An Iranian professor of anthropology at Tehran University has been considering the root of the nearly two months of nationwide protests as transformation of a political matter into a social matter that highlights the social development of Iranians people which believes: “In the future, there will be more movements with more culturally and cognitively that they will be treated and tried to deal every issues “questioningly.”
Ebrahim Fayyaz, is one of famous academic figures in the field of humanities, especially sociology, has been trying to evaluate and calculate the protests since its eruption by presenting opinions and analyzing the causes of these demonstrations from a sociological perspective.
Fayyaz’s opinions and analysis and those of other professors of sociology, have earned mixed reactions though it was in the favor of the protestors or against, but they found their own fans. What is more important than agreeing or disagreeing with these different and sometimes conflicting points of expressions, is the attention of the “academic” personalities on the street protests, an approach which was absent in the late 90s. The deficiency has been described due to the “theoretical poverty, scientific weakness and lack of analytical ability” of most sociologists and experts in that time. Two analytical examinations were made public, but cut off due to lack of media coverage.
However, at the current time, the universities and academic institutions have adapted an active look towards political and social issues in the past one decade. It’s appreciable to see that the professors and the students of the “school of thought” have come to a conclusion that remaining silent and ignoring social and political issues like in the past, is not justifiable.
Here is the interview of Ebrahim Fayyaz conducted by the Iranian news agency ISNA.
Two months have passed since the death of Mahsa Amini and the start of protests across Iran. There are different points of views and analysis regarding the origin of the protests. Some say it’s only a political move, while others call it a freedom moment, and others label it as a foreign conspiracy against Iran. What is your take on the root of these protests?
Currently we have reached the peak. And it is important to emphasize that we need to theorize the structure of our society in terms of time, history and geography. At the present, the course of Iranian society did not theorize at all, or it has been theorized by the western ideas.
As far as your question goes, I must say that from 1968 to 1988, our society has witnessed the rule of the economy in the country. At that time, we were not thinking of other issues but rather to have a better car, a better house, a better neighborhood, a better school, and etc….
However, since 1988 with the emergence of movements and other issues, we have triggered political wrangling and year after that we engaged more in communications. In term of economy, the instinct of hunger was the sole reason behind it, after 2008, the sexual intuition and even now it is the human communication impulse that has prevailed.
The second point is that we are lacking a clear policy to deal with these issues at first place, and no specific rule was chalked out to overcome the problems and organizations like the Publicity Office, Cultural Revolution Council, and academic insinuations did not theorize these issues and now we are suffering a dead end and come as a shock.
Since we are in deadlock, now some says morality policy patrol should be further made stricter, another comes with an idea that if a woman enter a bank without headscarf (hijab) should be fined, or a taxi driver who have a female customer without hijab should be find, and etc….
Such statements were already made and on other sides they were ready to respond where the death of Mehsa Amini was the start point. The scenario resembled an explosive device the size of a world that just needed a click, which now caused a strong explosion.
Do you see any relationship between the communication issue and the recent protests?
We already entered into communication issues and this will make use to hold a deep discussion on it and it could also probably take the media coverage. Whether in the field of religion, politics, aesthetics, opinion, and power, all these issues will earn media dimensions, and that’s why I predict that indigenous theorizing in all above aspects will rise in the future.
On the other hand, our society is full of foreign theories, but I think this will no longer be useful. The young generation will not go under this burden and this is at time while the institutions such as “Academic Jihad” or other similar institutions have made progress in experimental sciences and engineering and have not progressed in humanities like other scientific institutions.
This is the main reason that we are suffering from shortage of social capital and humanities. I mean only medication and engineering have flourished while humanities have completely abandoned as well as severely weakened. This has caused calamity in the society, though not for everyone, but it has taken the path of peace. And now we lost peace and a hiring crisis, and we are experiencing rebellion. It means, the current movement, almost all segments of the society are on the streets and the main focus of it are young and teenage girls.
In the past decades, there were street protests over range of issues like focusing on press freedom over suspending of Salam newspaper in 1978, questioning the election votes (1988), criticizing economic policies and high prices (1996 and 1998), but now the protestors are chanting slogans “women, freedom, and life.” How do you see the change from a sociological point of view?
These are highly developed movements that are controlled without any political leader. In 2018, the protests were political-motivated, but now it is not like that anymore. This is merely because social media changed attention from political developments toward social.
Now, the concept of the nation-state has changed in the world. Currently, other platforms, especially social media are now engaged in economic affairs. It means you are able to order goods from one city to another within the country or outside the country, without knowing on the other side. Just you need to pay and he will send you the goods. In a general view, we have moved in a way that we deliberately created problems. I mean if anything was related to the social issues, the politicians linked that into politics, but it was truly a social problem not politics – like that the political matter has become a social matter now. This means that Iran has become an advanced country. In Saudi Arabia, the political matter is still treated as politics, but in Iran, the political issues have now become a social matter.
How do you see the role of the domestic and foreign media, especially social platforms in influencing public opinion, especially in shaping the mentality of the protesters?
We, in Iran, because of thinking transcendentally and due to the mystical nature of literature, we often don’t see the quick intellect that is technology. There is no doubt that technology is changing drastically, and it has a huge impact. First, it changes the lifestyle, which means the relationship between life and technology. Digital technology changes the structure of Iran and the world day by day. Now we have created an ideological combination called “social space” and we kept saying that this space is virtual and that space is real, but the reality is that this is digital technology.
This technology is making everything so easy as well as cheap and also everyone could get easy access to it. So it means that in the not-so-distant future, our whole lives will change through this technology. The most important point is that this technology removes everything from ambiguity whether it be religion or other issues. How Hinduism thinks, how Buddhism is formed, where is Islam, where is Christianity, what is Judaism, technology is demystifying it all.
Well, of course technology doesn’t do that in Iran alone, now this technology is creating problems for Israel who wants to provide an iron and closed ideological system. The power of social media in the US and EU is also a big issue. The EU said that they can’t ignore the role of social media in influencing people.
What is more highlighted in the current protests compared to the previous years is the clash of protestors with the police and security forces, with the change in slogans. How do you see the cause of these changes?
Profanity is linguistic language. When the sexual instinct is not legitimately satisfied, it becomes a curse. That’s the fact they chant slogans that “you are a whore, you are a whore, I am a free woman”, it means that they want to say that I am a free woman who wants to get married and start a family. These people should understand that marriage is natural thing and belongs to all people of the world. Marriage is sacred in everywhere around the world. Marriage is being performed in the form of a religiously ceremony not matter if it is in Christianity, Jews or Buddhists. But one thing is good that these developments are positive and women are opposing homosexuality and consider their sexual partner to be a man and not their same sex.
In universities, they also can’t eat together; my question is why they shouldn’t sit together in the canteen? What is this? The main thing is that the children want to sit next to each other in the cafeteria and get to know each other and get married. Why these restrictions. They are not perverts. People have families and think about marriage. Let the student get married believe me, the addiction to even cigarettes decreases tenfold. Why has smoking addiction increased in universities? Because drugs are complementary to sex and if it is not, drugs take its place.
So you see the origin of such developments more in the context of marriage?
They asked me if women should go inside the stadium or not, I replied that first of all, we don’t have men and women as you say. The Iranian people are usually going everywhere with their families no matter if they go to the park, in the cinema, or in other such environments.
In the football stadiums, when the atmosphere becomes like a family, then the bad mouthing and collective obscenity of the single man in the football and other sport stadiums, which has damaged the personality of football, will no longer exist; even in my opinion, it will affect the quality of Iranian football and the quality of the games.
The biggest assets of the Iranian people are their family. Now, when a girl and a boy want to get married while they are students, why do they need to have so much cat and mouse? Even the teachers in the universities should help these students, and I have personally helped many of my students in this issue. We must understand that university is not only an educational structure. It is also a social structure.
How do you see the future of the country’s political and social environment? Will there be reformation of some governance policies, or will the confrontations continue?
The recent protests have come as a shock, actually a massive shock. Well this is not just a shock because most of the movements are intellectual that are now in the streets. Indeed, these protests started from the universities and rapidly spread into society and turned violent. However, now again it returned to the universities and apparently the violence is decreasing. The next level, it could be turned into writing and holding conferences, and whereas the sexual thing will be recognized and after that the communication obsession will also be accepted. We are basically moving in the same direction.
If we look at the past, since 2008, it gives an indication that we have become closer to the cultural and intellectual movements. As we move forward, the movements have become more cultural and epistemological.
After this, these social movements will turn into cognitive movements and starting thinking about sexual issues, and how to think about religious, politics and aesthetics issues, and how to think about seeking power.
A structural movement has already been formed and this is the beginning of the work. It would be naïve to think that this movement is over. Currently the movement is thinking about women’s issues, but it is not limited to them, and don’t doubt that it will bring changes and local ideas will be formed.
How do you see the government’s reaction to this?
There is no other choice but to go with them. The movement is serious. I am defining myself inside the Islamic Republic and talking about this issue. Many people are thinking like me, but of course it is time-consuming to reach a conclusion. We don’t have a theory nor a strategy. Our universities are very backward and studying at the university has become extremely meaningless, both in humanities and in technical and engineering sciences.
Because digital technology has now adopted the work of the human memory, and that is a huge library of several million books that can be gathered in a few minutes. It means that knowledge and insight can be searched and that is important.
Anyway, to say we are making the future or the future will shape us, but one thing is important to realize that building the future requires knowledge, insight and ideas. Unfortunately, we do not use the knowledge as well as the insight which is on the Internet, and there is no news of ideas. We are unfortunately moving violently into the future. One thing is for sure that we make the future for ourselves, we will make it with peace and ease, but if it makes our future, it will definitely be with violence.
