COVID-19 Crisis
M.H. Badamchi; F. Alborzi
Abstract
Corona pandemic has suspended two major social institutions in Iran; Traditional institution: Mosques, Holy Shrines, Ramadan and Muharram religious rituals were shut down very soon; as far as modern institutions concerned, i.e. malls, cinemas, Coffee shops, universities, parks and restaurants they faced ...
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Corona pandemic has suspended two major social institutions in Iran; Traditional institution: Mosques, Holy Shrines, Ramadan and Muharram religious rituals were shut down very soon; as far as modern institutions concerned, i.e. malls, cinemas, Coffee shops, universities, parks and restaurants they faced closure gradually. Instead of these two social structures, other two marginal institutions, internet and home, have taken responsibility to endure the fading social, cultural and even educational affairs. It seems that in intersection of home and internet, there is a “digital woman” maintaining “the social”, which we aim to introduce. This new feminine institution has risen within masculine Iranian tradition and masculine modernization. We use Nematollah Fazeli’s viewpoint about Iranian “none-traditional return to home” in semi-quarantined corona days and his idea about appearance of unprecedented “active home” in the pandemic. We also use Donna Haraway’s “a cyborg manifesto” about the feminine characteristics of mixed human-technology condition, to get qualitative analysis of Persian Instagram content in first wave of pandemic (between March and June 2020). The result implicates the appearance of a new generation of Iranian women, neither a traditional housewife as part of private home; nor a modernized one as part of public street; but a post-traditionalist/post-modernist creative citizen inside “Insta-Homes”, representing an feminine agency which doesn’t fit in the marginalizing borders of traditional and modernist patriarchal structures.
Cultural Studies
H. Taheri Kia
Abstract
The event of the epidemic of Covid-19 had a massive shock to the borders of the order of Iranian everyday life. The emergence of death and disease from the Covid-19 put Iran in an exception state. Universities and schools were shut down and people went to lockdown. Also, the event of the epidemic of ...
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The event of the epidemic of Covid-19 had a massive shock to the borders of the order of Iranian everyday life. The emergence of death and disease from the Covid-19 put Iran in an exception state. Universities and schools were shut down and people went to lockdown. Also, the event of the epidemic of Covid-19 led to other events such as quarantine and it caused economic, mental, and family crises. The crucial event of the epidemic of Covid-19 was coincident with the traditional ceremony of Iranian New Year accompanied by shopping, traveling, and visiting families. But all of them were destroyed. By shutting down the city and the necessity of not coming together, digital geography was the most important space for retrieval of relationships and people could share their emotions of fear and anxiety and they make an emotional connection. Thus, one of the most important emotions which were shared in virtual social networks included nostalgia about the time before the epidemic of Covid-19 in Iran and dreaming the coming future. Then by applying a multidisciplinary approach through digital cultural studies and visual studies, the main object of the article is to analyze how emotions of nostalgia and dreaming of Iranian people were expressed on Instagram and Facebook. Consequently, remembering the city as a lost secure home and thinking of a vague future as dreaming indicates of getting stuck in the present time of the field of the event.
