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The Power of Games and the Games of Power in Rural Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Rafique H. Keshavjee
Rafique H. Keshavjee*
Affiliation:
The Institute of Isma'ili Studies
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Extract

To some, it might seem frivolous to speak of village games when issues such as freedom and democracy, factions and socio-political configurations of a larger order loom in Iran. However, this paper hopes to demonstrate that these games, by their very frivolity, reveal and help resolve tensions not only in the village, but ones that lie at the very core of society. The village might have been where they were observed, but such events can become a window to basic questions such as how society continues in spite of tension and conflict.

The games were observed over Nawruz, the Persian new year which coincides with the vernal equinox, during fieldwork conducted between 1976 and 1979 on the mystical roots of the modernization of the Isma'ilis of Iran. The data, in the form of films of the games and notes from observations and interviews, was collected in villages north of the town of Birjand, southern Khurasan.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2-3 , 1989 , pp. 87 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1989

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References

1. This paper was first presented at the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, 1982.

2. Dramas, fields and metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974Google Scholar.

3. I do not think it is a coincidence that during the last decade, a time of divisive re-integration for Twelver Shi'is, the number making the pilgrimage to a site in north Khurasan has jumped from about 500 to 5,000, Ismailis and Twelvers, coming from around the country. That pilgrimage, however, is performed at the end of summer.

4. Beeman, William O., Language status and power in Iran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986Google Scholar.

5. Eisenstadt, S.N., Tradition, Change and Modernity, New York: John Wiley, 1973Google Scholar.

6. Passion: an essay on personality. New York: The Free Press, 1984Google Scholar.