Introduction

Much of the scholarship on the social history of modern Iran is modeled after a perceived European narrative of progress. Many Iranian historians have attempted to write a narrative of “progress” in the Iranian setting. This genre of historiography renders the struggle between “tradition” and “modernity,” positing the eventual victory of modern ideas, institutions, and personalities over local customs, outlooks, and cultural habits. A grand narrative of progress in this vein leaves little room for those ideas, institutions, intellectuals, and processes which function as a bridge between the local and the global, tradition and change.

Ideas, institutions, and social tensions are often portrayed as sites of the struggle between traditional impulses and modern desires. Intellectuals are equally subject to such “either/or” classification, and their ideas and dispositions too often defined in terms of traditional (Islamic, feudal, backward, local) or modern (cosmopolitan, Western-secular, progressive). Complexities and ambiguities are glossed over as traditional/modernist boundaries are constructed and installed.