City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran Shiraz, history, and Poetry By Setrag Manoukian (New York: Routledge, 2012. 272 pages.)

Abstract

Setrag Manoukian’s City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran: Shiraz,
History, and Poetry combines the application of Michel Foucault’s conceptualization
of the relationship between “knowledge” and “power” with a “historical
and ethnographic investigation” into the sociocultural and political life
of twentieth-century Shiraz in order to portray a history of Iran and Iranians
that differs from the usual accounts focusing on Tehran.
The book is intended for both Iranian studies scholars and the general
public interested in the history of Iran. Avoiding an exclusivist approach that
Book Reviews 107
offers either “a national perspective from the capital Tehran” or “a purely local
view from a self-contained city,” the book provides, in the author’s words,
“the viewpoint of Shiraz as a ‘province’ to highlight how local, national and
global dimensions are mutually constituted.” It discusses the “question of
knowledge” from the viewpoint of Shiraz because most of the research on
contemporary Iran concentrates on the capital as representative of the whole
country. In his view, “the after-effect of this concentration on Tehran is an analytical
posture that posits either the state and/or the nation as the starting
points of the analysis, obliterating the multiplicity of convergences and divergences
from which both these constituencies emerge” (p. 3) ...