Journal of National Studies
Year:2007 | Volume:8 | Issue:1 (29)|Papers Count:8

Regarding the problems and prospects of human self-definition, the unifying thread is "identity" in its various manifestations throughout the life course. Diversity is one of the aspects of Iranian society. This paper presents the findings of a politico - linguistic research conducted in 2006 among the Tat people living in Takistan in Qazvin Province, some 130 kilometres to the north east of Tehran. These people though a minority ethnic group in Iran, constitute the majority population of the city of Takistan and its surrounding vicinity. Tat language which is a member of the South-Western group of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family is the great aspect of these people's identity.The operating assumption of the paper is that struggling with different aspects of their identity these people see themselves as entirely distinct group and honour their three thousand years old identity. Of particular interest is the relationship between their perceived differences, actual differences, and geographic location. Interviews, observations and questionnaires were employed to examine the perceived identity of Tats.

Accepting the fact that geography and land is one of the pillars of national identity, creates a meaningful connection between the context of the name of the land and social identity.In this regard the origin and evolution of the name of "Iran", during 28 centuries, beginning with the establishment of, MAD, in the plateau of Iran to the present time, is very important and considerable to realize the concept of "National Identity" in Iran.In this essay, while passing over the meaning of "Iran", and its promotion to a political - social sense of Iranian Identity, in the period of Sasanids, we will review the recreating of this concept in the reign of safavids, after an enter mission of nine centuries. This work will be based on the content analysis of the subject in hand.

Itineraries of Safvids and Quajars, regardless of their epistemological and methodological shortages, are considered as a valid and credible document, explaining rituals and manners of Iranians and representing their "world" and accounted as foundations of knowledge about Iran in the minds of their audiences.Both Safavid and Qujar era are important, regarding the issue of identity. Safavid period played a major identity role, because it started the process of Iranian identification by combining three factors, i.e. religion, myth and territory. Quajar era is important too, because the inclusive intervention of western civilization in Iran s internal affairs deeply challenged its identity.This article concentrates on the most important features of Iranians' cultural identity, wl1.ichhave been accounted by writers of itineraries. These characteristics can be categorized in positive and negative features. Positive factors of Iranians' cultural identity mentioned as follow: religious toleration, religiousness, hospitalization, knowledge seeking spirit, poetical aspirations, strong belonging to elements of national identity, acceptance of clergymen as basic reference group and inclusiveness of chastity among women. The most important negative features of Iranians identity regarded as follow: superstitiousness, sumptuousness, lack of critical spirit, corruption of government, complete separation between elite and masses, double – dealing and lack of meritocracy.

This study with the help of content analysis investigates, the case of national identity in Iranian primary school textbooks. Using content analysis, it has studied all the textbooks in primary school period. In this study, 27 volumes of textbooks in the curriculum year of 1381-82 including 512 lessons, 3199 pages, 3332 pictures were analyzed from the approach of four categories. The categories are as follows: the values of national identity, religious values, revolutio8s values and other categories which were individually investigated on the basis of the defined criteria by researchers. To obtain and to compare the significant levels of each category, it used Shannon Antrophy method, which is a new method of interpreting the messages and processing the data of a problem in content analysis According to the findings, not enough attention was paid to the abovementioned categories. In the lessons, pages, pictures of these textbooks, the role of forming national identity in the present generation, which is the main purpose of the study, has been underestimated.

The main object of the paper is to show the role of social and cultural objects on generational identification. It is derived from this conceptual and theoretical framework which mention each generations can be defined by objects which the people used to do. Therefore, all the objects which has been used by the people are making their identities. On the other hand, the objects are the main factors in distinction and interrelations among generations over time. In a glance, there are three generations over times: the pre-revolution, the revolution and war, and the young generation after the revolution. The comparative method (comparing between objects and generations) and the concept of this article are Inglehart and Ballas.

For quite a long time, the elites, the scientists, and theoreticians have been busy trying to find out more about the civilized society. Among all those who have touched the issue we can name Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Farebi, John Lock, and Jean Jacques Rousseu. What is the civilized society.indeed? What are its proportions? What are its signs? What are the main mechanisms of which we can eventually lead to it? What mechanisms have hampered its progress? What are the mechanisms which can assist us?The present work attempts to study and analyse the above questions through looking at Imam Khomein's Kosar. The present work will have the following results: a scientific familiarity with Imam's Islamic insight in answering the above questions, presenting his guidelines for the oppressed muslim nations and communities for saving themselves from backwardness, and suggesting some important questions for future research.

One of the important events of Iranian Constitutional movement was the participation of Bakhtiari tribal Khans' force against despotic fans and their effective support of constitutionalists and their cooperation in conquering Tehran in July 1909. This activity on the part of Bakhtiari Khans due to this fact that this political movement was born out of the needs of city community and was not related to the tribal community, has surprised the political and historical analysts. This paper, therefore, has attempted to analyze the structural features of tribal community and to evaluate their military capacity produced within this structure. It was due to this military power that tribes and nomads could dominate the Iranian states. This paper will analyze the action of Bakhtiari Khans in this respect.