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Local Iranian Village Authors of Contextualized Memoirs: Foregrounding Indigenous Voices in Anthropological Publications
Abstract by Dr. Mary Elaine Hegland On Session   (Memory and Living History)

On Tuesday, November 12 at 2:30 pm

2024 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Over the last forty-six years of conducting field research in a southwestern Iranian (former) village, the proposing author has become aware of how lacking in visibility have been those persons who provided so much information, analysis, support, and friendship to the western anthropologist who came to live in their community. Of course, I thanked them in publications, quote them (using pseudonyms), give out numerous photographs, and try to maintain contact and friendship with them. In the past, however, conference papers, articles, and my book have named me alone as author. Iranians—mainly from my village research site of “Aliabad,” but also others--have collaborated with me in the anthropological endeavor, but only I have received the credit for authorship. Only in the last few years have I thought to sign off on papers and articles with joint authorship. Suggested to me by a long-time friend from Aliabad, who mentioned she would like to write a book about her life, I have also begun taking down life-histories/memoirs of my long- time friends and collaborators from Aliabad. This approach may be partly due to my lack of access to presence in my fieldwork site; the last time I was able to get to Iran was in May 2018. Instead of “participant observation” in the community, among many people, research has been limited to phone calls, internet communication with whatsapp and meet, and visits with one or a few people from Aliabad who came to Turkey. This limitation promotes long interviews/narrations with individuals. I have presented several conference papers with the narrator as first author (using pseudonyms) and myself as second author. One friend spent a month with me in Istanbul telling me the story of her life in Persian as I typed in English. We have since spoken many times as questions arise. We hope to publish this book. Two other chapter-length manuscripts have resulted from working with others about their lives; I hope to continue work taking down narrations to develop a volume of chapter-length memoirs for publication. Although authors are indicated with pseudonyms only, they know they have provided their narrations about their lives and times for conference presentations and publications. Hopefully, acknowledging local people as authors examining their lives within the social history of their environment constitutes a step toward minimizing intellectual colonialism and crediting local research partners for their indispensable contributions to the anthropological enterprise.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
None