Abstract:
The article provides a critical assessment of the more recent literature that relies on theoretical frameworks such as post modernism and globalization to deal with national identity, ethnicity and cultural mobility. Explaining sensitive and complicated issues such as identity requires the extensive use of the native historical, cultural and sociological sources related to the Iranian experience in the past rather than extracting generalizations based on a general and a-historical application of general social science theories. Three factors throughout Iranian history have played significant roles in creating a sense of national identity or Iranian-ness among all groups in Iranian society. These factors are the legacy of ancient Iran’s political heritage, the central role of the Persian language in conveying the political, cultural and religious legacy to all Iranian religious and linguistic groups, and the important role of religion in the revival of Iran’s cultural heritage, its independence, and unification.
Machine summary:
Unity within Diversity: Foundations and Dynamics of National Identity in Iran Hamid Ahmadi1 Associate Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran Received 12 January 2012 Revised 10 February 2012 Accepted 14 March 2012 The article provides a critical assessment of the more recent literature that relies on theoretical frameworks such as post modernism and globalization to deal with national identity, ethnicity and cultural mobility.
For a more recent work, see Brenda Shafer, Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity (MIT Press, 2002), which reflects the political and strategic Although some literature in the last decade has touched on the issues of identity, nationalism and nation-building in Iran in a way that reflect the application of a historical sociology tradition and thus presents more realistic analyses of Iranian society(Ashraf,2004Kashani sabet,200), few studies have concentrated on explaining the causes behind the dynamics of national unity and political continuity in Iran in the past and the fact that different religious and linguistic groups, especially non-Persians, have contributed to these dynamics and even have promoted the factors that are the foundations of Iranian national unity and identity.
S. Enders presents three basic factors: 1) the abstract non-Muslim and non-Turco-Mongol principle of monarchy, which accepts the ruler being of any ethnic origins (provided that he meets the second two criteria) or dynasty; 2) a state culture with Persian as the literary and administrative language; and 3) a state religion which in Iran since the sixteenth century has been Shi'i Islam.