Navid Fozi | Bridgewater State University (original) (raw)
Books by Navid Fozi
Reclaiming the Faravahar is the first ethnographic study of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. ... more Reclaiming the Faravahar is the first ethnographic study of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. Examining hundreds of ritual performances, Navid Fozi shows how Zoroastrians define their identity and values in an area long marked by conflict between the Shi‘a and Sunnis. He focuses on two main concerns for Zoroastrians: continuity with the past as evidenced by their claim to be the most authentic Iranians, as well as their attempts to stand apart from the dominant Shi‘a. Fozi also provides a look at the challenges Zoroastrians have faced over the centuries while exploring how today’s members are working to remain relevant in a tumultuous regional and global context.
Papers by Navid Fozi
The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2024
in Turkey, and Harvard Law School. He has carried out fieldwork in Iran, Malaysia, and Turkey, fo... more in Turkey, and Harvard Law School. He has carried out fieldwork in Iran, Malaysia, and Turkey, focusing on marginalized Iranian communities and diaspora. Fozi is the author of Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran. IntroductIon Since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, waves of Iranian migrants, mostly asylum seekers, have formed diasporas composed of four to six million people. 1 Asylumseeking thus illustrates one of the most significant modes of Iranian global mobility. The continuous revolutionary conditions perpetuated by the Revolutionary Guards and Revolutionary Courts have been identified as the sole contributor to the diasporization of Iranians. 2 I argue that such a myopic focus on revolutionary moments obfuscates the marginalizing historical processes that have shaped asylumseeking as a means of engagement with domestic and global inequality. The Islamic Republic has heralded a culmination of Iranian diasporic displacement unleashed by the deterritorializing effects of neoliberal world capitalism through economic globalization and mobility to meet labor demand. 3 Coupled with the apparatuses of the modern nation-state, the judiciary, police, and education system have given the traditional exclusionary practices a modern character. I will draw on my fieldwork with Iranian asylum seekers and refugees in transit through Türkiye pursuing permanent resettlement, mainly in North America, Australia, and Europe. These Iranians compose heterogeneous populations that embark on an arduous journey from the Global South to the Global North. They form diasporas of communities whose marginality in Iran predates the Islamic Republic. Each group finds its own niche while becoming part of the Iranian diaspora.
Asian Politics & Policy, 2015
Since the contested presidential (re)election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, crises of represent... more Since the contested presidential (re)election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, crises of representation, power, and knowledge have destabilized the Islamic Republic of Iran's governmentality notwithstanding a strong Weberian state. When many Iranians demanded a recount, the state rejected allegations of vote-rigging, purged Reformists from the state, cracked down on their supporters, elicited forced confessions, and staged show trials. This state-sponsored vigilantism that diminished the Republic's claim of representing the people caused a Reformist retreat from the streets as well as withdrawal from the parliamentary elections of March 2012. Such withdrawal, which threatened the vibrancy of the elections, added to the crises of representation. Moreover, it caused the Principalists to factionalize and radicalize, producing a crisis of power. In addition, divisions within the government and between the government and the populace resulted in the failure of the state to discern friends from foes, causing a crisis of knowledge. The subsequent presidential elections of Hassan Rouhani four years later in 2013, both in terms of the ways in which it unfolded as well as the outcome, was a confirmation and a way out of these challenges.
Iranian Studies
This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroas... more This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foun...
Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies , 2021
This article explores the diasporic subjectivities of Iranians in Malaysia, specifically how home... more This article explores the diasporic subjectivities of Iranians in Malaysia, specifically how homeland and host country’s national domestic policies and bilateral state relations, in addition to international politics, mold Iranians’ diasporic discourses, organizations, and economics. Positioned within the broader scholarship, my ethnography in Kuala Lumpur identifies the specificity and diversity of Iranian diasporic subjects that embed three accompanying processes of (1) fragmentation along the overlapping socioeconomic, political, ethnic, and gender lines; (2) polarization denoting open opposition of political ideologies and allegiances, religious interpretations, as well as ethnic and gender identities; (3) and pluralization as consciousness accommodating free and equal interaction and communication among diverse groups. Exploring these processes, I argue that the Iranians who observed, discussed, and imagined their own fragmentation and polarization, also developed a pluralist consciousness informed by the host country’s diverse backdrop.
https://www.utpjournals.press/eprint/HIJQFTAXFQNBDDYHQSD5/full
In 2009, Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad began to invoke nationalist sen-timents by paying ... more In 2009, Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad began to invoke nationalist sen-timents by paying homage to Iran’s pre-Islamic history; a significant shift from 30 years of disparaging this period. Tracing the religious and political genealogies of Ahmadinejad’s discourse, this article analyzes the climate that rendered both the Islamic Republic’s Shi‘i-oriented nationalism and the secular alternative pro- posed by the Pahlavi dynasty politically inadequate. Such a climate provided con-ditions to amalgamate, albeit incompletely, a “neo-Iranian” nationalist discourse based on restoring ancient Persia’s grandeur and bolstered by Shi‘i eschatology.
Reviews 649 how democracy promotion actually works, which others can then use to design more effe... more Reviews 649 how democracy promotion actually works, which others can then use to design more effective democracy assistance programs. In that goal, she has resoundingly succeeded. I recommend the book to scholars and students interested in democracy promotion and international norms in the Middle East and beyond, as well as practitioners working in the field of democracy and governance assistance.
Keywords: elections;governmentality;Iran;legitimacy;representation Since the conteste... more Keywords:
elections;governmentality;Iran;legitimacy;representation
Since the contested presidential (re)election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, crises of representation, power, and knowledge have destabilized the Islamic Republic of Iran's governmentality notwithstanding a strong Weberian state. When many Iranians demanded a recount, the state rejected allegations of vote-rigging, purged Reformists from the state, cracked down on their supporters, elicited forced confessions, and staged show trials. This state-sponsored vigilantism that diminished the Republic's claim of representing the people caused a Reformist retreat from the streets as well as withdrawal from the parliamentary elections of March 2012. Such withdrawal, which threatened the vibrancy of the elections, added to the crises of representation. Moreover, it caused the Principalists to factionalize and radicalize, producing a crisis of power. In addition, divisions within the government and between the government and the populace resulted in the failure of the state to discern friends from foes, causing a crisis of knowledge. The subsequent presidential elections of Hassan Rouhani four years later in 2013, both in terms of the ways in which it unfolded as well as the outcome, was a confirmation and a way out of these challenges.
In this article, drawing on my fieldwork in the Farmáni workshop in western Iran, I focus on the ... more In this article, drawing on my fieldwork in the Farmáni workshop in western Iran, I focus on the socially and ideologically informed body techniques of crafting the sacred lute-type tanbur. I show that the superiority of Farmáni tanburs transcends the family's pure Weberian "traditional authority" within the Ahl-e Haqq of Gurán; rather, this superiority is established upon Farmáni's informed body techniques that enable construction of unblemished tanburs, as the Ahl-e Haqq understand them. In order to provide insight into the Farmáni's embodied knowledge tradition, Barth's anthropology of knowledge framework, Marcel Mauss's concept of "body techniques" and Charles Hirschkind's notion of "perceptual capacities" are employed. Engaging the dialectical of the modern demands for more voluminous sound and the Farmáni's technical modification crafting the instrument, I contemplate the question of tradition in terms of "continuities of disciplined sensibility."
... government. He, by challenging the essential features of the secularization thesis, is able t... more ... government. He, by challenging the essential features of the secularization thesis, is able to criticize previous theories of Marxism, neo-Marxism and world system historians. ... and. Islam. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993. ...
Thesis Chapters by Navid Fozi
Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Tehran, as well as extensive archival research and textu... more Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Tehran, as well as extensive archival research and textual examinations, this dissertation analyzes the public rituals and discourses of the Zoroastrian religious minority in Iran to show how these define and defend Zoroastrian identity and values against persecution from the Shi‘a-Muslim majority. It begins by providing a focused historical sketch of Zoroastrians’ condition after the Arab invasion of seventh-century Iran, and some of the longstanding challenges they face living among Muslims. It then turns to description and analysis of hundreds of public discursive and ritual performances through which Zoroastrians identify, rationalize, and legitimate their doctrine and rituals in response to the prevalent Islamic context.
I argue that Zoroastrian religious gatherings manufacture an alternative religious space that operates in dialectical opposition to that of the dominant Shi‘a. For example, by maintaining their own astral calendar and round of celebrations, emphasizing joy rather than Shi‘a penitence, wearing white instead of black in commemorative rituals, and favoring women’s rights, the Zoroastrians assert their unique identity and make claims to global recognition.
Moreover, Zoroastrian socio-discursive conventions constantly play upon national, religious, and ethnic categories in a continuous process of identity construction. By sometimes coalescing, sometimes parsing out, the identities of Zoroastrians, Iranians, Shi‘a, and Arabs, these maneuverings enable Zoroastrians to construct, imagine, and secure their survival and their distinctiveness. One way this is achieved is by drawing a link between past and present, establishing Zoroastrians as creators, preservers, and promoters of authentic Iranian culture. Furthermore, Zoroastrians stress their influence in the formation of Shi‘a-Islam as a form of resistance against the invading Arab Sunnis. By emphasizing similarity with the Shi‘a as an Iranicized religion, they carve out a habitable niche for themselves. At the same time, by accentuating the Arab roots of some Shi‘a religious and cultural practices, portrayed as contrary to authentic Iranian culture, they maintain their distinctiveness.
In conclusion, I address the Islamic Regime’s recent linkage of nationalism to the glories of pre-Islamic Iran. This shift has, inadvertently, helped bring Zoroastrians’ assertion of themselves as symbols of primordial Iranian nationalism to public recognition.
Drafts by Navid Fozi
This book project is based on my extensive field research during 2015-2016 among Iranian asylum s... more This book project is based on my extensive field research during 2015-2016 among Iranian asylum seekers in various cities in Turkey. These transit migrants, whose estimated number is about twenty thousand, pursue a permanent resettlement, mainly in North America. They counter the privileged Iranian hegemonic public that consists of Iranian Shiʿa who abide by the authority of the Supreme Religious Leader and subscribe to the principles of heteronormativity. These Iranian counterpublics are consequently composed of precluded sociocultural categories, namely LGBTQ, political dissidents, as well as religious and ethnic minorities including Christians, Baha’is, Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq, Zoroastrians and Cosmic Mystics.
Reclaiming the Faravahar is the first ethnographic study of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. ... more Reclaiming the Faravahar is the first ethnographic study of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. Examining hundreds of ritual performances, Navid Fozi shows how Zoroastrians define their identity and values in an area long marked by conflict between the Shi‘a and Sunnis. He focuses on two main concerns for Zoroastrians: continuity with the past as evidenced by their claim to be the most authentic Iranians, as well as their attempts to stand apart from the dominant Shi‘a. Fozi also provides a look at the challenges Zoroastrians have faced over the centuries while exploring how today’s members are working to remain relevant in a tumultuous regional and global context.
The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2024
in Turkey, and Harvard Law School. He has carried out fieldwork in Iran, Malaysia, and Turkey, fo... more in Turkey, and Harvard Law School. He has carried out fieldwork in Iran, Malaysia, and Turkey, focusing on marginalized Iranian communities and diaspora. Fozi is the author of Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran. IntroductIon Since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, waves of Iranian migrants, mostly asylum seekers, have formed diasporas composed of four to six million people. 1 Asylumseeking thus illustrates one of the most significant modes of Iranian global mobility. The continuous revolutionary conditions perpetuated by the Revolutionary Guards and Revolutionary Courts have been identified as the sole contributor to the diasporization of Iranians. 2 I argue that such a myopic focus on revolutionary moments obfuscates the marginalizing historical processes that have shaped asylumseeking as a means of engagement with domestic and global inequality. The Islamic Republic has heralded a culmination of Iranian diasporic displacement unleashed by the deterritorializing effects of neoliberal world capitalism through economic globalization and mobility to meet labor demand. 3 Coupled with the apparatuses of the modern nation-state, the judiciary, police, and education system have given the traditional exclusionary practices a modern character. I will draw on my fieldwork with Iranian asylum seekers and refugees in transit through Türkiye pursuing permanent resettlement, mainly in North America, Australia, and Europe. These Iranians compose heterogeneous populations that embark on an arduous journey from the Global South to the Global North. They form diasporas of communities whose marginality in Iran predates the Islamic Republic. Each group finds its own niche while becoming part of the Iranian diaspora.
Asian Politics & Policy, 2015
Since the contested presidential (re)election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, crises of represent... more Since the contested presidential (re)election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, crises of representation, power, and knowledge have destabilized the Islamic Republic of Iran's governmentality notwithstanding a strong Weberian state. When many Iranians demanded a recount, the state rejected allegations of vote-rigging, purged Reformists from the state, cracked down on their supporters, elicited forced confessions, and staged show trials. This state-sponsored vigilantism that diminished the Republic's claim of representing the people caused a Reformist retreat from the streets as well as withdrawal from the parliamentary elections of March 2012. Such withdrawal, which threatened the vibrancy of the elections, added to the crises of representation. Moreover, it caused the Principalists to factionalize and radicalize, producing a crisis of power. In addition, divisions within the government and between the government and the populace resulted in the failure of the state to discern friends from foes, causing a crisis of knowledge. The subsequent presidential elections of Hassan Rouhani four years later in 2013, both in terms of the ways in which it unfolded as well as the outcome, was a confirmation and a way out of these challenges.
Iranian Studies
This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroas... more This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foun...
Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies , 2021
This article explores the diasporic subjectivities of Iranians in Malaysia, specifically how home... more This article explores the diasporic subjectivities of Iranians in Malaysia, specifically how homeland and host country’s national domestic policies and bilateral state relations, in addition to international politics, mold Iranians’ diasporic discourses, organizations, and economics. Positioned within the broader scholarship, my ethnography in Kuala Lumpur identifies the specificity and diversity of Iranian diasporic subjects that embed three accompanying processes of (1) fragmentation along the overlapping socioeconomic, political, ethnic, and gender lines; (2) polarization denoting open opposition of political ideologies and allegiances, religious interpretations, as well as ethnic and gender identities; (3) and pluralization as consciousness accommodating free and equal interaction and communication among diverse groups. Exploring these processes, I argue that the Iranians who observed, discussed, and imagined their own fragmentation and polarization, also developed a pluralist consciousness informed by the host country’s diverse backdrop.
https://www.utpjournals.press/eprint/HIJQFTAXFQNBDDYHQSD5/full
In 2009, Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad began to invoke nationalist sen-timents by paying ... more In 2009, Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad began to invoke nationalist sen-timents by paying homage to Iran’s pre-Islamic history; a significant shift from 30 years of disparaging this period. Tracing the religious and political genealogies of Ahmadinejad’s discourse, this article analyzes the climate that rendered both the Islamic Republic’s Shi‘i-oriented nationalism and the secular alternative pro- posed by the Pahlavi dynasty politically inadequate. Such a climate provided con-ditions to amalgamate, albeit incompletely, a “neo-Iranian” nationalist discourse based on restoring ancient Persia’s grandeur and bolstered by Shi‘i eschatology.
Reviews 649 how democracy promotion actually works, which others can then use to design more effe... more Reviews 649 how democracy promotion actually works, which others can then use to design more effective democracy assistance programs. In that goal, she has resoundingly succeeded. I recommend the book to scholars and students interested in democracy promotion and international norms in the Middle East and beyond, as well as practitioners working in the field of democracy and governance assistance.
Keywords: elections;governmentality;Iran;legitimacy;representation Since the conteste... more Keywords:
elections;governmentality;Iran;legitimacy;representation
Since the contested presidential (re)election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, crises of representation, power, and knowledge have destabilized the Islamic Republic of Iran's governmentality notwithstanding a strong Weberian state. When many Iranians demanded a recount, the state rejected allegations of vote-rigging, purged Reformists from the state, cracked down on their supporters, elicited forced confessions, and staged show trials. This state-sponsored vigilantism that diminished the Republic's claim of representing the people caused a Reformist retreat from the streets as well as withdrawal from the parliamentary elections of March 2012. Such withdrawal, which threatened the vibrancy of the elections, added to the crises of representation. Moreover, it caused the Principalists to factionalize and radicalize, producing a crisis of power. In addition, divisions within the government and between the government and the populace resulted in the failure of the state to discern friends from foes, causing a crisis of knowledge. The subsequent presidential elections of Hassan Rouhani four years later in 2013, both in terms of the ways in which it unfolded as well as the outcome, was a confirmation and a way out of these challenges.
In this article, drawing on my fieldwork in the Farmáni workshop in western Iran, I focus on the ... more In this article, drawing on my fieldwork in the Farmáni workshop in western Iran, I focus on the socially and ideologically informed body techniques of crafting the sacred lute-type tanbur. I show that the superiority of Farmáni tanburs transcends the family's pure Weberian "traditional authority" within the Ahl-e Haqq of Gurán; rather, this superiority is established upon Farmáni's informed body techniques that enable construction of unblemished tanburs, as the Ahl-e Haqq understand them. In order to provide insight into the Farmáni's embodied knowledge tradition, Barth's anthropology of knowledge framework, Marcel Mauss's concept of "body techniques" and Charles Hirschkind's notion of "perceptual capacities" are employed. Engaging the dialectical of the modern demands for more voluminous sound and the Farmáni's technical modification crafting the instrument, I contemplate the question of tradition in terms of "continuities of disciplined sensibility."
... government. He, by challenging the essential features of the secularization thesis, is able t... more ... government. He, by challenging the essential features of the secularization thesis, is able to criticize previous theories of Marxism, neo-Marxism and world system historians. ... and. Islam. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993. ...
Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Tehran, as well as extensive archival research and textu... more Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Tehran, as well as extensive archival research and textual examinations, this dissertation analyzes the public rituals and discourses of the Zoroastrian religious minority in Iran to show how these define and defend Zoroastrian identity and values against persecution from the Shi‘a-Muslim majority. It begins by providing a focused historical sketch of Zoroastrians’ condition after the Arab invasion of seventh-century Iran, and some of the longstanding challenges they face living among Muslims. It then turns to description and analysis of hundreds of public discursive and ritual performances through which Zoroastrians identify, rationalize, and legitimate their doctrine and rituals in response to the prevalent Islamic context.
I argue that Zoroastrian religious gatherings manufacture an alternative religious space that operates in dialectical opposition to that of the dominant Shi‘a. For example, by maintaining their own astral calendar and round of celebrations, emphasizing joy rather than Shi‘a penitence, wearing white instead of black in commemorative rituals, and favoring women’s rights, the Zoroastrians assert their unique identity and make claims to global recognition.
Moreover, Zoroastrian socio-discursive conventions constantly play upon national, religious, and ethnic categories in a continuous process of identity construction. By sometimes coalescing, sometimes parsing out, the identities of Zoroastrians, Iranians, Shi‘a, and Arabs, these maneuverings enable Zoroastrians to construct, imagine, and secure their survival and their distinctiveness. One way this is achieved is by drawing a link between past and present, establishing Zoroastrians as creators, preservers, and promoters of authentic Iranian culture. Furthermore, Zoroastrians stress their influence in the formation of Shi‘a-Islam as a form of resistance against the invading Arab Sunnis. By emphasizing similarity with the Shi‘a as an Iranicized religion, they carve out a habitable niche for themselves. At the same time, by accentuating the Arab roots of some Shi‘a religious and cultural practices, portrayed as contrary to authentic Iranian culture, they maintain their distinctiveness.
In conclusion, I address the Islamic Regime’s recent linkage of nationalism to the glories of pre-Islamic Iran. This shift has, inadvertently, helped bring Zoroastrians’ assertion of themselves as symbols of primordial Iranian nationalism to public recognition.
This book project is based on my extensive field research during 2015-2016 among Iranian asylum s... more This book project is based on my extensive field research during 2015-2016 among Iranian asylum seekers in various cities in Turkey. These transit migrants, whose estimated number is about twenty thousand, pursue a permanent resettlement, mainly in North America. They counter the privileged Iranian hegemonic public that consists of Iranian Shiʿa who abide by the authority of the Supreme Religious Leader and subscribe to the principles of heteronormativity. These Iranian counterpublics are consequently composed of precluded sociocultural categories, namely LGBTQ, political dissidents, as well as religious and ethnic minorities including Christians, Baha’is, Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq, Zoroastrians and Cosmic Mystics.