Description
Book SynopsisTells two intertwined stories: how, in early twentieth-century Iran, an emerging middle class used scientific knowledge as its cultural and economic capital, and how, along with the state, it employed biomedical sciences to tackle presumably modern problems like the stress of everyday life, people's defective willpower and demographic stagnation.
Trade Review"[This book] constitutes a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarly work on modern Iran." -- Fakhreddin Azimi American Historical Review "Schayegh clearly has broken new ground." -- Afshin Matin-Asgari Journal Of World History
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I. Science and the Formation of the Modern Iranian Middle Class, 1900-1950 1. The Historical Background 2. The Cultural and Discursive Dimensions 3. The Economic Dimensions Part II. Medicalizing Modernity: Interactions between the Biomedical Sciences and Modernity in Iran, 1900-1950 4. The Dangers of Modernity: Neurology, Psychiatry, and the Effects of Modern Technology and a Modern Economy 5. Biopower: Hygiene, Eugenics, Genetics, and Iran's Double Demographic Problem 6. The Self-Reliant Personality: Psychology, Pedagogy, and the Problem of Willpower Conclusion Appendix. First-Time Advertisements by Physicians in the Tehran Daily Ettelaaynat, 1927-1939 Notes Select Bibliography Index
