Journal of National Studies
Year:2019 | Volume:20 | Issue:4 (80) |Papers Count:9

Egocentrism, unilateralism, and authoritarianism are among the concepts emphasized by the orientalist approach in describing Iranian national identity. The dominant reasoning of the proponents of the approach in exploring the roots of these identity problems holds the historical tyranny ruling over Iranians responsible for its formation, and this historical deviation has periodically secured and rebuilt the pillars of despotism in Iran. This paper builds its claim on the criticism of these orientalist views and emphasizes that while Iranian history and identity have not been immune to "despotism intoxication" and that it has left its marks on the very temperaments of Iranians, highlighting the identity problems should not obstruct the attention to the aspects of the collectivist and cooperative attitude as the pillars and virtues of the Iranian civil life. This research reviews those Iranian and non-Iranian travel literature from the Safavid to the pre-Islamic Revolution era that have a more anthropological approach. The study is a descriptive and analytical review and the document research method is used to collect the data.

National convergence and cohesion and avoiding from divergence is one of the most important functions of governments to make the most benefit from resources and to prevent aliens from infiltrate and looting these resources. This issue is of great importance from the perspective that without national cohesion and productivity as the main keyword to proper utilization of resources, competition with other countries and regional and trans-regional actors will not be possible. Therefore, among other factors affecting national convergence which has been addressed in many social science studies, this study seeks to answer the question that, does balanced development lead to national convergence in border regions? To answer this question, a grounded theory method is used, in which the researcher attempts to achieve to a theory or a scientific concept regarding the subject under investigation and answer the research question by analyzing the phenomena and revealed facts, and conducting field research as well as by instigating related elites. In this study, 84 elites, mainly from border provinces, were surveyed on 8 economic indicators as effective (positive and negative) variables on national convergence that represented balanced development or underdevelopment. The research findings show that 5 indicators of economic development, investment in infrastructure, investment in social capital, government development investment and human development affects national convergence more than 60% as a factor of national convergence strength and more than 70% as high and very high. The 3 indicators of youth unemployment, economic corruption in society, and class divisions or inadequate distribution of resources as a factor of weakness and threat are both high and very high, with an average of 40 and 45 and 80 percent, respectively. The results of the standard deviation test also show that strengthening the first five indicators will greatly increase the national convergence and cohesion in the border regions and strengthening the next three indicators will have the opposite effect.

This research aims to understand the role of sports and cinematic activities on the national pride. This research carried out with Qualitative research method by grounded theory strategy and data collection is done by semi-structured interview method, In the analysis of data, by using coding, analytic concepts and categories have been extracted and the conceptual model of the research is based on these codes. The comprehensive model of national pride shows that sports activities are affected by three categories of causal, underlying, and interventional conditions. Due to the causal conditions, some components make it essential for a community to pay attention to the national pride of sporting and cinematic activities. Among these components are the community's need for sports and cinematic activities, the weakness in the planning of sports and cinematic activities, the success of the neighboring countries in cinema and sports, the weakness of the achievements of sports and cinema, the cinematic frustration and the need to be recognized in the international arena.

Nowadays, Persian-speakers are solely the inhabitants of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. In spite of different nationality, the people of these three countries belong to the same culture. Thus the main objective of the current research would be the analysis of national identity of Persian-speakers in the poetic heritage of Gulrukhsor Safieva (born in 1947); Tajik contemporary poet. According to theoretical of Romanticism, the author has analyzed and classified national identity of Iranian people into five major categories including: native land (Ariana), mythic and national system (nation of sun (, national origin (Iran and Turan), national language (native language), national masterpiece (Shahnameh and its reproduction). The analysis of poets’ divan showed that tendency to refer to the macro-structures of national identity has been in constant relationship with socio-historical context of poets’ lifetime. This tendency has been highly significant in the period of independence and influenced the poet ideational and mental evolution.

According to the settlement of half of the countrys population in the border provinces and their importance of security for the country, the recognition of the migration process in these provinces is important for demographic and socio-economic policy makers. Migration changes the identity and values of migrant because of its linguistic, social, cultural and psychological consequences. The aim of this paper is to investigate the trend changes and migration patterns in the border provinces of the country over the past two decades. The research method is descriptive and based on statistical analysis of census data. The results show that migration flow have been decreasing in border provinces and their dominant pattern is the increasing of out-of-provincial migrations. As well, the migration trends indicates that provinces of Khouzestan, Kermanshah, and Sistan & Baluchestan always have been the main emigrant polygons, while provinces of Bushehr, Gilan, Mazandaran and Hormozgan have been the main immigrant polygons during these years. Finally, the provinces of Ardebil, Ilam, Khouzestan, Sistan & Baluchestan, Kurdistan and Kermanshah always have been emigrants, while Bushehr and Mazandaran always have been immigrants in the past two decades. In general, due to the massive population of working age, low development level, high rates of unemployment and shortage of employment opportunities, it has been increased migration especially out-of-provincial ones in the border provinces.

If we accept that humans take an important part of their identity from the environment and attributing itself to the environment and dominant patterns in it affects human perception, then can understand the role of traditional architecture patterns, such as the "Iranian Garden". Therefore, this research tries to use a conceptual model to investigate the relationship between the past architectural identity and human funds and defines the concept of place identity based on sensory perceptions. The research method is descriptive-analytical with an interpretive look. The results indicate that Persian garden as "place" is a general and qualitative phenomenon consisting of "sensory experience" that in the first step, with visual and spatial visions, all sensory data are regulated and then reveals its own character in the same direction, through the creation of a mental structure and the association of existential meanings for memory in the context of time. Thus, the sense of "sameness" with the qualitative aspect of the Persian garden is a degree of authentication of place.

The main element of national identity is the common country. Belonging feeling to a country always begins the geographical Considerations, and always there is a conflict and tension between landing dependency and its interest and global feelings that makes the role of national identity more clear. Attacking to the identical borders of Iran, after the wars between Iran and Russia are in the number of the most important events of contemporary history. meanwhile shahanshahnam_e_saba had formed as a great book in this sensitive period in this research the degree of attention of this book to the borders of Iran and sensitivity of Saba to the had studied geographical identity by the way of analytical descriptive, and by using the content analysis approach. High frequency of the word «border» in shahanshahname and emphasis of Saba on border cities of Iran, with the Ruth this book for the consecutive losses by Iranian the fronts or bias on the Abbas Mirza’ s victories, is the factor to understand the amount of geographical identity reproducing in this book is more than the other factors of national identity.

The present paper deals with the policies of the Achaemenid kings in the process of formation and consolidation of Iranian identity in this period and tries to answer the following questions what was the position of Iranian identity in the political, religious, and cultural programs of the Achaemenid kingdom? This research has been written with a historical, political, and sociological approach based on descriptive-analytic research method. The findings of the research indicate that Median and Persian Iranians, after overtaking of the Iranian element on the Iranian plateau, introduced and consolidated the Iranian identity in the ancient world. Darius, exploiting the opportunity of ethnic-dynastic revolts after the death of Cambyses, attempted to apply three approach of cultural identity (Aryan language), political-geographic (central core of Iranian lands) and religious (placing Ahuramazda as the god of the Aryans) to Establish solidarity between the Iranian peoples and strengthen their link with the Achaemenid empire as the Iranian kingdom. These approaches, in historical, political, geographical, religious, and cultural dimensions, gave the continuation and dynamism to Iranian's identity and brought to create the concept of Iran in the political sense of the Sassanid era.