Sassan Pejhan

Bio: Sassan Pejhan is an academic researcher from Princeton University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Postal history. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 2 citations.

A Picture Postcard View of the Persian Constitutional Revolution

Abstract: A narrative of the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-09 is provided as seen through about forty picture post cards privately printed in the immediate aftermath of that event. Privately printed post cards have only recently received attention by postal historians and included in postal history exhibits. Iranian postal history itself has been flourishing in the past twenty years with the publication of numerous books on the subject and the display of several award winning exhibits at major shows.

From the domain of certitude to the relational realm: U.S. Missions in Iran and the Politics of piecemeal social change

Abstract: Methodologically this thesis employs a modified microhistorical approach to small social units alongside ethical reflection on historical events and persons. A critical theory method is also utilized in combination with situational analysis. Textual analysis is also used, particularly in relation to mission documents as sources of overlooked cultural, social, legal, and political information. This research advances the study of religion in the form of the study of the missionary origins of U.S.-Iranian relations and fills a critical historical gap in the study of U.S.Iran relations before the 1953 coup d’etat. Using the above methodologies this thesis identifies the nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. missions in Iran as having been largely unreflective on their own intellectual entanglement with historical strands of Middle Eastern Christianity and holds that evangelical dependency upon Iranian dynastic power, while mediated by royal orders (farman) and enabled by the regional and relational politics resulting from a weak central government, formed an integral part of the Qajar strategy to contest the power of Shi’i ulama, before being largely eclipsed by Reza Shah’s program of authoritarian modernization. In the above context this work found the following: that the presence of U.S. missionaries in Iran had significantly detrimental effects on community cohesion across ethno-national lines, despite simultaneously standing as an early achievement in the intercultural relationship between the U.S. and Iran; that in the absence of understanding or admiration attempts at textually based minority/majority religious transmission, where correctness is a guiding value, are prone to conflict; that understanding is a key to navigating difference in environments where internationaldynamics place a primary accent on alterity; that a preference for integrative action and an epistemological dogmatic-normativity remained the organizing logic of U.S. missions in Iran, despite the meliorating influence of a motive force of compassion traceable to the intellectual roots of these missions; that the apparatus of U.S. foreign missions remains underappreciated in its importance as site of contention in QajarShi’i power politics, as a site of national formation in the development of Assyrian culture, and as a site of innovation in the larger history of Iranian educational and political reform; that a reciprocal relationship exists between the operation of zeal, with its capacity to act as a driver of political change, and the cultivation of solidarity; that U.S. missions in Iran historically demonstrated a marginal but persistent preference for pragmatic solutions to intercultural problems and that this was linked in positive terms to manifestations of intercultural solidarity; that the pragmatic preference of U.S. missions in Iran depended significantly upon the categories of work and education to access a state of transformative potential capable of cultural synthesis; that the model of cultural change organized around additive…

Reading postcards: Multiple enactments of tourism destinations. The case of Pai, Thailand

Abstract: Actor-network theory was used to examine the role of postcards in the enactment of tourism destinations by analysing the representational and nonrepresentational readings of 325 postcards offered for sale in shops in Pai, northern Thailand. This paper illustrates how postcards take part in the construction of three versions of the tourism destination, that is, as an ethnic tourism destination, a hub for hippies and international backpackers, and a Thai romantic tourism destination. It also illustrates the multiplicity and different development paths of tourism destinations, and argues that non-representational readings of postcards (as well as other media) can and should be combined with representational readings to provide a full understanding of the construction of tourism destinations.