Babak Rahimi: Ethnography, Identity and Memory: The Case of Jalal Al-e Ahmad
This paper is an attempt to explore the relationship between memory, identity and history in the ethnographic works of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69). Focusing on his four important works, Owrazan (1954), tat Neshin-haye Boluk Zahra (1958), ‘A’ine Fasl (Seasonal Custom) (published in 1978), and Jazire-ye Kharg: Dorre yatim-e Khalij (1960), this paper argues that Ahmad’s attempt to study the rural and nomadic population of the Iranian society was a way to memorialize, and revitalize, a lost past through the narrative process of ethnographic study. An ethnographic account entails no authoritative voice of an objective observer since the act of narration is subject to a subjective process of self-realization through an encountered people of undeveloped, non-modernized (strictly speaking in terms of westernization) and non-urbanized culture of Iranian heritage. Central to this study is to explore the notion of representation through the ethnographic method of narrative which describes local cultural worlds in a more personalized and informal manner, rather than impersonal systemic form of scientific ethnography. The paper also argues that Ahmad’s ethnography writing can be recognized as a way to challenge the modernization process of the Pahlavi regime, perceived to be an extension of global westernization or “machinims” by a number of Iranian intellectuals like Ahmad. Ethnographic writing, therefore, is a way to liberate a culture from the onslaught of westernization; and the life of the Iranian rural society can be used as a model for national-liberation against western colonialism.