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ID:
160038
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Summary/Abstract |
This article studies materials published in the Bonyad Monthly, a journal sponsored by the Pahlavi state. It was published for two years (1977–78), just prior to the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Bonyad Monthly’s mission was to engage in the ongoing intellectual debates at the time in Iran’s encounter with modernity. It primarily published articles, interviews and translations, with the aim of exposing the cultural and moral perils of modern western culture. The writers of Bonyad Monthly cast the modern world as morally soulless, culturally debased, politically imperial and arrogant. The Journal also depicted Iranian culture as the mirror image of the modern west, and part of the rising “Eastern spiritual” resurrection. More specifically, Bonyad Monthly helped invert and de-politicize the notion of Gharbzadegi (Westoxification).
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2 |
ID:
143587
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Summary/Abstract |
Focusing on the cultural influence of the cigarette, this paper synthesizes a wide range of evidence to argue that the cigarette was a fundamental primer for Iran's encounter with modernity, especially as understood in the context of western influence. Applying the dramaturgical theories of sociologist Erving Goffman, it is argued that the cigarette is an instantiation of the “sign-equipment” of modernization used to refashion the identity and subjectivity of Iranian men and women. This refashioning has occurred in three distinct periods. In the first period (1860–1930), cigarette smoking was a habit adopted by the Persian elite in an attempt to mediate the encounter with European colonial figures. In the second period (1930–70), cigarettes were leveraged by Iranians who wished to be seen as upwardly mobile. In the final and contemporary period (1970–present), cigarettes have become ubiquitous among the adult population, but smoking itself has become the act of youth rebellion as experimentation occurs at increasingly young ages.
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