Doctoral Dissertation Research: Kinship, Food, and Sociality

弗吉尼亚大学博士生罗斯·韦尔曼将在苏珊·麦金农博士的指导下，研究亲属关系和家庭的社会文化观念与国家的社会文化观念之间的相互关系。虽然社会科学家长期以来一直指出人类社会生活中这两个关键领域之间的联系，但韦尔曼试图确定这种联系的发展和维持过程。她的研究将集中在亲属关系和社会组织，因为它是经验丰富，理解日常伊朗人，特别关注家庭和国家仪式，包括那些周围的食物。这项研究将在伊朗法尔斯省的一个省会城市卡德尔阿巴德进行。这项研究将建立在什叶派伊斯兰教和性别问题学者以前进行的研究的基础上，这些研究讨论了可继承物质的重要性，如通过男性血统建立的血缘关系，在塑造伊朗有关亲属关系和民族的思想和做法方面。 研究人员将调查在伊朗社会组织中运作的两个主要因素：1）生物学的概念，可遗传物质，2）仪式喂养，烹饪和食物分享的行为。在家庭中，食物对亲属关系的重要性可见于伊朗人对一起吃饭的日常和仪式行为的重视，以及对食物本身作为一种生成物质的重视。在国家的背景下，食物的作用是显而易见的，在仪式上分配大量的辛苦准备的食物，以频繁的什叶派伊斯兰国家仪式和慈善活动。研究人员将采用多种民族志研究方法，包括：日常参与观察，广泛访谈，收集家谱和生活史，以及分析流行媒体。这项研究很重要，因为它将提供有关当代革命后伊朗日常生活和社交的最新信息。这一研究将有助于当前亲属与国家关系的理论化。最后，这项研究将建立国际研究合作，并支持社会科学家的教育。

University of Virginia doctoral student, Rose Wellman, supervised by Dr. Susan McKinnon, will undertake research on the interrelationship between socio-cultural ideas of kinship and family, on the one hand, and socio-cultural ideas of nation, on the other. While social scientists have long pointed to connections between these two critical realms of human social life, Wellman seeks to identify the processes through which the connections are developed and maintained. Her research will focus on kinship and social organization as it is experienced and understood everyday Iranians, with particular attention to household and national rituals, including those surrounding food. The research will be carried out in Qader-Abad, a provincial city in the Fars Province of Iran. This study will build on previous research conducted by scholars of Shi'i Islam and gender that have addressed the significance of inheritable substances such as blood ties through the male line in shaping Iranian ideas and practices relating to kinship and nation. The researcher will investigate two main elements that operate in Iranian social organization: 1) concepts of biological, inheritable substances, and 2) acts of ritual feeding, cooking, and food sharing. In the home, the significance of food for kinship is visible in the emphasis Iranians place on daily and ritual acts of eating together and on food itself as a generative substance. In the context of the nation, the role of food is apparent in the ritual distribution of large amounts of laboriously prepared food for frequent Shi'I Islamic-national rituals and charity events. The researcher will employ multiple ethnographic research methods including: daily participant observation, extensive interviews, the collection of family genealogies and life histories, and analysis of popular media. This research is important because it will provide updated information on contemporary post-Revolutionary Iranian daily life and sociality. This research will contribute to current theorizing of the interrelationship between kinship and nation. Finally, this research will build international research collaborations and support the education of a social scientist.