Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:37:34.428Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

20 - PASTORALISM, NOMADISM AND THE SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF IRAN

from PART 3 - ECONOMIC LIFE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
E. Sunderland
Edited by
W. B. Fisher
E. Sunderland
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access

Summary

As a modern state, Iran exerts unitary governmental and political control within its boundaries. Yet practically all nation states throughout the world contain, either relatively easily or else with difficulty, certain disparate elements which refuse wholly to conform to the wishes of the central government, however constituted, and which choose for some purposes to be in control of their own affairs and in charge of their own destinies. In this respect, Iran is no exception.

Because of aridity and the rugged nature of the terrain, Iran, despite its large size, is discontinuously occupied and utilized by its people. This in itself might well be expected to produce a certain particularism: it is difficult to imagine dose bonds existing between Balūchī tribesmen in the south-east and Turkish speaking groups of cultivators in the north-west for instance, separated as they are by vast and comparatively empty areas. Both groups occupy niches within one body politic, but linguistically as well as in more general cultural terms, they show considerable differences. Again, for some purposes there could be said to be a great social chasm dividing the nomadic tribesmen of Fārs and the sophisticated urbanites of Tehrān. The oil installation workers on the Persian Gulf are far removed socially from the peasantry of the central Iranian plateau; there exists between them a substantial technological and ideological gap which is difficult to bridge.

Yet, within the country, there also exists a certain social mobility which, though its advent might possibly be dated to the arrival of Islam in the seventh century A.D., increases in volume and accelerates with the passing years.

Keywords

pastoral societysocial anthropologynomadic lifeIranian societyurban society
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Iran , pp. 611 - 683
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arasteh, A. R. Education and Social Awakening in Iran. Leiden, 1912.
Arasteh, A. R. Man and Society in Iran. Leiden, 1964.
Arberry, A. J. Sufism. An Account of the Mystics of Islam. London, 1950.
Arberry, A. J. (ed.). The Legacy of Persia. Oxford, 1953.
Arensberg, C. M. “The community study method.” Am. J. Sociol. LX, no. 2, 1954 et seq.Google Scholar
Avery, P. Modern Iran. London, 1965.
Banani, A. The Modernization of Iran, 1921–1941. Stanford, 1961.
Barnett, H. G. Innovation: The Basis of Cultural Change. New York, 1953.
Barth, F. Nomads of South Persia: the Basseri Tribe of the Khamseb Confederacy. Oslo, 1961.
Barth, F. “Principles of social organization in Southern Kurdistan.” Universitetets Etnografiske Museum Bull. no. 7. Oslo, 1953.Google Scholar
Barth, F. “FaBrDa marriage in Kurdistan.” Southwestern J. Anthrop. X, 1954.Google Scholar
Barth, F. “The land use pattern of migratory tribes of south Persia.” Norsk geogr. Tidsskr. vol. XVII, nos. 1–4. 1959–60.Google Scholar
Barth, F. “Nomadism in the mountain and plateau areas of South West Asia.” UNESCO Symposium on Arid Zone Problems, XVI, 1960.Google Scholar
Barth, F. Nomads of South Persia. London, 1961.
Barth, Frederik . Principles of Social Organisation in Southern Kurdistan, Universetets Etnografiske Museum. Oslo, 1953.
Beckett, P. H. T. and Gordon, E. D. “Land use and settlement round Kerman in Southern Iran.” Geogr. J. CXXXII, pt. 4, 1966.Google Scholar
Benet, F. “Sociology uncertain: the ideology of the rural-urban continuum.” Comp. Studies in Society and History, VI, 1963.Google Scholar
Childe, V. G. Social Evolution. London, 1950.
Chiva, I. Rural Communities. Problems, Methods and Types of Research. Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences. UNESCO, no. 10, 1958.Google Scholar
Coon, C. S. Caravan. The Story of the Middle East. New York, 1961.
Cressey, G. B. “Qanats, Karez and Hoggaras.” Geogr. Rev. XLVIII, no. 1, 1958.Google Scholar
Elwell-Sutton, L. P. A Guide to Iranian Area Study. Ann Arbor, 1952.
Forde, C. D. and Scott, R. The Native Economies of Nigeria. London, 1946.
Fortes, M. “Culture contact as a dynamic process.” In Methods of Study of Culture in Africa. Int. African Inst. Memo, XV, 1938.Google Scholar
Foster, G. M. “What is folk culture?” Am. Anth. LV, 2, pt. I, 1953.Google Scholar
Foster, G. M. “What is folk culture?” Traditional Cultures and the Impact of Technological Change. New York, 1962.
Friedl, E. “Studies in peasant life.” In Biennial Review of Anthropology, ed. by Siegel, B. J. . Stanford, 1963.Google Scholar
Frye, R. N. Iran. London, 2nd ed. 1960.
Fuller, A. H. Buarij. Portrait of a Lebanese Village. Harvard Middle East Monograph Series, no. 6, 1961.
Garrod, O. “The nomadic tribes of Persia today.” J. Roy. Cent. As. Soc. XXXIII, pt. I, 1946.Google Scholar
Garrod, O. “The Qashqai tribe of Fars.” J. Roy. Cent. As. Soc. XXXIII, pts. 3 and 4, 1946.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. “Studies in peasant life: community and society.” In Biennial Review of Anthropology, ed. by Siegel, B. J. . Stanford, 1961.Google Scholar
Gibb, H. A. R. and Bowen, H. Islamic Society and the West. A Study of the Impact of Western Civilisation on Moslem Culture in the Near East. Oxford, 1950 (vol. 1, pt. 1); 1957 (vol. 1, pt. 2).
Grunebaum, G. E. von . Muhammadan Festivals. London, 1951.
Grunebaum, G. E. “The structure of the Muslim town.” In Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition. London, 1955.Google Scholar
Grunebaum, G. E. “The problem: unity in diversity.” In Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization, ed. by Grunebaum, G. E. . Chicago, 1955.Google Scholar
Hadary, G. “The agrarian reform problem in Iran.” Mid. East J. v, 1951.Google Scholar
Hayden, L. J. “Living standards in rural Iran. A case study.” Mid. East J. III, 1949.Google Scholar
Ivanow, W. “Notes on the ethnology of Khurasan.” Geogr. J. LXVII, 1926.Google Scholar
Kinnane, D. The Kurds and Kurdistan. Inst. of Race Relations. Oxford, 1964.
Lambton, A. K. S. Landlord and Peasant in Persia. Oxford, 1953.
Lambton, A. K. S. “Impact of the West on Iran.” Int. Affairs, London, XXXIII, 1957.Google Scholar
Leach, E. R. Social and Economic Organisation of the Rowanduz Kurds. London, 1940.
Lerner, D. The Passing of Traditional Society; Modernizing the Middle East. Glencoe, Ill., 1958.
Levy, R. The Social Structure of Islam. Cambridge, 1957.
Lewis, O. Life in a Mexican Village; Tepoztlán restudied. Univ. of Illinois Press, 1951.
Lewis, O. “Tepoztlán restudied: a critique of the folk-urban conceptualization of social change.” Rural Sociol. XVIII, 1953.Google Scholar
Mair, L. New Nations. London, 1963.
Marx, K. “The British rule in India.” New York Daily Tribune. 25 June 1853. Quoted in Bottomore, T. B. , Sociology. London, 1962.Google Scholar
Masse, H. Persian Beliefs and Customs. Hum. Rel. Area Files. New Haven. Conn., 1954.
Miner, H. The Primitive City of Timbuctoo. Princeton, 1953.
Miner, H. “The folk-urban continuum.” Am. Sociol. Rev. XVII, no. 5, 1952.Google Scholar
Minorsky, V. : Hudud al-'Alam (London, 1937).
Minorsky, V. “The tribes of western Iran.” J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. LXXV, 1945.Google Scholar
Najafi, N. and Hinckley, H. Reveille for a Persian Village. London, 1960.
Narāghī, E. Les classes moyennes en Iran. Cahiers International de Sociologie, XXII, 1957.
,Naval Intelligence Division. Persia. Geographical Handbook Series, 1945.
Nikitine, B. Les Kurdes: Étude sociologique et historique. Paris, 1956.
Nolte, R. H. (ed.). The Modern Middle East. New York, 1963.
Op't Land, C. The Permanent Settlements of the Dachte-Moghan. Institute of Social Studies and Research. Tehrān, 1961.
Op't Land, C. A. The Permanent Settlements of the Dachte Moghan Area. Problems around the Sedentarization of Pastoralists, Paper no. 5. Inst. of Social Studies and Research. Univ. of Teheran, 1961.
Op't Land, C. A. “Land reform in Iran.” Persica. Annuaire de la Société Néerlando-Iranienne.
Parsons, T. The Social System. London, 1952.
Pitt-Rivers, J. (ed.). Mediterranean Countrymen. Paris, 1963.
Planhol, X. “Recherches sur la géographie humaine de l'Iran septentrional.” Mémoires et Documents du Centre de Documentation Cartographique et Géographique, Tome 9, Fasc. 4. Éditions du Centre de la Recherche Scientifique. Paris, 1964.Google Scholar
Planhol, X. . “Aspects of mountain life in Anatolia and Iran.” In Geography as Human Ecology, ed. Eyre, S. R. and Jones, G. R. J. . London, 1966.Google Scholar
Redfield, E. The Little Community. Chicago, 1955.
Redfield, E. Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago, 1956.
Redfield, E. Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village. A Study of Folk Life. Chicago, 1930.
Redfield, E. The Folk Culture of Yucatan. Chicago, 1941.
Redfield, E. The Primitive World and its Transformations. Cornell, 1953.
Reza, Mohammed Pahlevi, Shah . Mission for My Country. London, 1960.
Rioux, M. “Description de la culture de l'Ile Verte.” Ottawa Nat. Mus. Of Canada Bull. no. 133. Anthrop. Series, no. 55, 1954.Google Scholar
Safrastian, A. Kurds and Kurdistan. London, 1948.
Salim, S. M. Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta. London, 1962.
Schooten, M. Ullens Lords of the Mountains: Southern Persia and the Kashkai Tribe. London, 1956.
Sjoberg, G. The Preindustrial City, Past and Present. Glencoe, Ill., 1960.
Spooner, B. “The function of religion in Persian society.” Iran, 1, 1963.Google Scholar
Spooner, B. “Iranian kinship and marriage.” Iran, IV, 1966.Google Scholar
Sprott, W. J. H. Human Groups. Harmondsworth, 1958.
Stirling, P. “Structural changes in Middle East Society.” In Tensions in the Middle East, ed. Thayer, P. W. . Baltimore, 1958.Google Scholar
Stirling, P. Turkish Village. London, 1965.
Tolstov, S. P. (ed.). Narody Perednei Azii. Moscow, 1957.
Upton, J. The History of Modern Iran: an Interpretation. Harvard Mid. East Monograph Series. Harvard, 1960.
Vreeland, H. H. (ed.). Iran. Human Rel. Area Files. New Haven, Conn., 1957.
Watt, W. M. Islam and the Integration of Society. London, 1961.
Weber, M. General Economic History. Glencoe, Ill., 1950.
Weber, M. The City, trans, and ed. by Martindale, D. and Neuwirth, G. . New York, 1962.
Wilber, D. N. (ed.). Iran: Past and Present. Princeton, 1958.
Wilber, D. N. Contemporary Iran. New York, 1963.
Wittfogel, K. A. “The hydraulic civilizations.” In Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, ed. by Thomas, W. L. . Chicago, 1956.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. R. Peasants. New York, 1966.
Young, T. C. “The problem of westernization in Modern Iran.” Mid. East J. 11, 1948.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×