Doctoral Dissertation Research: Kinship, Food, and Sociality

弗吉尼亚大学博士生罗斯·威尔曼将在苏珊·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的这两个关键领域之间的联系，但威尔曼试图确定发展和维持联系的过程。她的研究将集中在亲情和社会组织上，因为它是伊朗人日常经历和理解的，特别关注家庭和国家仪式，包括那些围绕食物的仪式。这项研究将在伊朗法尔斯省的省会城市卡德尔-阿巴德进行。这项研究将建立在什叶派伊斯兰教和性别学者之前进行的研究的基础上，这些研究探讨了通过男性血统的血缘关系等可遗传物质在塑造伊朗与亲属和国家有关的思想和做法方面的重要性。研究人员将调查在伊朗社会组织中运作的两个主要元素：1)生物、可遗传物质的概念，以及2)仪式喂食、烹饪和食物分享的行为。在家里，食物对于亲属关系的重要性可以从伊朗人对日常和仪式行为的强调中可见一斑，这些行为包括一起吃饭，以及食物本身是一种生殖物质。在国家的背景下，食物的作用在为频繁的什叶派伊斯兰国家仪式和慈善活动而精心准备的大量食物的仪式上分配是显而易见的。研究人员将采用多种人种学研究方法，包括：日常参与者观察，广泛访谈，收集家谱和生活史，以及流行媒体分析。这项研究很重要，因为它将提供有关革命后伊朗当代日常生活和社会性的最新信息。这项研究将有助于当前对亲属关系和国家之间相互关系的理论化。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.