University of Virginia doctoral student, Rose Wellman, supervised by Dr. Susan McKinnon, will undertake research on the interrelationship between socio-cultural ideas of kinship and family, on the one hand, and socio-cultural ideas of nation, on the other. While social scientists have long pointed to connections between these two critical realms of human social life, Wellman seeks to identify the processes through which the connections are developed and maintained. Her research will focus on kinship and social organization as it is experienced and understood everyday Iranians, with particular attention to household and national rituals, including those surrounding food.
The research will be carried out in Qader-Abad, a provincial city in the Fars Province of Iran. This study will build on previous research conducted by scholars of Shi'i Islam and gender that have addressed the significance of inheritable substances such as blood ties through the male line in shaping Iranian ideas and practices relating to kinship and nation. The researcher will investigate two main elements that operate in Iranian social organization: 1) concepts of biological, inheritable substances, and 2) acts of ritual feeding, cooking, and food sharing. In the home, the significance of food for kinship is visible in the emphasis Iranians place on daily and ritual acts of eating together and on food itself as a generative substance. In the context of the nation, the role of food is apparent in the ritual distribution of large amounts of laboriously prepared food for frequent Shi'I Islamic-national rituals and charity events. The researcher will employ multiple ethnographic research methods including: daily participant observation, extensive interviews, the collection of family genealogies and life histories, and analysis of popular media.
This research is important because it will provide updated information on contemporary post-Revolutionary Iranian daily life and sociality. This research will contribute to current theorizing of the interrelationship between kinship and nation. Finally, this research will build international research collaborations and support the education of a social scientist.
Graduate student Rose Wellman (University of Virginia), supervised by Dr. Susan McKinnon, undertook 10 months of ethnographic research in a provincial city in the Fars Province of Iran and 2 months of research of Iranian popular media and archives. Research focused on kinship and social organization as it is experienced and understood by everyday Iranians. In particular, the researcher explored three media of Iranian social organization: 1) concepts of "biological," inherited substances, such as blood; 2) acts of ritual feeding, cooking and sharing food; and 3) acts of creating and sharing Islamic morality through the recitation of prayer and verse. Research findings suggest that these three media are dynamically interrelated in how Iranians constitute the moral family. Additionally, the researcher has found that an understanding of Iranian kinship is critical to comprehending Iranian ideas about national (Islamic) sociality which are similarly organized by the interaction of inheritable substance (e.g., martyr’s blood), public and pious food sharing, and Islamic blessing – here described as "kindred Islamic spirit." This study builds on previous research conducted by scholars of Shi’i Islam and gender that have addressed the significance of inherited substances such as blood in shaping Iranian ideas and practices relating to kinship and nation. The researcher, however, has found that Iranians additionally create moral kinship and nation by sharing ritually blessed, pure food. The primary interlocutors for this study were self-described followers of the late Ayatollah Khomeini living in three main regions: a village in the Fars Province, Shiraz, and Tehran. Ethnographic research methods included daily participant observation in kitchens and households and extensive interviews with individuals from more than 40 families across these locations. The researcher further explored Iranian sociality by collecting genealogies, life histories, and by conducting direct observation of daily and ritual social life in public squares, graveyards, bazaars, and parks. This research builds on recent theoretical and ethnographic work on the interrelationship between kinship and nation and provides a much-needed portrait of contemporary post-Revolutionary Iranian daily life and sociality. The research has created indispensable relationships between American and Iranian social scientists, such as with faculty at the University of Tehran and Shiraz. It has further been essential to the education of a graduate student.
