In search of ‘cultural invisibility’: cultivating Iranian-American diasporic citizenship in rural kentucky

ABSTRACT

Within the Iranian-American community in rural Kentucky, pre-migratory ideas and practices from the homeland play crucial roles in community formation. They use their compromised pre-migratory identities, middle-class achievements, and adherence to local norms to create a community composed of cultural citizens. Drawing upon their upwardly mobile middle-class status, my interlocutors challenged local racialization dynamics while adopting local norms that emphasized the importance of faith, church, and community. Through negotiations of their contested past cultural citizenships, they were able to create unique forms of claiming U.S. cultural citizenship, which enabled them to build a unified and harmonious diasporic community. The Iranian case compels us to consider how a full spectrum of factors, including educational and professional achievement, social class, local norms, the homeland contested identities, national politics, and local community-building initiatives, interplay in shaping the endeavours of Muslims to combat racialization and achieve cultural citizenship within American society.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural citizenship
• American Islam
• Iranian Americans
• politics
• Muslim racialization

Acknowledgement

I did not receive funding that fully sponsored my research; however, I did receive minor grants, such as the James Brown Award from the Appalachian Center and the Adelski Dissertation Research Award from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky, as well as teaching assistantships from the Graduate School, which provided support during the period when I conducted my ethnography and preliminary research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

This research was conducted based on the University of Kentucky’s Nonmedical Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved protocol: #49000. The data was obtained through informed consent, which was stamped and approved under the same IRB approval issued by the same institution. According to the ‘Recruitment of Subjects’ section of my IRB protocol, ‘people in the United States and potentially elsewhere, who have a connection to the subject matter’, were potential interlocutors for my research. My approved and stamped IRB approval, and consent form will be provided upon the request.

Notes

1. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research, which was conducted in the anonymized cities of Simonstown, Winstonburg, Footland, and Greavesville in Kentucky, from June 2019 to August 2020. Compared with Simonstown and Winstonburg, which are larger cities compared with Footland and Greavesville, which are smaller towns in Appalachian region and are considered rural settings.

2. The Iranian new year celebration.

3. On Yalda night or shabe chelle, Iranians celebrate the longest and darkest night of the year, which is around December twentieth, the winter solstice.

4. Mr. Heshmati came to the U.S. to pursue his higher education. After the 1979 Revolution, he returned to Iran accompanied by his wife and two sons born in the U.S.

5. Hasan Nasrallah is the leader of Hezbollah, a Shi’i militia group in Lebanon.

6. The sixth president of the IRI.

7. The Muslim Students Association – Persian-Speaking Group.

8. The Iranian-American Muslim Association of North America.

9. The Cultural and Educational Foundation.

10. ‘Island of Stability’ gained currency as a result of a speech delivered by American President Jimmy Carter during a visit to the Niavaran Complex in Tehran, Iran in 1977 as a guest of the Shah of Iran.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the funding that fully sponsored my research.