Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 University of Mohaghegh Ardabili
2 University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
Abstract
Introduction
The current research investigates the tension between tradition and modernity in the daily lives of Iranian women with a focus on cultural, social, and political spaces. The lives of women contain the reality of living under the historical norms and traditions of Iranian society along with modernity, globalization and increasing social opportunities. This duality shapes their identities at personal and social level and their social and political participation. This study also asks how women create new meanings around their roles and identity and what strategies they enact in response to the conflicting context; from careful adaptation, to resisting and redefining social boundaries. The value of this study is the contribution to our understanding of the process of identity formation of women, the reproduction or transformation of political culture and implications for policymakers, civil institutions and social change activists in developing new and innovative strategies aimed at bolstering women's agency and social and political participation. To this end it contributes value to the body of literature around theory as well as to practice concerned with developing policies and programs for women.
This study utilizes micro-level perspectives from Goffman and Butler to conceptualize women's interactions with the duality of tradition/modernity not simply as a macro-ideological phenomenon, but as the everyday social performances of individuals. From a Goffman perspective, individuals act out roles in different moral frameworks, while managing impressions and maintaining continuous control over the presentation of their self (appearance and body). Importantly, Butler emphasizes that gendered-social identities become constituted and stabilized through both articulated and habitual repeated acts of practice and discourses. Together, these perspectives illustrate both the practices of reproducing meaning in everyday performances, as well as possibilities for resistance and redefinition. At the structural level, drawing from Bourdieu, Giddens, and Foucault, emphasizes that the boundaries of tradition and modernity are part of the social structures tied to institutions, distributions of capital, and relations of power. Bourdieu emphasizes habitus, and distributions of capital that are not equally available; Giddens considers reflexivity and disembedding mechanisms when considering modernity; an Foucault provides important insight related to power/knowledge relations and the disciplinary role of institutions, which emphasize major historical moments as situated and consequential to subjectivity and normative categorizations of bodies. For the related research, these existing symbolic boundaries can be both stabilizing and contested sites of meaning. Additionally, cultural self theorists, Markus and Kitayama, and social identity theorists, Tajfel and Turner, provides additional, complementary insight into individual and collective sense making: cultural contexts are implicated in whether fields of practice are identified with individuality or belonging, while group-based categorization and comparison processes provide further degrees with which to reinforce or reduce symbolic boundaries.
Methodology
This research used a qualitative methodology as it pertains to Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory, which focuses on interpreting lived experiences and social meaning-making a process to identify the layers of the topic under study. The research design was chosen to investigate how women reflect on and negotiate their identities in the tension between tradition and modernity, a design that is explicit about the researcher and reflexivity of meaning-making. The fieldwork was done with women of various social and cultural backgrounds in Tabriz, selected through purposeful sampling based on age, marital status, education and lived experience in the additional of theoretical sampling until saturation throughout was occurred. A total of 23 women participated in semi-structured interview, conducted in Turkish, based on what was convenient for the women and translated into Persian during the coding process for accuracy. Data was analyzed in the steps according to Charmaz’s coding framework: phase one initial line by line coding, phase two focused coding to sort categories into concepts, and phase three axial/theoretical coding to identify related concepts into categories supported through memoing, constant comparisons, and ongoing reflexivity. Ethical practices practiced included informed consent, confidentiality, and study considerations to undertake ethical research practices. To keep the validity and credibility facts of research strategies were: participant review, diversification of study sample, and continuous comparisons of data and initial codes.
Results
The context of women's experiences of modernity and tradition in Iran emerges from layers of unthought and simplistic origins. Gender systems, patriarchal norms, and religious narratives constrain women's participation, agency, and authority, while the ideals of modernity, education, media, and globalization offer new, and broader ways of engagement. Women's lived experiences—family discussion, exclusionary experiences, and the reconstruction of their identities—anchor women's positionality within this complex dualism. These origins interact with socially constructed formative conditions, such as familial frameworks, cultural pressures from broader society, state sanctions, institutional provisions, and economic circumstances, as women navigate in and out of contested spaces across the intersection of traditional and modern discourses. Women's positionings base tensions at three levels: individual (self-discernment, non-entitlement related decisions, and political consciousness), social group (familiarity, generationality, and similar peer social networks), and public (statutory institutions, media, laws on moral righteousness, societal cultural discourses). These spaces create multilayered contexts of publication for what constitutes women's political and social subjectivities that are thusly reconstituted as women challenge their constructed situations.
In this context, women develop two overarching strategies that I label acceptance and resistance. Acceptance involves an element of cautious traditionalism, selective reconstruction of identity, and incremental participation based on balancing a sense of cultural legitimacy versus a more modern experience. Resistance, on the other hand, emphasizes stimulating modernity, a critical reconstruction of gendered distinctions, and more active participation in civic and political life. Enabling factors - family support, cultural discourses regarding women and community participation, institutional policies or environments, and individual self-efficacy - have been contributory in how women may gravitate towards acceptance or resistance. There are drastic outcomes; acceptance maintains a level of social legitimacy, solidarity among participating women, and incremental participation but restricts any broad refunctioning of identity. Resistance prioritizes independence, agency, and visibility but is often at a cost that can be social or emotional. Eventually, the resistance strategies will contribute to gender norms transforming and women's space growing in the public and political sphere. This is to signify women as change agents for their cultural and political identities.
Conclusion
This research examined the tension between tradition and modernity in the lives of women in Tabriz by using a qualitative, constructivist grounded theory methodology. Based on the lived experiences of women, this study explored the ways identity formation is conditioned by structural roots (tradition-historical legacies, contemporary values, personal consciousness), environmental factors (family, institutions, culture, economic systems), and intervening conditions (social, cultural, institutional, individual). It identifies two general approaches: a cautious acceptance that is characterized by a slow tendency to accommodate and access social legitimacy, and resist with a critical intention to achieve autonomy, increase involvement and reimagine gender roles. While acceptance allows for continuity, resistance creates change. The study underlines identity as a flowing reflexive process composed through daily practices, relational power, and group memberships, thereby confirming that women’s negotiation of tradition/modernity is both limiting and transformative.
Keywords
Main Subjects
)