Continuity and Change in Rural Iran: The Eastern Deserts

Professional ethnography did not enter Iran until the late fifties. For a variety of reasons which are largely non-Iranian and non-an­thropological the anthropologists who have worked in Iran since then have concentrated their attention on pastoral nomads, and little work of any anthropological significance has been done in the village sector of Iranian society. My general interest in the historical ecology of the desert areas of eastern Iran led me to embark in the summer of 1969 on a series of preliminary studies of oasis village communities. This essay relies on the data collected in two short seasons1 and a long fam­iliarity with the Iranian deserts in general. Small isolated settlements in eastern Iran are of course in no way representative of Iranian vil­lages in general. However the fascination of the deserts for a fieldwork­er interested in social processes lies in the immense distances and the low density of population. Problems which are difficult to isolate in the more typical areas of relatively high population density may be exposed in simple relief in the deserts. The solutions may of course not be the same. At this stage I am suggesting only that what can be extrapolated from the results of preliminary studies in the east may prove valuable in future studies of more typical and more densely populated areas of the country. Because these villages are so isolated modern types of change have been slow to reach them and such mod-em processes of change that have touched them are easier to isolate

The Iranian Deserts

This chapter marks a transition in the volume from agriculture to other subsistence bases. It is concerned particularly with the effects of environment-and the technologies used to exploit it-on the culture and identity of pastoral nomadic groups, mining colonies, and certain agricultural communities specializing in different ranges of crops. It deals with an arid region where these three occupational categories are closely linked and interdependent economically. It suggests that before agricultural technology reached a stage of development that would allow exploitation of such a marginal region, exploitation by other means (for example, pastoralism) was not possible either, and excess population from the lush peripheries was not able to overflow into the deserts

Developing World: Challenges and Opportunities

The complex problem which confronts us in the world\u27s rangelands -- is the need to raise living standards, increase economic productivity, and at the same time reduce ecological stress -- is approached in this symposium from a number of different disciplinary points of view. The case material presented in the papers shows (in varying degrees) the significance of the accumulated experience and cultural ideals of the different types of people involved -- local pastoralists, Western-trained ecologists, planners - as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. s - as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. The role of human activity in the history of the rangeland ecosystem and the cultural memory of the ecological past are treated as complementary to the potential of social forms and cultural aims and values

Iranian Kinship and Marriage

This paper is an attempt to distinguish and discuss the Iranian (as distinct from the Turkish, Arabic and Islamic) elements in the present pattern of kinship and marriage practice in Persia in their historical context. This will entail also a discussion of what can be known of the pre-Islamic Iranian system

Kūch u Balūch and Ichthyophagi

An enquiry into the present condition of the Persian province of Baluchistan, its antecedents and potentialitie

Ābyāri

Although dry farming is important in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Khorasan, as well as some other districts, a large proportion of Iran’s agriculture has always depended upon irrigation. Approximately half the annual grain crop, and an overwhelming proportion of other crops, are irrigated. With the exception of the Caspian littoral almost the whole of Iran is classified as semi-arid or arid. As is characteristic of lands under this classification, precipitation is generally not only scanty (most of the country has an average of less than 400 mm per year) and poorly distributed through the year, but irregular and unreliable. Irrigation affords not only the necessary soil moisture for productive agriculture, but the regularity and dependability of agricultural production that facilitates settled life and allows the development of large settled populations. Given the availability of refillable and accessible water sources, especially in combination with soil deposits of good quality, irrigation technologies can greatly increase the productivity and carrying capacity of the land. However, the use of these technologies imposes social and economic conditions on the populations that become dependent on them. Irrigation has played an important role in Iranian history and civilization. It involves factors that are significant in the development of settlement pattern and morphology, in the socioeconomic relations of agricultural activities, in the political processes and legal formulations that are based on these relations, and in the associated linguistic, symbolic, and ritual forms of activity that evolve in the cultural elaboration of them

Afghan Wars, Oriental Carpets, and Globalization

The afghan war rugs on exhibit at the Penn Museum from April 30 to July 31, 2011, raise a number of interesting questions—about carpets, Afghanistan, and the way the world as a whole is changing. These rugs, which come in a variety of sizes and qualities, derive from a tradition of oriental carpet-weaving that began to attract the attention of Western rug collectors in the late 19th century. Unlike the classic museum pieces that were produced on vertical looms in the cities of western Asia for use in palaces and grand houses, war rugs came from horizontal looms in small tribal communities of Turkmen and Baloch in the areas of central Asia on either side of the northern border of Afghanistan—tribal communities that were incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century