Orality in Persian Argumentative Discourse: A Case Study of Editorials

Languages have their own distinctive styles of argumentation. It seems some languages like Arabic and Persian have a preference for using the “oral” features of parataxis, formulaicity and repetition as persuasive devices in argumentation. The purpose of this article is first to examine these “oral” characteristics in Persian argumentation, and then to tie together the two areas of research: the study of orality and the study of metadiscourse. The article claims that these oral characteristics in Persian are means of gaining rhetorical effectiveness. Therefore, they should be considered as metadiscourse devices used to create a bond between writer and reader.     

Negotiating hydro-scales,forging states: Comparison of the upper Tigris/Euphrates and Jordan River basins

In this comparative study of two water basins in the Middle East, we examine the hydro-political construction of scale as central to state and nation building, and their territorial consolidation. We argue that scalar negotiations and constructions of freshwater became central to the very consolidation of both Turkey and Israel. The examples we offer also illustrate the usefulness of a performative approach to scale, benefiting from but moving beyond a politics of scale approach. The comparative focus on hydro-scalar politics and performativities in relation to state and nation building offered a) lends to an enriched understanding of water politics in these two contested river basins, b) enables fuller understanding of how water becomes central to the processes by which nations, states, and territories are consolidated in this region, and c) contributes to recent debates in political geography by demonstrating the value of scalar and performative approaches. Underscoring these linkages, the analysis differs from many works on water in the Middle East, contributes to studies of state and nation building as contested processes, and avoids the assumption of state or national scales as ontological pre-givens.     

Gender and emergent water governance: comparative overview of neoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization,devolution and marketization

This article provides a critical reading of some of the gendered dimensions of emergent water governance regimes, specifically those related to the privatization, marketization and devolution of water resources management. After first providing an overview of recent nature–society contributions related to neoliberalization processes, the article comparatively evaluates insights with respect to the gender dimensions of recent shifts in water governance. I make several arguments at the intersection of relevant literatures. First, there is a need for gender theorists interested in water resources and nature–society debates to engage more with issues, theories and processes associated with neoliberalization. Second, there is a need for more attention to gender, feminist theory and approaches to inequality and socio-spatial difference in discussions of neoliberalized natures. Third, reading these literatures together reveals that there is a need to be self-reflexive and critical of elements of the gender and water literature that implicitly endorse foundational elements of the neoliberal turn in resource governance. Finally, there are particularities with respect to gender theory and politics, and water materialities that hold importance for understanding recent water governance shifts in the broader context of political and economic changes associated with neoliberalization.     

Study on the discovered ornaments from Jafar-Abad and Tu Ali-Sofla kurgans (second phase of excavations)

In this research, typology of bronze ornaments discovered from Jafar-Abad and Tu Ali-Sofla kurgans (second phase of excavations) near Aras River in Khoda-Afarin town was investigated. These kurgans belong to combatant and migrating Eurasian tribes, which migrated to northwest Iran in Iron Age II (1200–800 B.C.). From the total number of 103 discovered objects, 93 objects were bronze ornaments, including rings, bracelet, earring, buttons for clothes, and spiral. Discovery of ornaments of various types’ revealed the existence of a social classification system of people in these tribes. In addition, study on the discovered buttons from these kurgans showed that as a tradition in burial ceremonies, the deceased were buried wearing clothes. To understand the basics of metalworking of combatant and migrating Eurasian tribes, analytical investigations were also conducted on three jewelry items including a bracelet, a ring, and an earring from a total number of 93 bronze ornaments discovered.     

The participation myth

Policy rhetoric around strategies to and the value of increasing participation in the arts has been well documented internationally over more than a decade. But in the UK, which is the focus for this article, targets to increase participation have been consistently missed and there remains a direct correlation between those taking part in cultural activity and their socio-economic status. The starting point for this article is to examine the barriers to increasing participation in the arts and question the way that such policy has been implemented within the English context, which may have relevance for policy-making in other countries. What is demonstrated is that policy implementation is influenced by vested interest of those in receipt of funding and that a narrow range of voices, from a powerful cultural elite, are involved in the decision-making in the arts. The article makes a case for widening the range of voices heard in decision-making in order to support both artistic practice and public engagement.     

Public and Private Lives in Iran: An Introduction to the Archaeology of the 2003 Bam Earthquake

Bam, Iran, was destroyed by a powerful earthquake in December 2003. In what is perhaps Iran’s greatest tragedy in living memory, the majority of the mud brick houses and concrete buildings were completely flattened and more than half of the city’s population was killed. Five years after the disaster, a team of Iranian archaeologists and ethnographers excavated the remains of six houses destroyed in the earthquake. The excavated material culture demonstrates the stark contrasts between the residents’ public lives lived outside of their homes, and their private lives lived inside of their homes.     

The Last Episode of an Iranian Teacher’s Bag: Children’s Lives as the Smaller Copies of their Parents’ in Contemporary Iran

How can the desired culture of a dictatorial system be transmitted from one generation to another? The focus of dictators on children could be an answer. Factually in such a system, children are located in a value system which teaches them what to do or what not to do in purpose of being good for the political system since the very beginning of their lives. In Iran, the traditional educational system teaches children to act as adults; people who are able to discern which action is bad and which is good. The exceptions are usually the ones who deconstruct the cultural/political structure and begin to resist based on their agencies. In the present paper, we argue the process of education (formal and informal) in Iran based on two sets of material cultural remains. The first is the Qajar (nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photos of children) and the second is the school compositions of 19 students found in the bag of a teacher who died in the devastating earthquake of Bam in 2003, in South Eastern Iran. The bag was found during a contemporary archaeological project.     

What He Thought…What He Did: An Archaeological Study of the Persian Gulf Coasts Colonial Sites of Sheikh Khazal Khan in the Early Twentieth Century

Iranian colonial sites on Persian Gulf coasts include eighteenth-century Portuguese fortresses and graveyards on the islands of Hormoz and Qeshm and twentieth-century British colonial missions in southern Iran and Kuwait. Sheikh Khazal Khan, an Iranian Arab, who lived in the early twentieth century, ruled Khuzestan and counseled the governors of Kuwait. He also apparently worked as Great Britain’s political dependent in the region at least from 1890s. He constructed five palaces on the shores of southwestern Iran and two in Kuwait. The author excavated these sites in 2008. Khazal’s identity is a problematic subject in contemporary Iranian history. He is judged variously as a spy (for most Iranians) and as a hero (for Pan-Arabs). Introducing Khazal Khan’s Persian Gulf coastal architectural data, this essay explains the context in which these colonial architectural units were constructed. The patterns of this colonial process are used to interpret Khazal’s identity, based on the material culture of the era.