Erika Friedl
Biographic Data
| ID | 3637781 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erika Friedl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erika |
| FAMILY NAME | Friedl |
| SIGNATURE | FRIEDL E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Michigan University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Mourning at New Year’s Day (Nowruz)
As Persian Muslims, Iranians observe Old Persian rituals in the solar calendar, such as the spring equinox, as well as Islamic rituals in the lunar calendar, such as mourning the martyr’s death of Imam Huseyn. In 2006, the dates coincided, causing distress as people tried to combine the demands of a joyful, life-affirming tradition with that of a religious ideology that allowed no compromise. Living in a tribal village at that time, we recorded p…
Eschatology in Boir Ahmad, Iran
This article is an ethnographic dissection of ideas pertaining to eschatology in a Shi’a Muslim tribal area in Iran that reveals the syncretistic possibilities in lived Islam, the generosity of the local culture regarding matters of religion, and individuals’ motivations for selecting certain possibilities to think about death and the afterlife. A common theme is for people to look at religious tenets as they pertain to this-worldly relations and…
Introduction
For several reasons there exist only relatively few ethnographic studies of children in the Middle East or in the diaspora. Accordingly, the articles in this issue of Anthropology of the Middle East represent thematically and theoretically highly divergent projects, all based on ethnographic topics and methodologies. Geographically they encompass different locations, and thematically they range from the history of childhood in Iran to matters of …
A Brief History of Childhood in Boir Ahmad, Iran
Ideas about childhood and children’s experiences in a tribal area in southwest Iran have been changing along with major local sociopolitical relations over the past century quite in accordance with the functionalist model of education and socialization. However, in the most recent stage – a globalizing, consumer-driven society in a closed, totalitarian political system – child-rearing prepares children to have great aspirations and be dedicated c…
The birthrate drop in Iran
Recent research in Boir Ahmad, south-west Iran
Transformation of sacred spaces, pilgrimages and conceptions of hybridity in the Post-Soviet Caucasus
Reports
Hegland, Mary Elaine (2014), Days of Revolution: Political Unrest in an Iranian Village (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 316 pp., two maps, nine photographs; glossary, notes, bibliography, index, ISBN: 978-0-8047-7570 (cloth) U.S. $95.00; ISBN: 978-0-8047-7568-7 (pbk.) U.S.$27.95. Hush, Girls Don’t Scream by Pouran Derakhshandeh (2013)
Folktales and Storytellers of Iran
What are the myths and stories that penetrate a society’s everyday practices? What are the un-questioned ‘truths’ that hold the keys to understanding both the concept of self-perception and group identity? Here, Erika Friedl highlights the role of the fairytale and folklore in the creation, transmission and manipulation of regional and national identities. Having carried out anthropological research in Iran since 1965, Friedl is uniquely placed t…
New Friends
Trends in intra-family relationships in Iran point to fast changes in regional and class-linked cultural patterns following the rapid spread of the national culture and of modernist ideologies and practices. People redefine their responsibilities and expectations as small nuclear families increase, women aspire to higher education and employment, and the bad economic situation necessitates various adaptations. Analysis of recent ethnographic data…
Cultural Parameters of a "Miraculous" Birth Rate Drop
Traditional Medical Popular Culture in Boir Ahmad, Iran
Analysis of my ethnographic data on medical popular culture in tribal south-west Iran, mostly from 1965 to 1983, suggests several traditional explanatory models and philosophical tenets that guide approaches to health issues. Empirical knowledge of natural processes motivates people to observe their bodily requirements. The belief in God's autocratic power is tempered with God's purported wish that people use their abilities to take responsibilit…
Methods Applied
In the 1970s social cultural anthropology in Iran was beginning to flourish. However, with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Islamic Republic of Iran, fieldwork in Iran became extremely problematic. Foreign anthropologists faced formidable obstacles to obtaining visas and permits. Anthropologists working inside Iran were also discouraged from anthropological participant observation. As a result, during the post revolutionary perio…
Stories as Ethnographic Dilemma in Longitudinal Research
Stories as Ethnographic Dilemma in Longitudinal Research
In this article, the author examines the ways her informants' stories have taken on lives of their own over a 37‐year engagement in fieldwork. Taking a practical approach, the author draws on personal experiences to ask: What is the ethnographer to do with stories that shrink, metamorphose, or disappear over time? The author suggests that these transformations run along lines of indigenous logic, and concludes by calling for the elevation of “the…
The Ethnography of Children
More than half the population of Iran is under the age of seventeen, but despite these more than 30 million children and adolescents, social scientists know little about their experiences, culture, or history. This ignorance is a reflection of what social scientists deem important. The dismissive attitude toward research with children is similar to earlier attitudes toward research with women: at best women were quantified and described. Most soc…
Why Are Children Missing from Textbooks
Letters
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Women in Muslim Societies
Exploring the status, roles and contributions of Muslim women, not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia, the authors stress the importance of historical context, local customs, the policies that define their status, and the opportunities or constraints they may experience
Making Mutual Sense
(By Special Editor Renate Fernandez) Erika Friedl, in keeping with her preferred low‐profile stance, tells of raising two daughters in an Iranian mud village from infancy through early adulthood, their time in the field distributed over a total of more than six field years. Rarely personally frustrated by having to adapt her Austrian/U.S. academic middle‐class ways to a strongly marked patriarchy in a physically and socially uncomfortable situati…
Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation
Women of De Koh
Women and the Division of Labor in an Iranian Village
Colors and culture change in Southwest Iran
An examination of recent changes in the color terminology of a Lurispeaking pepole in Iran shows a strong cultural basis of perception, categorization, and manipulation of colors. Compared to the familiar evolutionary model of the development of color categories, this case constitutes a slight deviation in the position of the colors brown and purple and suggests a qualification of the respective evolutionary stages as well as an expansion of the …
Boir Ahmad Mockery
Although contemporary Persian folk poetry does not receive much scientific attention presently, this is not necessarily a sign that it is of little importance among renown arts in Iran. In fact, folk poetry seems to be quite alive and thriving in tents and behind mud walls—still alive, one probably has to caution, in spite of the rapidly changing channels of creativity in Iran. The ephemeral folk songs and poems can, indeed, be found everywhere, …
The Folktale as Cultural Comment
New Friends
Trends in intra-family relationships in Iran point to fast changes in regional and class-linked cultural patterns following the rapid spread of the national culture and of modernist ideologies and practices. People redefine their responsibilities and expectations as small nuclear families increase, women aspire to higher education and employment, and the bad economic situation necessitates various adaptations. Analysis of recent ethnographic data…
The Ethnography of Children
More than half the population of Iran is under the age of seventeen, but despite these more than 30 million children and adolescents, social scientists know little about their experiences, culture, or history. This ignorance is a reflection of what social scientists deem important. The dismissive attitude toward research with children is similar to earlier attitudes toward research with women: at best women were quantified and described. Most soc…
Why Are Children Missing from Textbooks
Colors and culture change in Southwest Iran
An examination of recent changes in the color terminology of a Lurispeaking pepole in Iran shows a strong cultural basis of perception, categorization, and manipulation of colors. Compared to the familiar evolutionary model of the development of color categories, this case constitutes a slight deviation in the position of the colors brown and purple and suggests a qualification of the respective evolutionary stages as well as an expansion of the …
Methods Applied
In the 1970s social cultural anthropology in Iran was beginning to flourish. However, with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Islamic Republic of Iran, fieldwork in Iran became extremely problematic. Foreign anthropologists faced formidable obstacles to obtaining visas and permits. Anthropologists working inside Iran were also discouraged from anthropological participant observation. As a result, during the post revolutionary perio…
The Folktale as Cultural Comment
Boir Ahmad Mockery
Although contemporary Persian folk poetry does not receive much scientific attention presently, this is not necessarily a sign that it is of little importance among renown arts in Iran. In fact, folk poetry seems to be quite alive and thriving in tents and behind mud walls—still alive, one probably has to caution, in spite of the rapidly changing channels of creativity in Iran. The ephemeral folk songs and poems can, indeed, be found everywhere, …
Colors and culture change in Southwest Iran
An examination of recent changes in the color terminology of a Lurispeaking pepole in Iran shows a strong cultural basis of perception, categorization, and manipulation of colors. Compared to the familiar evolutionary model of the development of color categories, this case constitutes a slight deviation in the position of the colors brown and purple and suggests a qualification of the respective evolutionary stages as well as an expansion of the …
Women and the Division of Labor in an Iranian Village
Women of De Koh
Making Mutual Sense
(By Special Editor Renate Fernandez) Erika Friedl, in keeping with her preferred low‐profile stance, tells of raising two daughters in an Iranian mud village from infancy through early adulthood, their time in the field distributed over a total of more than six field years. Rarely personally frustrated by having to adapt her Austrian/U.S. academic middle‐class ways to a strongly marked patriarchy in a physically and socially uncomfortable situati…
Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation
Women in Muslim Societies
Exploring the status, roles and contributions of Muslim women, not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia, the authors stress the importance of historical context, local customs, the policies that define their status, and the opportunities or constraints they may experience
Letters
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Why Are Children Missing from Textbooks
Stories as Ethnographic Dilemma in Longitudinal Research
Stories as Ethnographic Dilemma in Longitudinal Research
In this article, the author examines the ways her informants' stories have taken on lives of their own over a 37‐year engagement in fieldwork. Taking a practical approach, the author draws on personal experiences to ask: What is the ethnographer to do with stories that shrink, metamorphose, or disappear over time? The author suggests that these transformations run along lines of indigenous logic, and concludes by calling for the elevation of “the…
The Ethnography of Children
More than half the population of Iran is under the age of seventeen, but despite these more than 30 million children and adolescents, social scientists know little about their experiences, culture, or history. This ignorance is a reflection of what social scientists deem important. The dismissive attitude toward research with children is similar to earlier attitudes toward research with women: at best women were quantified and described. Most soc…
Methods Applied
In the 1970s social cultural anthropology in Iran was beginning to flourish. However, with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent Islamic Republic of Iran, fieldwork in Iran became extremely problematic. Foreign anthropologists faced formidable obstacles to obtaining visas and permits. Anthropologists working inside Iran were also discouraged from anthropological participant observation. As a result, during the post revolutionary perio…
Traditional Medical Popular Culture in Boir Ahmad, Iran
Analysis of my ethnographic data on medical popular culture in tribal south-west Iran, mostly from 1965 to 1983, suggests several traditional explanatory models and philosophical tenets that guide approaches to health issues. Empirical knowledge of natural processes motivates people to observe their bodily requirements. The belief in God's autocratic power is tempered with God's purported wish that people use their abilities to take responsibilit…
New Friends
Trends in intra-family relationships in Iran point to fast changes in regional and class-linked cultural patterns following the rapid spread of the national culture and of modernist ideologies and practices. People redefine their responsibilities and expectations as small nuclear families increase, women aspire to higher education and employment, and the bad economic situation necessitates various adaptations. Analysis of recent ethnographic data…
Cultural Parameters of a "Miraculous" Birth Rate Drop
The birthrate drop in Iran
Recent research in Boir Ahmad, south-west Iran
Transformation of sacred spaces, pilgrimages and conceptions of hybridity in the Post-Soviet Caucasus
Reports
Hegland, Mary Elaine (2014), Days of Revolution: Political Unrest in an Iranian Village (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 316 pp., two maps, nine photographs; glossary, notes, bibliography, index, ISBN: 978-0-8047-7570 (cloth) U.S. $95.00; ISBN: 978-0-8047-7568-7 (pbk.) U.S.$27.95. Hush, Girls Don’t Scream by Pouran Derakhshandeh (2013)
Folktales and Storytellers of Iran
What are the myths and stories that penetrate a society’s everyday practices? What are the un-questioned ‘truths’ that hold the keys to understanding both the concept of self-perception and group identity? Here, Erika Friedl highlights the role of the fairytale and folklore in the creation, transmission and manipulation of regional and national identities. Having carried out anthropological research in Iran since 1965, Friedl is uniquely placed t…
Introduction
For several reasons there exist only relatively few ethnographic studies of children in the Middle East or in the diaspora. Accordingly, the articles in this issue of Anthropology of the Middle East represent thematically and theoretically highly divergent projects, all based on ethnographic topics and methodologies. Geographically they encompass different locations, and thematically they range from the history of childhood in Iran to matters of …
A Brief History of Childhood in Boir Ahmad, Iran
Ideas about childhood and children’s experiences in a tribal area in southwest Iran have been changing along with major local sociopolitical relations over the past century quite in accordance with the functionalist model of education and socialization. However, in the most recent stage – a globalizing, consumer-driven society in a closed, totalitarian political system – child-rearing prepares children to have great aspirations and be dedicated c…
Eschatology in Boir Ahmad, Iran
This article is an ethnographic dissection of ideas pertaining to eschatology in a Shi’a Muslim tribal area in Iran that reveals the syncretistic possibilities in lived Islam, the generosity of the local culture regarding matters of religion, and individuals’ motivations for selecting certain possibilities to think about death and the afterlife. A common theme is for people to look at religious tenets as they pertain to this-worldly relations and…
Mourning at New Year’s Day (Nowruz)
As Persian Muslims, Iranians observe Old Persian rituals in the solar calendar, such as the spring equinox, as well as Islamic rituals in the lunar calendar, such as mourning the martyr’s death of Imam Huseyn. In 2006, the dates coincided, causing distress as people tried to combine the demands of a joyful, life-affirming tradition with that of a religious ideology that allowed no compromise. Living in a tribal village at that time, we recorded p…
Sociology (18 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Ethnography (10 works) · History (10 works) · Islamic Studies and History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works)