The 1360 Generation
• Chapter 3. Ephebiphobia, the Fear of Youth
• Chapter 4. Streets
• Chapter 5. Walls
• Chapter 6. Learning to Endure
• Chapter 7. Precarious Iran
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Acknowledgments