Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T04:51:37.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Renegade Cosmopolitans: Iranian Architects, Professional Power, and the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Shawhin Roudbari Open the ORCID record for Shawhin Roudbari [Opens in a new window]
Shawhin Roudbari*
Affiliation:
Environmental Design at the University of Colorado, Boulder
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Through migration, professional activism, and by engaging the symbolic terrain of architecture magazines and competitions, Iranian architects have sought to make their profession cosmopolitan. But following decades of isolationist tendencies, factions of the Iranian architecture profession continue to meet resistance from elements of the state. The profession’s institutions have become a battleground for the expression of the power of design professionals. Building on scholarship on relationships between states and professions as well as professionals’ expressions of cosmopolitanism, this paper demonstrates ways everyday professionals leverage their institutions for professional power. It shares accounts from a transnational ethnography of Iranian architects to show how, on the one hand, professional change seeps outside restrictions attributed to political and economic borders. On the other hand, the stories of cosmopolitan professionals show that the state need not be bound by structural sanctions, like those Iran has faced, in its efforts to cultivate an avant-garde.

Keywords

architecture professioncosmopolitanismmigrationprofessional institutionstransnational ethnography
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 6 , November 2018 , pp. 905 - 930
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2018

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

Abbott, Andrew. “States and Universities and Environments for Professions.” Sociological Theory 23, no. 3 (2005): 245–274. doi: 10.1111/j.0735-2751.2005.00253.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abbott, Andrew. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Araghian, Lela, TEDxTehran, April 1, 2016. Accessed September 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaFQiHbapSA&feature=shareGoogle Scholar
Bayat, Asef. Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Bani-Mas’ud, Amir. Iranian Contemporary Architecture. 2nd ed. Tehran, Honar-e Memari-e Gharn Publishers, 2011.Google Scholar
Blau, Judith R. Architects and Firms: A Sociological Perspective on Architectural Practices. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael, Blum, Joseph A., George, Sheba, Gille, Zsuzsa, Gowan, Teresa, Haney, Lynne, Klawiter, Maren, Lopez, Steven H., Riain, Sean O., Thayer, Millie. Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Post-modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Cuff, Dana. Architecture: The Story of Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Emerson, Robert M., Fretz, Rachel I., and Shaw, Linda L. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Fourcade, Marion. “The Construction of a Global Profession: The Transnationalization of Economics,” American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 1 (2006): 145–194. doi: 10.1086/502693CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fourcade, Marion. Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grigor, Talinn. Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs. New York: Prestel, 2009.Google Scholar
Gutman, Robert. Architectural Practice: A Critical View. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Hardwick, M. Jeffrey. Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Holton, Robert J. Cosmopolitanisms: New Thinking and New Directions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honar va Meʿmāri (Art and Architecture), 1969.Google Scholar
Inglis, David. “Cosmopolitans and Cosmopolitanisms: Between and Beyond Sociology and Political Philosophy.” Journal of Sociology 50, no. 2 (2014): 99–114. doi: 10.1177/1440783312438788CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, James D. “Cosmopolitanism from Below: Universalism and Contestation.” Critical Horizons 1 (2016): 66–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jāmeʿ-eh va Meʿmāri (Society and Architecture), November 1979.Google Scholar
Johnson, Terry. “Governmentality and the Institutionalization of Expertise.” Chapter 1 in Johnson, Terry, Health Professions and the State in Europe, edited by Larkin, Gerry, and Saks, Mike. New York: Routledge, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Anthony, ed. Professions and the State: Expertise and Autonomy in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Kostof, Spiro. A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Krausse, Eliott. “Professions and the State in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Theoretical Issues.” Chapter 1 in Professions and the State: Expertise and Autonomy in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, edited by Jones, Anthony. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Larson, Magali Sarfatti. Behind the Postmodern Facade: Architectural Change in Late Twentieth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Larson, Magali Sarfatti. The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Lipstadt, Hélène. “Can ‘Art Professions’ be Bourdieuean Fields of Cultural Production? The Case of the Architecture Competition.” Cultural Studies 17, nos. 3–4 (2003): 390–419. doi: 10.1080/0950238032000083872CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lofland, John, and Lofland, Lyn H. Analyzing Social Settings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2006.Google Scholar
Marcus, George E. “Ethnography in/of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 95–117. doi: 10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.000523Google Scholar
Marefat, Mina. “Building to Power: Architecture of Tehran 1921–1941.” PhD diss., MIT, Cambridge, MA, 1988.Google Scholar
Moallem, Minoo. “Objects of Knowledge, Subjects of Consumption: Persian Carpets and the Gendered Politics of Transnational Knowledge.” Chapter 9 in Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures, edited by Hegde, Radha Sarma. New York: New York University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Nedelcu, Mihaela. “Migrants’ New Transnational Habitus: Rethinking Migration Through a Cosmopolitan Lens in the Digital Age.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38, no. 9 (2012): 1339–1356. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2012.698203CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Olszewska, Zuzanna. “Classy Kids and Down-at-Heel Intellectuals: Status Aspiration and Blind Spots in the Contemporary Ethnography of Iran.” Iranian Studies 46, no. 6 (2013): 841–862. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2013.810078CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roudbari, Shawhin. “Crowdsourced and Crowd-pleasing: The New Architectural Awards and the City.” Journal of Urban Design 23, no. 2 (2018): 206–222. doi: 10.1080/13574809.2017.1340799CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roudbari, Shawhin. “Instituting Architecture: A History of Transnationalism in Iran’s Architecture Profession, 19455–1995.” Chapter 7 in Gharipour, Mohammad (ed.) The Historiography of Persian Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar
Saldaña, Johnny. The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. 3rd ed. Sage, 2015.Google Scholar
Sayar, Saman. “Assimilating the Authentic with the Contemporary: the Work of Hadi Mirmiran 1945–2006.” Architectural Design 82, no. 3 (2012): 80–87. doi: 10.1002/ad.1407CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shahidi, Hossein. “From Mission to Profession: Journalism in Iran, 1979-2004.” Iranian Studies 39, no. 1 (2006): 1–28. doi: 10.1080/00210860500470177CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklair, Leslie. “The Transnational Capitalist Class and Contemporary Architecture in Globalizing Cities.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, no. 3 (2005): 485–500. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00601.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sreberny-Mohammadi, Leili. “Coffee Shops and Cigarettes: On the ‘Return’ to Tehran of Young Diasporic Iranians.” Iranian Studies 46, no. 1 (2013): 115–130. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2012.740900CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Garry. The Favored Circle: The Social Foundations of Architectural Distinction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Szerszynski, Bronislaw, and Urry, John. “Visuality, Mobility and the Cosmopolitan: Inhabiting the World from Afar.” British Journal of Sociology 57, no. 1 (2006): 113–131. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2006.00096.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tombesi, Paolo. “A True South for Design? The New International Division of Labour in Architecture.” ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly 5, no. 2 (2001): 171–180. doi: 10.1017/S1359135501001191CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vertovec, Steven, and Cohen, Robin. “Introduction: Conceiving Cosmopolitanism.” Chapter 1 in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Wilding, Raelene. “Transnational Ethnographies and Anthropological Imaginings of Migrancy.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 331–348. doi: 10.1080/13691830601154310CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woods, Mary N. From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar