Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T04:33:34.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Re-Ghettoization: Armenian Christian Neighborhoods in Multicultural Tehran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James Barry
James Barry*
Affiliation:
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Deakin University, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper incorporates a study of “re-ghettoization” among the Armenian Christians of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It focuses on how legal marginalization has led to the emergence of an entirely separate existence from the Muslim majority in Tehran among Armenians born after the revolution. By focusing on the spatial and social divisions of the hayashatner (Armenian neighborhoods) and the “social” ghetto of the Ararat Compound, this article addresses the question: what are the social implications for religious discrimination in the Muslim Middle East? This paper is based on three extensive blocks of fieldwork carried out in Iran from 2010 to 2015.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , July 2017 , pp. 553 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2017

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.)

Footnotes

This research was made possible by a Future Fellowship grant from the Australian Research Council [FT120100032], and a Research Grant from the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, both of which the author gratefully acknowledges.

References

Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran between Two Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Aghanian, Denise. The Armenian Diaspora: Cohesion and Fracture. New York: University Press of America, 2007.Google Scholar
Agier, Michel. “The Ghetto, the Hyperghetto and the Fragmentation of the World.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33, no. 3 (2009): 854–857. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00922.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariel de Vidas, Anath. “What Makes a Place Ethnic? The Formal and Symbolic Spatial Manifestations of Teenek Identity.” Anthropological Quarterly 81, no. 1 (2008): 161–205. doi: 10.1353/anq.2008.0008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakalian, Anny. Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993.Google Scholar
Barry, James. “‘This is Not Our Country’: Declining Diversity in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The Muslim World 105, no. 3 (2015): 281–298. doi: 10.1111/muwo.12100CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barry, James, and Akbarzadeh, Shahram. “State Identity in Iranian Foreign Policy.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 4 (2016): 613–629. doi: 10.1080/13530194.2016.1159541Google Scholar
Bournoutian, George. “Armenians in Nineteenth-Century Iran.” The Armenians of Iran: The Paradoxical Role of a Minority in a Dominant Culture; Articles and Documents, edited by Chaqueri, Cosroe, 54–76. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Chehabi, Houchang. “The Banning of the Veil and its Consequences.” The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921‒1941, edited by Cronin, Stephanie, 193–210. London: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Choksy, Jamsheed. “Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Contemporary Iran.” Iran and the Caucasus 16, no. 3 (2012): 271–299. doi: 10.1163/1573384X-20120017Google Scholar
Choksy, Jamsheed. “Zoroastrians as a Socioreligious Minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Iranian Languages and Culture: Essays in Honor of Gernot Ludwig Windfuhr, edited by Ghanoonparvar, Mohammad Reza and Aghaei, Behzad, 8–37. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2012.Google Scholar
Dallalfar, Arlene. “Negotiated Alliances: Contemporary Iranian Jewish Identities.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, no. 2 (2010): 272–296. doi: 10.1215/1089201X-2010-013CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elling, Rasmus Christian. Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fereydoun, Hossein. “Dastiār-e vizheh-e rais-jomhuri dar bāzdid az darmāngāh-e kheyrieh-e arāmāneh: Vāzheh-e aqaliat rā nemi-pasandam” [Special advisor to the president in a meeting with the Armenian Benevolent Society: I do not use the term “minority”]. ISNA, December 29, 2013. Accessed September 19, 2014. http://isna.ir/fa/news/92100804508/Google Scholar
Fozi, Navid. Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flint, John. “Cultures, Ghettos and Camps: Sites of Exception and Antagonism in the City.” Housing Studies 24, no. 4 (2009): 417–431.Google Scholar
Gunzberg, Lynn. Strangers at Home: Jews in the Italian Literary Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Gupta, Radhika. “There Must be Some Way out of Here: Beyond a Spatial Conception of Muslim Ghettoization in Mumbai.” Ethnography 16, no. 3 (2015): 352–370. doi: 10.1177/1466138114552941CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holliday, Shabnam. Defining Iran: Politics of Resistance. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.Google Scholar
Lazarian, Zhanet. Dāneshnāmeh-ye irāniyān-e armanī [Encyclopaedia of Armenian Iranians]. Tehran: Hirmand Publications, 2003.Google Scholar
Levy, Habib. A Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran: The Outset of the Diaspora. Translated by Ebrami, Houchang. Cosa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999.Google Scholar
Loeb, Lawrence. Outcaste: Jewish Life in Southern Iran. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1977.Google Scholar
Migliorino, Nicola. (Re) Constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Alesia. “Ghetto and Enclaves in the Cross-Place Realm: Mapping Socially Bounded Spaces across Cities.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35, no. 3 (2011): 659–675. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00999.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naby, Eden. “The Assyrian Diaspora: Cultural Survival in the Absence of State Structure.” Central Asia and the Caucasus: Transnationalism and Diaspora, edited by Mehendale, Sanjyot and Atabegi, Touraj, 214–230. London: Routledge, 2006.Google Scholar
Nazarian, Armen. “Zendegi ruzmareh arāmāneh irān dar goft-o-gu-ye shafaqnā bā ārmen nazariyān” [The daily life of Iran’s Armenian community in a Shafaqna. Interview with Armen Nazarian]. Shafaqna, July 11, 2014. Accessed September 4, 2014. http://www.shafaqna.com/persian/elected/item/79520Google Scholar
Pahlevanian, Hovhannes. Iranahay Hamayk‘ĕ: 1941‒1979 [the Iranian Armenian community, 1941‒1979]. Yerevan: Armenian SSR Academy of Science Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Patterson, Kelly, and Yoo, Eun-Hye Enki. “Trapped in Poor Places? An Assessment of the Residential Spatial Patterns of Housing Choice Voucher Holders in 2004 and 2008.” Journal of Social Service Research 38, no. 5 (2012): 637–655. doi: 10.1080/01488376.2012.706698CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Jenny. Symbol, Myth and Rhetoric: The Politics of Culture in an Armenian American Population. New York: AMS Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Pirzadeh, Ali. Iran Revisited: Exploring the Historical Roots of Culture, Economy and Society. New York: Springer, 2016.Google Scholar
Powell, Ryan. “Loïc Wacquant’s ‘Ghetto’ and Ethnic Minority Segregation in the UK: The Neglected Case of the Gypsy-Travellers.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37, no. 1 (2013): 115–134. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01188.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qānun-e esāsi-ye jomhuri-ye eslāmi-ye irān 1368 khorshidi [The 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran].Google Scholar
Saleh, Alam. Ethnic Identity and the State in Iran. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanasarian, Eliz. Religious Minorities in Iran. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Sanasarian, Eliz, and Davidi, Avi. “Domestic Tribulations and International Repercussions: The State and the Transformation of Non-Muslims in Iran.” Journal of International Affairs 60, no. 2 (2007): 55–69.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony. “Ethnic Election and National Destiny: Some Religious Origins of Nationalist Ideals.” Nations and Nationalism 5, no. 3 (1999): 331–355. doi: 10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00331.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Sarah. “The Politics of Zoroastrian Philanthropy and the Case of Qasr-e Firuzeh.” Iranian Studies 45, no. 1 (2012): 59–80. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2011.594624CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Civil Code of Iran. Translated and annotated by Taleghany, M. A. R. Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman, 1995.Google Scholar
Vivier-Muresan, Anne-Sophie. “Communitarian Neighborhoods and Religious Minorities in Iran: A Comparative Analysis.” Iranian Studies 40, no. 5 (2007): 593–603. doi: 10.1080/00210860701667654CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. “Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21, no. 2 (1997): 341–353. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.00076Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Yaghoubian, David. Ethnicity, Identity and the Development of Nationalism in Iran. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014.Google Scholar