| This thesis presents a critical study of the questions of ethnic nationalism and ethnic identity formation in order to explain the causes and the origins of the Kurdish, Azari and Baluchi nationalist movements in Iran. By a critical look at existing literature on ethnicity and nationalism, it argues that concepts such as ethnicity, tribe, ethnic groups and ethnic nationalism are contested and thus should not be considered universal, given and bearing the same meaning across time and place. By criticizing the Western and Orientalist approaches to the study of ethnicity, tribalism and ethnic nationalism in the Middle East in general and Iran in particular, it places its emphasis on the historical specificities of the cases under study rather than ahistorical and universal theories and conceptual frameworks. Following such a logic, and after a critical discussion of different theoretical frameworks on ethnicity and ethnic nationalism, this thesis argues that none of these sufficiently explain in themselves the formation of ethnic nationalist movements in the three Iranian cases. It then presents a theoretical framework in which three variables of state, elites, and international forces play key roles in the formation of ethnic identity and the politicization of linguistic, religious and racial ties, or the emergence of what social scientists call ethnic nationalism. In other words, the roots of ethnic nationalism are sought in: (1) the rise of the modern secular centralized state and it confrontation with the traditional autonomous and powerful tribal chiefs; (2) the manipulation of religio-linguistic differences and the construction of ethnic identities by political and intellectual, both ethnic and non-ethnic, elites; and (3) the promotion of ethnic identity and the support/encouragement of secular nationalist tendencies by Western Orientalists and external forces.; Considering the historical experiences of the Iranian society, this theoretical framework is applied to explain the emergence of Kurdish, Azari and Baluchi nationalist tendencies and the formation of autonomist/separatist movements in these cases. Given the Iranian historical context, this study concludes that questions of ethnicity and ethnic nationalism are modern political phenomena and according to Eric Hobsbawm, "invented traditions". The existence of ethnic groups with distinct cultural and political identities are 'the states of mind', or according to Benedict Anderson, "imagined communities."... |
