Standing Working Group
Iran and Beyond – Breaking the Ground for Sustainable Scholarly Collaboration (IRSSC)
Performance of Culture, Religion, and Body as Strategies of Self-Empowerment in the Islamic Republic Iran
Project Leadership: Dr. Katja Rieck
Principal Investigators:
PD Dr. Robert Langer (Research Field The Religious History of Anatolia),
PD Dr. Judith I. Haug (Research Field Music in the Ottoman Empire and in Turkey),
Dr. Melike Şahinol (Research Field Human, Medicine, and Society)
It is the aim of the International Standing Working Group IRSSC to explore possibilities and limits of cooperation especially with Iranian researchers and academic institutions by employing innovative research topics. Cultural, social and religious connections in the transregional continuum stretching from Anatolia to Iran and beyond to Pakistan will be in the focus of attention.
Under difficult economic conditions and in the context of rapid socio-cultural change due to globalization and the demographic shift, citizens of Iran make use of their cultural resources in various ways to confront the struggles of their daily lives. In the face of globalization, migration, urbanization, and the dissemination of technically mediated forms of expression, practices of cultural expression are modified and multiplied, becoming socially differentiated. In this context, local as well as global patterns of cultural, religious, and bodily performance are gaining importance. Traditional forms of authenticity (such as the identities of minorities or regional music styles), global forms of expression (esotericism, new kinds of religiosity, transhumanism as a postmodern current, vegetarianism/veganism, music-related subcultures), but also advanced technological possibilities for the “conquest of the human condition” (‘Human Enhancement’) are causing profound transformations of social interaction and group identities as well as the human body. On the basis of selected research questions, mainly pertaining to the Turkey–Iran–Pakistan sphere, IRSSC investigates the efficacy of these concepts – be it in cross-border entanglements or in their parallel existence.
The creative appropriation of practices and discourses that is fostering rapid social change takes place in tension to and in dialog with currently accepted norms and practices. These are for example related to Shiite Islam, and phenomena such as those concerning body habitus, religious ritual, gender roles as well as active and passive access to music. Conditions of modern-day mediality and the resulting multiplication of social interaction lead to a larger, internally more differentiated, and hybrid repertoire of practices in dealing with public institutions as well as with an international public sphere, e.g. via social media. These questions will be investigated with qualitative methods of social and cultural research in relation to the areas of music, religion, and (body-modifying) therapeutic and non-therapeutic medicine.
In addition to project research, the chief aim of the IRSCC is to clarify the potential for establishing an international research network that integrates scholars from the region, especially Iran, in international knowledge communication and production.
The following projects are part of IRSSC: