Abstract
There are two periods in modern Iranian history in which the terms of the ‘woman question’ (mas’ale-ye zan) have been shaped as a central part of an emerging climate of political ideas and social concerns. The first, in the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century, ushered in the era of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’, an era during which, despite an underlying animosity towards European intrusion, Europe’s social and political achievements provided the model for modernity and progress. It was generally thought the intrusion itself could be resisted through becoming like the European Other. The ‘woman question’, meaning the now problematic place of women in a modern society, was for the first time posed in that context. The second period, from the mid-1960s to the present time, marks the rejection of the previous paradigm and the creation, reappropriation, and redefinition of a new Islamic political alternative.1
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Notes
For a survey of these changes see B. Pakizegi, ‘Legal and Social Positions of Iranian Women’, in L. Beck and N. Keddie (eds), Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978);
Gh. Vatandoust, ‘The Status of Iranian Women during the Pahlavi Regime’, in A. Fathi (ed.), Women and the Family in Iran (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985).
See Mahnat Afkhami, ‘A Future in the Past — The ‘pre-revolutionary’ Women’s Movement’, in R. Morgan (ed.), Sisterhood is Global (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1984).
L. P. Elwell-Sutton, ‘Reza Shah the Great: Founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty’, in G. Lenczowski (ed.), Iran Under the Pahlavis (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978) p. 34.
See S. Vahed, Goharshad Uprising, in Persian (Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, 1982).
H. Afshar, ‘Women, State and Ideology in Iran’, in Third World Quarterly, vol. 7 (1985) no. 2, pp. 256–78.
See N. Yeganeh, ‘Women’s Struggles in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, in A. Tabari, A. and N. Yeganeh (eds), In the Shadow of Islam: The Women’s Movement in Iran (London: Zed Press, 1982).
E. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 124–5.
M. T. Bahar, A Brief History of Iran’s Political Parties, in Persian, (Tehran: Jibi Publications, 3rd edn 1978 [1942]) pp. viii–xi.
A. R. Sadeqipur (ed.), Collection of Speeches by the Late Majesty Reza Shah the Great, in Persian (Tehran: Javidan Publishers, 1968) p. 41.
Quoted in D. N. Wilber, Reza Shah Pahlavi (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1975), p. 49.
Sh. Akhavi, ‘State Formation and Consolidation in Twentieth-Century Iran: The Reza Shah Period and the Islamic Republic’, in A. Banuazizi, and M. Weiner (eds), The State, Religion and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
For further discussion of the contrast between Turkey and Iran see C. F. Gallagher, Contemporary Islam: The Plateau of Particularism, Problems of Religion and Nationalism in Iran (New York: American Universities Field Staff Reports, 1966)
C. F. Gallagher, Contemporary Islam: The Straits of Secularism: Power, Politics, and piety in Republican Turkey, Southwest Asia Series, vol. XV, no. 3 (Turkey) (New York: American Universities Field Staff, 1966).
See also R. Pfaff, ‘Disengagement From Traditionalism in Turkey and Iran’, in Western Political Quarterly, vol. 16 (March 1963) pp. 79–98,
and B. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).
For a full discussion of women’s societies and journals of this period, see chapter 3 of E. Sanasarian, The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran (New York: Praeger, 1982).
See, for instance, ‘Eshqi’s famous poems against Reza Khan’s republican claims, M. ‘Eshqi, Collected Works, ed. A. Moshir Salimi, in Persian (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1971) pp. 277–99.
F. Adamiyat, The Ideology of Iran’s Constitutional Movement, in Persian (Tehran: Payam Publishers, 1976) pp. 426–429.
See H. E. Chehabi ‘Modernist Shi’ism and Politics: The Liberation Movement of Iran’. Ph. D. dissertation, Yale University, 1986.
See A. Najmabadi, ‘Depoliticisation of a Rentier State: The Case of Pahlavi Iran’ in H. Beblawi, and G. Luciani (eds), The Rentier State (London: Croom Helm, 1987).
See Gh. R. Afkhami, The Iranian Revolution: Thanatos on a National Scale (Washington, D.C.: The Middle East Institute, 1985) pp. 76–77.
This transformation of his role and his self-image began after the 1953 coup. Bayne (Persian Kingship in Transition, New York: American Universities Field Staff, 1968, p. 105).
See, for instance, M. R. Pahlavi Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980).
M. R. Pahlavi Towards the Great Civilization, in Persian (Tehran: Pahlavi Library Publication, 1978) p. 89.
G. E. Goodell, The Elementary Structures of Political Life: Rural Development in Pahlavi Iran (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 182.
See, A. Najmabadi ‘Iran’s Turn to Islam: From Modernism to a Moral Order’, The Middle East Journal, vol. 41 (1987) no. 2, pp. 202–17.
See M. R. Pahlavi, The White Revolution, in Persian (Tehran, 1967) and Answer to History.
See, for instance, M. R. Pahlavi, Mission for My Country, in Persian, (Tehran, 1960) pp. 474–480.
O. Fallaci, Interview with History (New York: Liveright 1976)
see S. Amir Arjomand (ed.), From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam (Albany: State University of New York, 1984);
S. Mardin, ‘Super Westernization in Urban Life in the Ottoman Empire in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century’, in P. Benedict, E. Tumertekin and F. Mansur (eds), Turkey: Geographic and Social Perspectives (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974) p. 415.
See F. San’atkar, ‘Political Marriages of Mojahedin-e Khalq’, in Persian, in Nimeye Digar, nos. 3–4 (Winter 1986), pp. 10–33,
F. San’atkar, ‘Feminism and Women Intellectuals’, in Persian, in Nazm-e Novin, vol. 8 (Summer 1987), pp. 56–85.
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© 1991 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Najmabadi, A. (1991). Hazards of Modernity and Morality: Women, State and Ideology in Contemporary Iran. In: Kandiyoti, D. (eds) Women, Islam and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21178-4_3
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