Ali Mozaffari

The heritage ‘NGO’: a case study on the role of grass roots heritage societies in Iran and their perception of cultural heritage

This paper examines the activities of a group of heritage enthusiasts in Iran. Grass roots heritage activism is a relatively recent phenomenon that appeared in Iran since the late 1990s. They are increasingly operating collectively as cultural or heritage NGOs. They have diverse socio-economic origins and political views. However, as this paper argues, they share a common ground in their activities; one that maintains an ambivalent and critical relationship with the state and official definitions of heritage and identity. Referring to interview and other data collected during fieldwork in Iran, this paper traces and analyses the contours of that common ground and argues that there is a nascent heritage movement in the country. The impact and contribution of these emerging and self-reflective heritage movements to Iranian identity, which is reflected in their embracing of diversity and the notion of historical continuity, reveal the dynamism and complexity of the cultural and political landscape of contemporary Iranian society. They also reveal the importance of generating further scholarship in the field of Iranian cultural heritage. In conceptualising the characteristics of a nascent heritage movement in Iran, the paper makes a new contribution to the approach of existing scholarship in the broader field of heritage studies.

Islamism and Iran's Islamic Period Museum.

The Islamic Period Museum of Iran was established, almost 16 years after the Islamic Revolution, as an addition to the previous National Museum building – the Iran Bastan, or Ancient Iran Museum – in 1996. By examining the components of state Islamism, the space of the museum and key exhibits, this paper reveals the analogous relationship between the museum and state ideology. That relationship suggests that the museum embodies fundamental ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in Iranian state Islamism. Those ambiguities and inconsistencies are only concealed, in the museum as in the ideology, by employing traditionalist rhetoric with regard to religion and identity.

Forum: Reflecting on the Politics of Patrimony

Abstract This Forum evolved from a provocation by the Editors of this special issue of Fabrications that “too often heritage conservation assumes an apolitical stance by neglecting to acknowledge its own unsettling agendas.” The Forums five contributors highlight a range of challenges and trends that architectural heritage professionals – including historians – have begun to identify and engage with in a critical fashion. These pieces demonstrate the need to commit to historical practice that embraces the “critical turn,” and to acknowledge our responsibilities as “gatekeepers” and producers of knowledge. While we cannot control the multitude of interpretations that our work will surely generate across time and space, we can consider whether we are contributing to, or challenging, existing silences, inaccuracies, and regimes of knowledge. This Forum does not claim to provide answers, but instead seeks to foster discussion and identify some of the avenues along which work in the general realm of “Architecture / Heritage / Politics” is – or should be – progressing.

Designing a Revolutionary Habitat: Tradition, Heritage and Housing in the Immediate Aftermath of the Iranian Revolution – Continuities and Disruptions

Abstract For the first decade after its victory, the Iranian revolution (1979) was dominated by an uncompromising Islamist ideology, invoking the Islamic and vernacular traditions. A logical arena through which Islamism could act upon people’s daily lives was public housing, the design and construction of which is controlled by the government, and its constituents are the masses who mostly adhere to Muslim traditions and espouse forms of Islamic identity in their daily life. Referring to a selection of projects from a series of government housing competitions held in 1986, we examine the relationship between the submitted designs and architectural precedents cited as constituting “Islamic architectural heritage.” Elaborating on the heritage processes involved in articulating the past in these designs, we trace the interrelationships between these designs and other, non-Islamic, architectural discourses and design procedures deriving from a Western context. We argue for rethinking the relationship between heritage and architectural design, such that the latter is seen as the process of refashioning fragments of past traditions into heritage, in this case, a purportedly Islamic form. Concurrently, we show the gap between ideological rhetoric and the praxis of design and remarkable continuities between the periods leading up to and following the revolution.

Reclaiming Heritage through the Image of Traditional Habitat

From the 1960s, Iran, like many other similar countries experienced a radical urban expansion and industrialization, chiefly as a result of the expanding oil industry. Internal migration fueled by industrialization created both a crisis of habitation and a cultural dissonance, in response to which various schemes were developed for model communities, intended to bridge the gap between Iranian culture, its heritage, and modern urbanism. We will examine one such “model community,” New Shushtar, a housing complex adjacent to the ancient heritage town of Shushtar, in which architectural motifs and images were used to evoke and perhaps invoke authentic traditional life. We will place this complex within the broader context in the Muslim world of attempts to defend regional culture from the effects of globalization.

Picturing Pasargadae: Visual Representation and the Ambiguities of Heritage in Iran

For Graham Seal This paper probes the relationship between visual representations and visitation practices at Pasargadae, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Iran. Presenting a systematic analysis of publicly available online images of Pasargadae, the paper examines the complex relationship between the place and its visual representations. Through analysis, the paper elaborates on a sense of intimacy that, while grounding Pasargadae, is also a potential common ground in pre-Islamic heritage in which the Iranian state and society could at once meet and contest versions of identity. Examining this relationship facilitates reflections into both heritage and the peculiarities of its visual representation in the Iranian context.

Heritage Contests: What Can We Learn from Social Movements?

ABSTRACT While contests and conflicts are well recognized in heritage research, analysis of the specific circumstances and dilemmas that individuals and groups face when pursuing heritage goals and partaking in heritage contests can benefit from further methodological work. This paper presents a case and method for incorporating concepts from an emerging interactionist perspective on social movements into heritage research in order to better conceptualize and analyze the interactions and processes through which collective identity and heritage is co-produced. We examine the political and interpretive processes at the heart of heritage research, consider areas in which the language and concepts of social movements addresses existing gaps and disagreements, and identify a set of questions that will open new perspectives on heritage movements and contests. We apply these questions to a heritage contest over the World Heritage site of Pasargadae in Iran, emphasizing how heritage activists advanced their perspectives and claims, eventually leading to the incorporation of Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage within the official Islamic republic discourse.