Feeding Iran: Votive Food and the Making of an Islamic Republic

Rose Wellman is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan- Dearborn who specializes in Iran, the Middle East, and its diaspora. Her book, Feeding Iran: Shi’i Families and the Making of an Islamic Republic (external link)  (University of California Press, 2021), draws from ethnographic research in Iran between 2007 and 2010 to explore how everyday family life and piety are linked to state power. Wellman is currently conducting new research with Arab Americans in metro Detroit, focusing on the region’s vibrant Shi’i Iraqi community.

Abstract:

This talk draws from a year and a half of ethnographic research among Shi‘i state–supporting families in the provincial town of Fars-Abad, the city of Shiraz, and Iran’s capital, Tehran, to explore how votive food is being employed at home and in the grand rituals of Iranian state power to forge an Islamic Republic. By focusing on food, Wellman seeks to understand how ideas and practices of kinship and religion are linked to state power. She asks: what can an analysis of home life and everyday piety tell us about contemporary nation-making?