Just another dent in the damage…

Today has been one of those days that came around far too quickly. My dissertation supervisor asked me a couple of months ago whether I would be interested in coming back to the University to guest spot in a lecture concerning censorship, freedom and privacy and today was to be the day it was done.

The general idea of the lecture was to present Iran as a case study, exploring how the Internet as an information system has developed in Iran as an information society. The most difficult aspect of preparing my lecture was to judge how much the class would need informing about Iran’s political climate, its history of self-censoring social norms and the segregation of public and private spaces, especially seen as I’d always tried to steer away from the political side of things whilst doing the actual research. Secondly, this particular subject is one of those that risks a lot of controversy. As an obvious non-Muslim talking about a Muslim country is something I always feel quite wary about as the last thing I’d intend to do is cause offense. But in getting too caught up in the political correctness of topics I think that more often than not this is what makes people lose interest in what it is you’re trying to say.

Anyway after overcoming the initial nerves I think it went OK. No-one likes the sound of their own voice after all, right? So it takes a bit of getting used to. I introduced my research by giving a general overview of Iranian culture as a ‘Culture of Paradoxes’ (yes, its another cliche but at least there’s a good deal of truth in it) and why Iran as an Islamic Republic makes for an interesting study. In being considered to have one of the most repressive Internet censorship regimes in the world Iran seemed like an obvious choice to me and with Persian now estimated to be the 3rd or 4th (depending on sources) most populous blogging languages I saw it as an opportunity to ‘break new ground’ in terms of academia and the fuss about Web 2.0. Justifying your motivations for choosing a research topic are always difficult to explain though aren’t they. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times people have asked me ‘Why Iran?’ Well… why the hell not? It meant I got to go on a nice holiday, make some incredible friends and do something that needed me to use my own initiative more so than picking a topic from a list of other people’s research interests would have. I also think in doing something I’m interested in it made me more enthusiastic about the research process and the laborious writing up of findings.

After a break to catch my breath I moved onto the idea of using the Internet as a platform of communication. I looked particularly at how access to web content has developed over the Internet’s short history in Iran and why initial enthusiasm for its development progressed into suspicion over the impact that western influence may (or may not) have on Iran’s interpretation of the moral codes of Islam. The web’s subversive potential was also discussed here in relation to theories suggesting the Internet is a driver for political change. My purpose here was to highlight the difficulty of refusing to fall into the trap of over generalising about the wider implications or the impact that Internet activity has in the real spaces of a country with a population of over 70 million when there are only really 7.5 million of those regularly accessing web content. I intended to cover a lot of ground during the lecture and so feel that maybe some of this was skipped over too quickly… maybe I could work on that. But nevertheless I think this worked well as it emphasised the importance of the research context and the development of understanding phenomenon not in isolation but rather as more than the sum of its parts.

…kicked it Saturday night. Pure class. I feel like I’€™ve waited my entire life to see them and unlike Bold (who jumped on the reunion bandwagon a couple of years ago) they were still so tight! Funny too.

Highlights: New Direction and Start Today (obvious intro and outro), old faces, Dead Kennedys cover (courtesy of Fast Point) £3 bags and pink shirts.

Lowlights: The stench, old sweaty bodies, the Lakes, old faces and wet hair.

Up this week – Cold World and Jose Gonzalez. YES!

Iran as a Nation of Nose-jobs is another one of those repetitive cliches that, putting it politely, really gets on my nerves. Since beginning my research into Iranian blogging I have collected a mass of editorials that, like Hitchens, although seemingly attempt to depict ‘Iran’s Other Face‘ or ‘Lift the Veil‘ do little more than mislead its readers into thinking that the only aspirations of young Iranians is western simulation – to listen to western music, to dress in western fashion, to experience western romance (like you find in the movies) or simply to up sticks and seek new opportunities in the west.

Often such editorials only scratch the surface of Iran’s rich cultural heritage, offering us typical accounts of ‘when I told my friends and family I was going to Tehran, they looked at me as if I were taking a short break in Mordor’ and ‘nothing quite prepared me for the dust, noise and being swathed in fabric head to toe’. Don’t get me wrong, when I told my friends and family I was off to Iran for two weeks I, obviously like many others, was confronted with dumb-founded expressions and grew tired of comforting their fears that I might be taken hostage and paraded on Al Jazeera. However I don’t think I was unprepared to be ’swathed in fabric’ – I think that’s just ignorant. I lost count of the number of times I had to explain to people that wearing hejab is the law in Iran and of course I would need to wear hejab to abide by the law. The only way I felt I could describe this to others, with little knowledge about Iran, was by making a poor comparison between state law in the US. For example whilst the legal age of consuming alcohol may be 18 in one state it is quite possible that it may be 21 in another and just because you are old enough to drink in your home state it doesn’t mean you’re old enough to drink it in another state and must therefore stick to soft drinks unless willing to break the law. Tenuous or what!! but you get the point.

I thought that after visiting Iran I might write up my own experiences of life in a ‘closed society’ but to be honest every attempt I made followed a similar route – ‘it’s not what you’d think’, ‘that’s not what it’s like’, ‘it’s so different to how you imagine’. But the final nail in the coffin came as I read Rachel Cooke’s poor ‘Persian Pilgrim’ in the Observer (which I can’t seem to find an online link to). I think just about every third sentence riled me in some way and consequently I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how sincere you try to be in writing about your experience in Iran as a westerner usually you just end up sounding like a complete moron.

I haven’t seen a woman’s forearms, or even a wrist, for so long that my vision has adjusted; it’s like getting used to a black and white television, after colour all over again.

Repeating stereotypical notions of ‘chador-clad Islamists’ or ‘Down with America Friday prayers’ is something I wanted to move away from but in attempting to depict a ‘truer picture of Iran’ these always seem to end up being the starting point of conversation. In attempts to educate people about Iran it seems that we always need to address the media’s misrepresentation of Iranian culture and exaggerated stereotypes, which shape the public image of Iran in people’s mindsets. If I felt like being harsh I’d say that mostly people here are ignorant but that isn’t true. We are just bombarded by terrorist theories and images of brutality to instill fear and subsequently justify supposed preemptive strikes against Iran. In my opinion an attack on Iran is highly unlikely’ it’s just too infeasible. For a start there’s too many paykans in the way, but that’s another story’.

My time in Iran was spent making some wonderful friends, re-acquainting myself with an ex-colleague and inspirational information studies researcher, hunting down traditional Persian cuisine for the less traditional (i.e. veganised chelo kebabs, tadique and khoreshes), frequenting coffee shops, shopping in the bazaars and generally having the time of my life, rather than fantasising about ‘orange blossom and the sound of the muezzin dancing faintly on the breeze’ or ‘camels padding elegantly across sand, crowded but authentic bazaars, and caravanserai with vaulted ceilings and twirling grilles over their windows’. And I certainly didn’t spend as much time as this Cooke woman moaning about my ‘wretched scarf’.