August 21, 2008

 From: Michael Burawoy, ISA Vice-President for National Associations

 Re: Visit to Iran, June 12-26, 2008

 

In 2006 the Iranian Sociological Association applied to join the ISA. In 2007 the ISA voted to accept its application. In 2008 the Iranian Sociological Association invited me to visit Iran and talk about ways in which scientific collaboration could be extended between the two associations. I was there from June 12 to June 26, accompanied by Nazanin Shahrokni, PhD student at Berkeley, conducting research in Iran and a member of the Council of ISA’s Research Committee 32, Women and Society. We visited 4 cities and 5 universities – University of Tehran, University of Shiraz, University of Isfahan, University of Mazandaran at Babolsar, and Allameh TabaTabai University in Tehran – as well as one government research institute.  I gave 8 lectures on various topics: the ISA, Public Sociology, Hurricane Katrina, Ethnographic Research, and Scientific Associations.

            The entire two weeks was wonderfully organized by the Iranian Sociological Association and, in particular by its President Hossein Serajzadeh. Everywhere I went the hospitality was bountiful and warm. The discussions I had were amazing and fruitful. The talks were all well attended even though students were taking examinations. It was all largely made possible by the brilliant translating and interpreting of Ms. Shahrokni without whom this visit would have hardly been possible.

            I began the two weeks with a presentation to the Iranian Sociological Association about the ISA -- the benefits of individual membership but most importantly of collective membership.  About 20 people were present including the 5-member board of the Iranian Sociological Association, previous board members and heads of various scientific groups. I told them about the Forum in Barcelona, the conference of National Associations in Taipei (which Dr. Ghanaeirad will attend), the Congress in Sweden, the website for National Associations, the sponsorship of Regional Conferences, the PhD laboratories, and the possibility of publications in ISA journals and its monograph series. By the end of the two weeks I had interested the board of the Iranian Sociological Association in sponsoring a PhD laboratory that would reach out into the region, in the development of a website in English, the possibility of putting together a collection of papers in English on Iranian sociology, and the attendance of the various international conferences. 

            Dr. Fakouhi of University of Tehran gave a presentation at the opening meeting on behalf of the Iranian Sociological Association. [1] Iranian sociology has had a short but lively history. The first course in sociology was taught in 1938 but it was not until 1972 that a Faculty of Social Sciences was founded and the introduction of PhD training had to wait until 1990. This was also the year in which the Iranian Sociological Association was founded.

            Many of the most influential sociologists before the revolution (1979) had been trained abroad, most often in France but also in the U.S. and U.K. After the revolution there was an attempt to develop an Islamic sociology. These efforts had limited success. Many of the sociologists in the country are still trained abroad. In 2003 of the 216 Iranian sociologists (faculty members) with PhDs, 55.3% were trained in Iran, and the bulk of the remainder was trained in France (12.5%), USA (11.6%), India (5.1%), and Germany (3.2%). [2] Many of the sociology departments also contain a smaller number of anthropologists, and there is generally hope for greater inter-disciplinary collaboration.   

            One of the more striking developments in post-revolutionary Iran is the expansion of enrollments in higher education and, in particular, the expansion of female enrollments, so that 67% of the 31,274 social science students are women. There has been some increase in female representation in the faculty but still only 14.3% of sociology PhDs are held by women. Still these demographic changes in gender have attracted a lot of interest from sociologists, feminist and other. 

A second striking feature of Iran is its internal multiplicity – in many ways far more ethnically plural than I had imagined. Only 50% of the population has Persian as its mother tongue. This has grave implications for national unity. 

              Since its formation in 1990 the Iranian Sociological Association has made great strides forward, especially over the last 10 years. From an office with a key it has now developed into an association with approximately 1,000 members, 200 of whom are active scholars. The association publishes two journals – the Iranian Journal of Sociology (4 issues a year) which began in 2000 and the newly launched Iranian Journal of Social Studies. Within the association there are 13 active scientific research groups (including social pathologies, rural sociology, women’s studies, urban sociology, sociology of revolution and social movements, sociology of art and literature, sociology of science and technology, sociology of religion, and cultural studies).

            The defense of sociology, as an academic discipline, has been substantially aided by one or two well-placed ambassadors, such as Dr. Tavassoli and Dr. Abdollahi.  Following his former Dr. Moidfar Dr. Serajzadeh, as the President of the Iranian Sociological Association, is making every effort to build an ecumenical and open association, linking together sociologists with different university affiliations and political and ideological backgrounds as well as people with different theoretical and methodological interests. He also steered the recent entry of the Iranian Sociological Association into the ISA -- a further sign of its growing vitality. 

Although, as a research and teaching enterprise, sociology is heavily concentrated in Tehran, the Iranian Sociological Association now has branches in several cities across the country. The University of Shiraz continues its tradition of teaching PhD students in English, inherited from the Pahlavi era, and has contacts with US and British universities. Isfahan, one of the old capitals of Iran, is less integrated into the international world but its sociologists were no less interested in contacts abroad.

At Babolsar we also met scholars who had been educated abroad and I gave my talk to the faculty in English without any translation. The Iranian Sociological association is making efforts to bring the varied regions of Iran into its orbit and to forge scientific relations with the rest of the world. My talks on public sociology aroused a certain curiosity. The conceptualization of public sociology was novel if not the practice. In the reform era under President Khatami (1997-2005) sociology was indeed very active in the public sphere. To this day there remain fluid and resilient publics, marked by informal organization in civil society, and by a range of critical media outlets (especially magazines) and weblogs authored by sociologists. In other words, there is a considerable gap between political discourse and concrete society and thus an ongoing space for public sociology. Some, of course, were suspicious of the idea of public sociology as a Western contamination and I was repeatedly asked my opinion of an indigenous sociology, Islamic or other. This question can be understood in the light of the widespread use of Persian translations of European social thinkers (from Durkheim, Weber and Marx to Habermas, Foucault and Giddens) and U.S. sociologists (including texts written by Jonathan Turner, George Ritzer and others). 

            Perhaps the most interesting public discussion followed my talk on “Hurricane Katrina: Social Autopsy of an American Disaster.” The talk focused on the abysmal failure of prevention, relief and reconstruction as a reflection of the militarization of the US state and the marketization of its economy. 

An Iranian economist, Dr. Athari, followed with a talk on Iranian state’s reconstruction efforts following the 2003 earthquake that destroyed the ancient city of Bam, leaving 30,000 people dead. This was a state driven high modernist project which brought limited success because it ignored the preexisting society. The Iranian state set about creating a completely new city by building new physical structures, overlooking the social foundations of community.  Where I had talked about a postmodern capitalism and racism, Athari framed his analysis in terms of incomplete modernization and a dual economy. There was a very interesting discussion about the comparative pathologies of our two states, and the movement of populations after the disaster. Many in the audience held up the US as a model society and so they found my analysis problematic.        

            Before I left I had discussions with Dr. Serajzadeh about possible future projects and collaborations, including the hosting of regional conferences and a regional PhD laboratory as well as developing the association’s website in English (in addition to the one that already exists in Persian). Notwithstanding visa and language problems, the association is making every effort to participate in international conferences. I said the ISA would in turn do all it can to assist Iranian sociologists in pursuing these goals.  

 

1. Thanks to Dr. Fakouhi for allowing me to draw on his power point, “Iranian Sociological Association: A Country Report.” 

 

2. According to Dr. Serajzadeh, the total number of sociology PhDs today is more like 300.