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Middle Class Urbanism: The Socio-Spatial Transformation of Tehran, 1921–41

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Ashkan Rezvani-Naraghi
Ashkan Rezvani-Naraghi*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Abstract

Most of the available literature on Tehran between the two world wars deals with the morphological transformation of the city and the role of the Pahlavi state in accomplishing massive urban projects. In contrast, this article focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the sociality and spatiality of the city. It demonstrates how the consolidation of the discourse of modernity resulted in the development of social and political desires for the production of new forms of social life and spaces. The article argues that the formation of the modern middle class and its alignment with the Pahlavi state’s reform projects contributed to a twofold process: first, the decline of the traditional forms of social life and spaces and, second, the production and prevalence of alternative forms. This process resulted in the establishment of social dichotomies with vast spatial manifestations and polarized the city both socially and spatially.

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Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 97 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

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Footnotes

Research for this paper was supported by the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), under the IGHERT Fellowship of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). I am also indebted to Jennifer Jordan, Amanda Seligman, Afshin Marashi, and Kari R. Smith for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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