Explores the haptic relations that connect the mothers and wives of the fallen soldiers of the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88) to their sons and husbands as martyrs
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Ventures into haptic exploration of micro-objects as a new venue of material religion
The first book-length ethnographic account of practices and politics of Iran’s martyr-cult and its sites of military commemoration, focusing especially on women as the non/participants of war
Complements recent scholarly works on material mediation in religious life-worlds and their necro-sociality
Transcends typical dichotomies of devotion versus politics, emancipation versus submission, resistance to versus compliance with official Islam
Interlaces material religion and sociology of religion by attending critical medial and agentive ways in which Shiʿi women invoke and are affected by invisibilities of war
How would a switch from the inner to the outer, from the inwardness to the surface, from the habitus to the haptic alter our anthropological thinking about Islam? How do micro matters permeate the terrain of Shiʿi women’s religious practice and Iran’s contemporary politics? Women, Martyrs and Stones in Iran's Post-War Politics explores the haptic relations that connect mothers and wives of the fallen soldiers of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) to their sons and husbands as martyrs. They have played a crucial role in the legitimation discourse of the Iranian state and transformed the very grounds on which religious nationalist and statist projects can be envisioned and practiced. Mourning mothers of martyrs covered in black veils have not only been integrated into a state-revering cult, but have incorporated their conduct into state’s apparatus. This book takes the reader on a journey from women’s dreamworld to their practices of intercession in cemeteries and former battlefields to show material and affective exposures in crafting relics.
List of Illustrations Note on Transliteration Glossary Acknowledgements
Introduction: Touching Micro-relics of War
1. The Veil: Rematerialising Women in Politics of Piety 2. Dream and Aura: Mothers’ Veneration of Saints and Martyrs in Dreamworld 3. Scent and Tint: Mothers and Martyrs in the Cemetery 4. Blood and Genes: Kinning Martyrs and Missing Soldiers 5. Dust and Rust: Women’s Pilgrimage to the Battlefields
This book is a welcome addition to the body of scholarly work that help us understand Muslim practices in daily life and that tune into the sensory and material aspects of religious devotion. The author pays meticulous attention to relations between women’s circles and the aims of state institutions in defining acceptable practice.
This book opens up new and productive ways to understand the relations between Islamic praxis/piety and their environments in Iran. Chavoshian manages this challenging task with guile and sophistication. It almost seems as though two voices are harmoniously at play. One has a deep level of expertise in classical sociology, anthropology and Islamic Studies while the other is fluid in the most recent approaches emerging from the human sciences, including sensory ethnography. This is a rare combination that delivers a dynamic and original text.
Sana Chavoshian is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin and Associate Researcher at the Centre for Advance Studies “Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” in Leipzig University.
