Cultures of Iran and Japan

Leonard Helfgott and John K. Nelson have chosen very different vantage points from which to study the cultures of Iran and Japan. Yet Helfgott's study of the manufacture of carpets and Nelson's description of the annual cycle of activities at a Shinto shrine have several important points in common. Both authors deal with traditional practices that have involved and affected every level of their societies. Both of these practices have been modified in ways that reflect broader cultural change. And both practices have unique and very significant roles in their respective societies today. But the two studies necessarily employ very different methodologies and seek different types of information. As a study of a major aspect of the material culture of Iran, Helfgott's Ties That Bind: A Social History of the Iranian Carpet deals with economic aspects of Iranian culture, and the society's relationship with the West and the world economy, in some detail. It is a historical industry study that concentrates on the relationship of that industry to the broader society. Nelson's A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine, on the other hand, deals with the ritual year at a single contemporary shrine, and historical and general social questions are incidental to the body of the study. A comparison of these two works will demonstrate two distinct approaches to the study of culture that share the common goal of reaching a broader understanding of a culture via the study of a single aspe

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ional period to be reconstructed later by the demands of capital" (77). One of the most interesting sections of Helfgott's book is that in which he describes the conditions in which the new Western demand for Iranian carpets developed--the "orientalizing" view of the corrupt and exotic East. Throughout this discussion Helfgott makes it clear that the effect of this view of the East had serious economic implications. The industry revived in Iran after 1873, but this time the Western interest in Iranian arts was stimulated by the fact that such work had been elevated to the level of "artistic accomplishments" worthy of museum exhibition (133). The development of the modern carpetmaking industry produced different effects in different sectors of Iranian society but, overall, its consequences for the workers, especially women, were not good. In pastoral groups the reemergence of the industry had a limited effect. But as various social and economic pressures mounted over the next few decades to force pastoral nomads from their traditional grazing lands, the economic value of the skill facilitated their transition to villages and towns. At the same time the vastly increased demand resulted in the emergence of "workshop and fact

Category: Foreign - C