Description
Book SynopsisSince Iran's 1979 Revolution, the imperative to create and protect the inner purity of family and nation in the face of outside spiritual corruption has been a driving force in national politics. Through extensive fieldwork, Rose Wellman examines how Basiji families, as members of Iran's voluntary paramilitary organization, are encountering, enacting, and challenging this imperative. Her ethnography reveals how families and state elites are employing blood, food, and prayer in commemorations for martyrs in Islamic national rituals to create citizens who embody familial piety, purity, and closeness to God. Feeding Iran provides a rare and humanistic account of religion and family life in the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic that examines how home life and everyday piety are linked to state power.
Trade Review"Wellman’s work is a powerful contribution in the best tradition of anthropology, from which sociologists of religion and Islam can learn a great deal." * Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review *
"Beyond food studies, for those interested in contemporary kinship studies, or the anthropology of the Middle East, particularly Iran, [this book] sheds an important light on the inculcation of every day, embodied support for the illiberal state." * Anthropological Quarterly *
"
Feeding Iran offers an account of kinship and the intersection of kinship and politics. . . .readers are unlikely to mistake the emotional and perspectival empathy she applies in her fieldwork." * Religiologies *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction: Kinship, Islam, and the State
1. Blood, Physio-Sacred Substance, and the Making of Moral Kin
2. Feeding the Family: The "Spirit" of Food in Iran
3. Regenerating the Islamic Republic: Commemorating Martyrs in Provincial Iran
4. Creating an Islamic Nation through Food
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index
