Psycho-nationalism focuses on the history of the use of Iranian identity under the Shah, as well as by the governments since the 1979 Iranian revolution, to offer an exploration into the psychological and political roots of national identity and how these are often utilised by governments.

Nationalism and other forms of group identity underlie many of the destructive conflicts the world is experiencing today. Particularly puzzling in such conflicts is their tenacity and viciousness. Why do people cling to conflicts that are damaging them? Why are the feelings involved so vehement and intense? Understanding the fragile nature of individual and group identity, and how people perceive threats to identity, can answer these questions. By analyzing nationalism in Quebec, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Sri Lanka, this book shows that addressing the psychological dimensions of nationalism can help us understand, and perhaps to intervene successfully in, nationalist and ethnic conflicts.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ethnonationalism has left its indelible mark on Europe and every other continent. The latest events in the Balkans, in central and eastern Europe, and in the former Soviet Union unequivocally testify to the power and influence of ethnonationalism at the end of the second millennium. What forces make people so committed to their ethnonational groups that they are ready to ignore all other concerns, first and foremost the rights and interests of people of other ethnicities? What is the social psychological and anthropological underpinning of ethnonationalism? And finally; why and how do people adhere to nation alist attitudes and beliefs? These questions are virtually impossible to avoid for anyone who has directly felt the impact of ethnonationalism, but they also present them selves to anyone who has indirectly experienced the prejudices unleashed by ethnonationalist forces. This book attempts to answer all these questions by focusing on national feeling and the social psychological and anthropological founda tions that underly the sense of belonging that is essential to nationalism. No matter how qualitatively different nationalist attitudes and beliefs are from national sentiment, the latter has to be considered in any study of national ism.

What is Iran? What are its domestic politics? Its history? Its international relations? Here, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam sheds fresh light on these questions, offering a general introduction to everything there is to know about this country. Uniquely, he uses musical pieces as a way to offer a holistic understanding of the full spectrum of Iranian affairs. As a result, even the general reader is invited to traverse a wide array of topics in an interactive format which merges approaches from the social sciences with philosophy, poetry and art. These topics include a variety of themes, issues and personalities: from Trump, Khomeini, the Shah, Saddam Hussein and Qasem Soleimani, to Israel, Syria, Latin America, China and the Gulf monarchies. Ultimately, this book demonstrates in clear and accessible prose the impact of Iranian politics on a global scale, and offers solutions to the various crises enveloping the country in the region and beyond.

This book examines the problematic politics of contemporary nationalism, and the worldwide resurgence of ethno-nationalist conflict. It analyses the core theories of nationalism, building upon these theories and offering a clear analytical framework through which to approach the subject. This outstanding volume features detailed case- studies discussing nationalist contention in areas including Spain, Singapore, Ghana and Australia as well as looking at Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Rwanda disputes.

The Discovery of Iran examines the history of Iranian nationalism afresh through the life and work of Taghi Arani, the founder of Iran's first Marxist journal, Donya. In his quest to imagine a future for Iran open to the scientific riches of the modern world and the historical diversity of its own people, Arani combined Marxist materialism and a cosmopolitan ethics of progress. He sought to reconcile Iran to its post-Islamic past, rejected by Persian purists and romanticized by their traditionalist counterparts, while orienting its present toward the modern West in all its complex and conflicting facets. As Ali Mirsepassi shows, Arani's cosmopolitanism complicates the conventional wisdom that racial exclusivism was an insoluble feature of twentieth-century Iranian nationalism. In cultural spaces like Donya, Arani and his contemporaries engaged vibrant debates about national identity, history, and Iran's place in the modern world. In exploring Arani's short but remarkable life and writings, Ali Mirsepassi challenges the image of Interwar Iran as dominated by the Pahlavi state to uncover fertile intellectual spaces in which civic nationalism flourished.

This volume offers a new cultural and political history of the idea of the nation. Situating the history of international politics and the idea of the nation in the history of psychology, it reveals the popularity and political importance of a transnational discourse of the psychology of nations that had taken shape in the previous half-century.