Being Modern in Iran

Fariba Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, xiv + 190 pages.

Scholarly interest in Iran waned in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Due to the real and perceived logistical difficulties of conducting long-term field research, Iranian studies were limited in terms of topics and approaches. Many works addressed macro-level research questions regarding the causes of the revolution, overemphasizing the revolution's radical break with the past and giving most attention to its religious dimension, while ignoring its complexity. With the gradual opening of Iranian society in the second decade after the revolution, scholarly interest in Iran has also shifted toward studying the consequences of the revolution and a full range of research techniques are being used.

Fariba Adelkhah's Being Modern in Iran is a strikingly original, informative and challenging study, which all students of contemporary Iran will enjoy and find stimulating. She seeks to move beyond the cliché view of Iran that epitomizes a nation of 60 million people through photographs of women wearing the chador, a symbol in the West of the totalitarian nature of the Islamic Republic.

The book is based on the author's extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Iran since the beginning of the 1990s. It asks questions about the interaction between social and political transformations and the concept of modernity. The question of whether or how Islam is compatible with elements of modern life such as democracy, capitalism and the international system has an importance that goes far beyond the Islamic Republic. It is at the heart of debates in the West about immigration, terrorism, war and peace, especially after 9/11. As Adelkhah argues, Iran has a very special place in these debates in so far as it is the only example of Islamism arising from a true revolutionary mass movement which is now institutionalized.

Adelkhah examines the relationship between modernity and social and political change in Iran by describing and analyzing "life-styles"'...