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From “alien” to “one of us” and back:field experiences in IranShahnaz Nadjmabadi Anthropologist and Research Fellowa The University of Frankfurt , GermanyPublished online: 23 May 2006.

To cite this article: Shahnaz Nadjmabadi Anthropologist and Research Fellow (2004) From“alien” to “one of us” and back: field experiences in Iran, Iranian Studies, 37:4, 603-612, DOI:10.1080/0021086042000324143

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Shahnaz Nadjmabadi

From “Alien” to “One of Us” and Back: Field Experiences in Iran

Even for a native anthropologist, fieldwork does not necessarily imply being “athome” in the field. As an Iranian anthropologist living and working in Germanyand France but conducting research in Iran, I have to deal with the differentmeanings of “home” wherever I am. In the following, I broach the topic bysketching some recent relevant literature, and by then taking a critical look atthe conditions and consequences of my own fieldwork “at home.”In the growing literature on anthropology at home,1 most authors agree that

working at home can make the anthropologist appear like “one of us,” withexpectations to share cultural values and experiences. Obeyesekere describeshow the shared culture in the field made him sensitive to his position: “I amone with [my informants]. . .yet not one of them.”2 Narayan stresses the marginalposition of native anthropologists as simultaneous insiders and outsiders, as“halfies.” Rao suggests that the difference between the anthropological practiceof natives and non-natives is gradual, and that emphasizing dissimilarities is aform of orientalism in which the self is defined in contrast to the “other.”3

Fabian, Gupta and the Fergussons, Okely and others argue that in the pastonly by travelling to “the field” one could encounter cultural difference.Today, fieldwork should no longer be a study of the “other” but of the self-other relationship, to be found anywhere.4

These arguments reflect the perspective of the researcher rather than the reactionsof the research subjects to the researcher. Most discussions of ethnographic field-work are on writing rather than doing fieldwork, on ethnographic representation

Shahnaz Nadjmabadi, is an anthropologist and Research Fellow at The University of Frankfurt,Germany.

1For recent literature, see M.G.S. Peirano, “When Anthropology is at Home: The DifferentContexts of a Single Disclipline,” Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998): 105–128;I. Todorava-Pirgova, “‘Native’ Anthropologist: On the Bridge at the Border,” in The Politics ofAnthropology at Home II, ed. C. Giordano, I-M. Greverus, R. Roemhild (Hamburg, 2000).

2G. Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (Chicago,1981): 11.

3K. Narayan, “How Native is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?,” American Anthropologist 95 (1993):671–86; A. Rao, “Einige Bemerkungen zur Feldforschung in der Heimat,” in Feldforschungen. Erfah-rungsberichte zur Einfuehrung, ed. H. Fischer (Berlin, 2002).

4J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (New York, 1983); A. Gupta,A. Fergusson, and J. Fergusson,Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field (Berkeley,1997); J. Okely, Own or Other Culture (London, 1986).

Iranian Studies, volume 37, number 4, December 2004

ISSN 0021-0862 print=ISSN 1475-4819 online=04=040603-10#2004 The International Society for Iranian StudiesDOI 10.1080=0021086042000324143

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rather than on the practical conditions of fieldwork. Provided we anthropologistsare brave enough to do so, we all can talk about critical reactions of local peopleto us, and about being caught in the people’s web of demands, expectations, andclaims. A field researcher has to react as well as act. Herein for me lies the deepermeaning of the self-other relationship. How ethnographers meet their hosts, howthey are met by their hosts, how their choices are constrained by local conditions,and, later, how they transfer lived experiences into text depends on their day-to-day relationships with their hosts. Back home, however, few anthropologistswrite about these experiences and problems. I think this is so mainly because wedon’t want to look weak in the eyes of other scholars. Therefore, we suppress orconceal much information through self-censorship, and tend to fashion ethnogra-phies as perfect stories of success.5

Rather than simply theorizing about this topic or criticizing the research ofothers, I will discuss how my own research activities in rural Iran were receivedin the field; how they were approved of, modified or dismissed by the people Istudied; what expectations people attached to the roles they ascribed to me;and how inadequately I dealt with these expectations.My experiences suggest that an important difference between a “native” and a

“foreign” researcher lies in what I call the “conceivability” of the researcher.Iranians say of foreign researchers that it is difficult to get them to make commit-ments to the local population. Neither their coming and going nor their knowl-edge about local conditions can be controlled by local people. Foreign researcherscan simply dissociate themselves and disappear from the field any time withoutbeing accessible to the people or accountable for their actions.In relation to native researchers, people are guided by experiences they have

had with government officials coming to rural areas. Most often the officials’ pre-sence is forced on the people and resented. Native anthropologists inevitably willbe associated with government authorities. They are regarded with suspicion orelse expected to act as mediators between local people and government agenciesand to engage themselves on behalf of the people’s communal and individualinterests. Though native researchers also can escape the people and theircontrol by leaving, they nevertheless remain “conceivable” to them. As nativeIranians, their traces can potentially be followed.Of course people express expectations and demands to foreign researchers, too,

but more subtly so, I think. Besides, local people know that foreign scholarscannot exert much influence on Iranian authorities, barely tolerated in theregion as they often are, and staying only with the approval of these authorities.These constraints do not release the foreign researcher from responsibilitiestoward the local people altogether, however, in the absence of such constraints,native scholars are confronted with demands much more forcefully.

5See also G. A. Fine, “Ten Lies of Ethnography: Moral Dilemmas of Field Research,” Journal ofContemporary Ethnography 22.3 (1993): 267–294.

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In the field in Iran,6 my persona was framed by these factors: I was born in Iran,thus an Iranian by culture; educated in Europe; working at different universitiesin Europe; not committed to a specific national idea; observing and writing aboutlocal affairs. Again and again I was provoked to ask myself how these factorsinfluenced my research, whether they facilitated or hindered my part in the dialo-gue, whether they marked me as a guest, a visitor, an observer, a participant, aninterpreter, a translator.Geographically, all three of my field locations were in border regions: Luristan

borders on Iraq, Khorasan on Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf represents thetransition to the Arab Gulf states. As remote and peripheral regions, all threelack the infrastructure necessary for convenient and easy contact with the inland,and thus the people’s living conditions are precarious. In all three areas I livedwith local families in cramped spaces, out of necessity. This facilitated my rapidintegration but left little room for privacy or even for writing up field notes. Ialways left the field with raw notes, which made the subsequent analysis at homemore difficult.

Case Studies

Luristan: In 1970 I went to the field for the first time, to do research in westernIran for my Ph.D. thesis.7Influenced by then popular research interests in theWest, I decided to study the role of parental ties for the social organization ofthe Shirawand, a nomadic tribe in Luristan on the verge of sedentarization.In the seventies the government had gained control over distant Iranian bor-

derlands through the White Revolution and the establishment of the “army ofknowledge and health” (sepahe danesh va behdasht). Hospitals and schools werebuilt in remote regions and staffed with graduates from high schools and collegesin the course of their military service, but unreliably so. Regarding nomads, gov-ernmental policies were intended to make access to pastures more difficultthrough the control of local forest authorities, and to settle them.At the beginning of my research I told the Shiravand that I was particularly

interested in their nomadic form of life and their relations to neighboringtribes. But under the circumstances, for the local people this meant that I wascharged by the government to work for the settlement program, and that allinformation they gave me would be used to settle them.Soon after my arrival demands on me were piling up. As a representative of the

state, I should convince the forest authorities to stop controlling their pastures,and should persuade the authorities not to recruit all their sons into militaryservice. Furthermore, as in the eyes of the local people I seemingly had

6In Luristan, west-Iran (1970), in Khorasan, east-Iran (1976), and in the Iranian coastal region ofthe Persian Gulf (1977 to present).

7R. Shahnaz. Nadjmabadi, “Die Shirawand in West Lorestan: mit besonderer Beruecksichtigungdes Verwandtschaftssystems” (Ph.D. diss., University of Heidelberg, 1975).

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nothing concretely to do, I should teach the children and look after the sick in theinfirmary, or at least work for the literacy campaign for adults in the evening.The people’s fundamental misunderstanding of my research intentions did not

change as long as I was there: as we were saying good-bye, my hostess, withwhom I had had many intimate talks and had developed a warm friendship,told me, “You have been here for such a long time, and we have confided ineach other, but to this day I don’t know why you have come here.”Khorasan: In 1976 I took students from the University of Zurich in Switzerland

to Khorasan to practice ethnographic fieldwork. By then I had decided that I hadaccepted too uncritically the western anthropological preference for topics such asnomadism, tribal and kinship structures, and rituals. I had neglected topics ofinterest and concern to Iranian anthropology, such as rural structures, social andeconomical transformation processes, ethnic identity, and self-conception. NowI wanted to study such topics in rural Khorasan, the so-called granary of Iran,where the consequences of the shah’s land reform had deeply influenced rural life.While supervising the students’ research I came across the construction of

water-pump stations (cah). During the land reform large landowners quicklycultivated their fallow land in order to escape expropriation. They sank numerousdeep wells, installed power pumps, and irrigated the surrounding land to growmostly cumin and melons as cash crops. The intensive cultivation leached thesoil quickly and destroyed the traditional irrigation system (qanat). The waterdried up and many peasants in the more distant villages were no longer able tocultivate their land. They left their villages and became farm workers in thenew fields in order to survive. They lived in provisional substandard dwellingsbeside the wells without economic security or control over the distribution ofthe crops. This exploitative system was tolerated and even supported by localauthorities because many civil servants had invested their own money in it.For me, this hard reality took on exotic features when I found out that a group

of local seyyed (who claim direct descent from the Prophet Mohammad) declared tobe in possession of a hair of the Prophet which they carefully preserved in a shrine.No peasant had ever seen it. The seyyeds said that because they were the guardiansof the Prophet’s hair each peasant had to work for a lowwage in the pump-stationsbuilt by the seyyeds. Thus they succeeded in enriching themselves at the expenseof the peasants’ credulity and gullibility, eventually controlling over 70 percent ofthe pump stations.It took me some time to overcome my dismay and anger (my subjectivity, that

is,) about something that I interpreted as mendacity. I began to study this totallynew phenomenon of pump stations in Iranian agriculture and its social and econ-omic effects. Eventually the seyyeds allowed me to live with a family who workedfor them and who had settled near one of the pump-stations. The people living inthe vicinity of the well reacted quite suspiciously when I asked them about theirvillage(s) of origin, their duration of stay near the well and their crop yields. Theywere afraid that I had come to repatriate them to their old villages. Moreover theywere quite confused about my long discussions about the Prophet’s hair.

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For the pump-station owners my stay at the well was inconvenient. Again andagain they tried to induce me to move to one of the old villages, where life wouldbe much easier and more pleasant. They argued that the farm workers were habit-ual liars and therefore I should not listen to them.The local people expressed demands on me clearly: as they had no means

of putting pressure on the pump-station owners themselves, they asked me toargue for a fairer distribution of the produce and to persuade the owners tobuild the promised houses, a school, and a clinic. This put me in an awkwardposition.The end of our stay arrived swiftly when all Swiss students fell ill with hepatitis.

After I had organized their departure I returned to the pump-station. Meanwhile,the people had come to the conclusion that this misfortune had hit my studentsand thereby myself because I had not believed in the Prophet’s hair.Persian Gulf: My interest in the Gulf region, where I have stayed the longest

time and where my current research is located, developed when I realized howclosely rituals of possession such as the zar are related to identity and integrationin a multiethnic community.8 In 1977 I began research on the island of Larak,where zar ceremonies were still conducted regularly. During that time, questionsof ethnic affiliation and identity of the Sunni minority living between the Iranianand the Arab cultural areas became important for me. Today they represent thefocus of my research.Coming to the island, I told the people that I was particularly interested in their

traditional fishing system and the zar ritual. Behind my interest for the ritual theysuspected that I wanted to unmask their belief in spirits, which did not completelyharmonize with Islamic doctrine. Only some of the older fishermen tookmy interest in fishing seriously.When I extended my field of research to coastal villages on the mainland, again

the local people expressed their demands clearly: I should persuade local auth-orities to provide potable water and to complete the road to the inland. MoreoverI should plead for the restitution of the free trade area and the local customs clear-ances, which earlier had been a source of income for the villagers. And someintellectually inclined people told me that instead of wasting my time ontraditional fishing and rituals I should record their recent history. Since the revo-lution the government-supported Shia ideology was challenging the Sunnimajority, but nobody reported on the struggle for self-determination in thisregion and on the riots in Bandar Lengeh in the first year after the revolution.I, a neutral and literate person, should make all this public.In my repeated returns to the village, the people see a true interest on my part

in their history and in the improvement of their living conditions. They continueto hope that eventually I will present their demands to the local authorities withsuccess.

8Qolam H. Saedi, a medical professional, wrote the first book about zar ceremonies, after alengthy stay in the Gulf region. Q.H. Saedi, Ahl-hava (Tehran, 1966).

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Reactions to the People’s Expectations

These were collective demands of local people. Most of the expectations of indi-vidual people were for me to take sides in conflicts.My residency in Luristan was as an inexperienced, insecure researcher, a young,

unaccompanied woman. Working on the kinship system I soon recognized dis-putes and quarrels in the different family groups. I found myself surrounded byseveral hostile tribes and families, and hostile local civil servants and tribalchiefs. My lack of experience in dealing with Iranian authorities put me into astate of mind where it took all my courage just to open my mouth at all. I wasafraid that even the smallest involuntary mistake or undiplomatic word wouldthreaten my stay, and therefore I refused to side with anybody in a conflict.Furthermore, to avoid offence, I tried to honor my hosts’ wishes even whenthat made me act against my own better judgement. For example, I abstainedfrom food during Ramadan, although fasting was hard for me, especiallybecause food was scarce anyway. I prayed punctually, day and night, and Ireduced my contact to the motreb, a group of entertainers and craftsmen, becausethe nomads considered them haram (religiously unlawful). I complied not inresponse to what I considered to be the local people’s sensibilities but becausethe people directly and repeatedly pointed out to me my “wrong” behavior. Forexample, they scolded me for skipping a prayer, and they did not touch mydishes after I had stayed with the motreb. Obviously, they used these rules tocontrol me—several local women took neither fasting nor praying seriouslywithout being reprimanded. As I never protested or demanded anything, keptout of local conflicts, and did not take care of their children or their sick, intheir eyes I simply did not behave right. The people never seemed to understand,or at least to acknowledge, the reason for my stay. It was a stressful experience forme, and I have never returned to Luristan.Today, considering this first fieldwork from a distance, I think that with a bit

more self-assurance I could at least have taught the children and adults. But eventoday, despite my experiences with authorities and my knowledge of their func-tions in these marginal areas, I still find it problematic to involve myself in con-flicts between them and local people. As soon as I try to clarify a problem betweenthem, the authorities perceive this as my solidarity with the population against theinterests of the authorities, which endangers my research stay. My siding withgovernment officials inevitably leads to a rift between myself and the people,which I can risk even less. Identification with both parties means severe personalproblems and restrictions on the scope of my research.One of the consequences of these conflicting loyalties and relationships was

that I collected and analyzed my data on kinship from the perspective of delimita-tion, conflict, and disharmony, reflecting my own insecurities and negativeemotions. Looking back after twenty years, I see the Shiravand’s inter-familyand inter-group relationships as much more flexible than I had perceived them

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to be while I was there. Now I think that maybe my earlier interpretation was anattempt to bring some order and structure into my problem-ridden subjectiveeveryday life among the Shiravand.9

In Khorasan my foremost concern was with how human beings can fall victimto their beliefs. My efforts to fulfill one of the ethical demands of critical anthro-pologists, that is, to raise the consciousness of local people by discussing powerrelationships by providing background information for the people’s situations,were misunderstood. The people told me that I had no right to take their faithaway. Moreover, they thought that I had been punished for my unbelief andthat I was incompetent, especially in religious matters. For me this meant thatthey regarded me as qualified only as long as I looked after their interests anddid not question their complicity in the status quo. I was not allowed to utterany criticism, especially not if it suggested a change of ideas or practices.It was clear to everybody that my sympathies werewith the farmworkers and not

with the landowners who had good relations with the authorities and the secretpolice. I always had to watch my words in order not to discredit myself, as mystay there depended on their good will. My efforts to point out to them the farmworkers’ miserable situation usually were dismissed with the cynical argumentthat the workers were much better off at the wells than in their villages of origin.After this experience I started to doubt the feasibility of realizing the goal of

critical anthropology: to enlighten the oppressed by informing them of theelites’ tactics of exploitation. What could I actually find out about the seyyeds’power structures and their cooperation with local authorities that the peopledid not already know? The farm workers and I had one thing in common: inorder to be allowed to stay at the well, we had to accept the landowners’ con-ditions. Furthermore, I am convinced now that the people’s demands for betterlife conditions could not have been met by the pump-station owners. Had Istayed longer to fight for the farm workers’ rights with the authorities of the pro-vince of Mashhad I might have caused a reduction of the number of the wells,with bad consequences for the farm workers who had abandoned their landand water rights in their old villages. I could not in good conscience havetaken the responsibility for the consequences of such activism.My methodology for collecting data was influenced by my early declaration of

solidarity with the farm workers. This implied my negative attitude toward theseyyeds. I had no interest in the seyyeds’ perceptions of the situation, for theway in which they legitimized their power. Now, years later, I realize that inorder to understand the complex religious feelings and the complex relationshipsof all the people there, I should have suppressed my prejudice in order to be ableto understand the seyyeds’ philosophy that informed their relationships with the

9For this see also Jacob Black-Michaud, Sheep and Land: The Economics of Power in a Tribal Society(Paris, 1986). He describes contractual relationships of the “Lure” as rigid. J.P. Digard, “Jeux destructures. Segmantarite et pouvoir chez les nomades Baxtiari d’Iran,” L’Homme 102 (1987): 12–53 describes the power distribution among the Bakhtiari as rigidly structured.

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local people. Because of my ethical and political bias, the material I collected andmy interpretations of it only represent the reality at the wells as it was lived by thefarm workers.The village in the Persian Gulf is the only place where I have stayed for a long

period and have returned several times. Here I tried to comply with the people’sdemands to act as agent between them and authorities. My attempts as a mediator,however, always ended with mutual assignments of blame. For example, when Italked to the local authorities about road building, I found out that the rule ofself-participation applied, which meant that the villagers had to contribute tothe cost of building the road. As they delayed these payments, the constructionwas delayed. The people, however, argued that self-participation could betraced back to the time when Iranians working in the Arab countries of thePersian Gulf financially supported the building of the local infrastructure. Asthis support meanwhile had ceased, the Iranian authorities should pay for all con-struction costs. I could not possible reconcile these two different standpoints.A similar problem arose when, honoring local people’s wishes, I started to

devote myself to researching the recent history of the area, including the recentpolitical conflicts in Bandar Lengeh. I realized early on that this would necessitatean analysis of the use of religion to manipulate and exert power by Sunni as wel1as by Shia groups, and of the roles of their leaders in the conflict. I doubt thatanybody could do this without jeopardizing the anonymity of the people con-cerned. Publications about these events would endanger many people.The currently popular demand by representatives of dialogical anthropology to

involve the people we study in a dialogue about our research and in the judge-ment of our work has enormous practical problems, although it looks reasonableand noble. Douglas recommends the “member test of validity:” texts should besubmitted to the members of the studied community in order to find out “ifthe members recognize, understand and accept one’s description of thesetting.”10 In all three regions where I did research, I found that when I triedto explain my interpretation of their world to the local people, I rarely metwith unrestrained approval, particularly when my analysis was critical. Even ifthe people themselves described their situation as oppressive and themselves ashelpless, for example, they did not want this description in my texts. Their officialimage of themselves did not correspond to the picture they projected to me, or tomy understanding of a situation.My collection of material and its evaluation were influenced by these experi-

ences in so far as I avoided many topics, even if they seemed important to me,because the villagers established different priorities. For example, they showedno understanding at all for my interest in the origin of the different ethnicgroups in the Persian Gulf area or in Iranian-Arab relations, and thereforethere are many gaps in my information on inter-ethnic relations there.

10J. Douglas, Investigative Social Research: Individual and Team Field Research (Beverly Hills, CA,1976): 131.

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The Process of Detaching

Considering the demands on me in the field, I often had to think about what,indeed, I could offer the people as an anthropologist—not much, I concluded.What the people wanted were decisive actions and practical help; what I couldoffer were social scientific analyses—abstract and near-incomprehensible words.The situations where I was a witness to injustice, to emotional and physicalharm, and was asked for help but could do nothing, often got so unbearablystressful for me that in order to gain some distance from the depressing feelingof helplessness I started to tune out emotionally. I began to detach myself andto react with indifference, even impatience, to the people’s demands and expec-tations. For example, when I anticipated my hosts’ likely demand as I was enter-ing their house, I greeted them with a disclaimer: “Yes, I know, your road stillisn’t finished and the school authority has not sent a teacher, . . ..” This behaviorviolated all rules of politeness toward the hosts, who consequently withheldinformation I wanted to get from them.The fishermen in the Persian Gulf villages used to complain to me bitterly

about the destruction of the rich fishing grounds by foreign fishing companiesand about their difficulties in selling their fish on the Iranian market. After awhile these discussions became stereotypical, and as I could do nothing tochange their situation, our dialogue usually ended because I stopped listening.When I asked them for stories about the sea for the purpose of recording theiroral literature, they always said they had none. At the time I thought they with-held their stories from me intentionally, but now I know that they simply hadmore urgent topics they would have liked to talk to me about.With my growing indifference toward the people’s existential problems I also

lost my affection for them. Only a factual interest was left: I began to collect datain a soulless way. There were moments when I did not want to listen anymore; Ihad reached the limits of my endurance. I started to think about the differencesbetween my world and “their” world—a picture of “otherness” emerged inme, and I began to wait with impatience for the end of my field research.

Conclusion

During my field studies in Luristan, Khorasan, and in the Persian Gulf area I wasmade painfully aware of the discrepancy between my personal research interestsand the wishes and expectations of the local people who saw in me mainly asource of potential assistance. This traumatic experience motivated me todiscuss this subject here.In my case, my status as an anthropologist who came from the outside but was

regarded as an insider was most consequential for my relationships with localpeople. I found that local people—the research subjects—differentiate betweena native and a foreign anthropologist. They react to and interact with both

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differently. They approach the native anthropologist in an open, demanding, andinsistent manner, articulating their needs and wishes, and provide insight into thedifficulties of their everyday lives in order to discuss potential solutions and towin the anthropologist’s support. This does not make the native anthropologistautomatically “one of them”; it is an encouragement to become “one with them”in Obeyesekere’s sense.For me personally, it became obvious in the course of my work that the attempt

to do research as a “native” anthropologist without thinking about practicalapplications of my data for solving local problems was misguided and led to dis-illusionment for me and my hosts. So far, Iran scholars have not addressed thisproblem either practically or theoretically. We lack relevant case studies bynative as well as foreign anthropologists.Yet, considering how difficult it is for foreign anthropologists to get research

permissions for rural areas in Iran, and for native ones to get support for suchresearch, pressing problems like this one do not get the attention they deserve.The lack of regular professional contacts between foreign and Iranian anthropol-ogists makes it altogether difficult to establish a viable scholarly community, andfor Iranian anthropologists to incorporate new theories and methodologies intotheir work. This is especially unfortunate as Iranian social scientists cannotaccomplish unaided the huge amount of ethnographic work that needs to bedone in Iran. Only through collaboration between native and foreign anthropol-ogists in the formulation of new research perspectives and in the exploration ofnew methodologies can Iranian anthropology be linked to global scholarlytrends.

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