Bio: Janet Alexanian
Janet Alexanian is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of
California, Irvine. Her research interests include: the formation of
collective identity, the relationship of narrative to history and
inter-generational (in terms of immigration)dynamics of overseas Iranian
communities (at various locations, both geographically and imaginary).
Multi-sited research: Los Angeles, Toronto, and Paris. Broader interests
are on the effects of the (re)creation and (re)production of Iranian
social norms, communities and historical narratives in the context of the
multiple discourses within which they are born and against which they are
articulated in particular, configurations of transnational migration,
nationality, citizenship and discourses of "cultural preservation" and
assimilation. Janet has received a Regents' Fellowship (2003, 2004),
Pre-dissertation Research Award (2004), and funding for field research in
the United States and France from the School of Social Sciences and
Department of Anthropology (summers 2004, 2005).
Abstract
Publicly Intimate Online
Iranian identities are increasingly being articulated through the internet,
especially through online sites for reflective narration and discussion
called webloggs, or blogs. Blogs are emerging as an analytic site for the
examination of emergent forms of techno- or cyber-sociality, and more
generally constitute a space for studying the relationship between new
technological emergences and expressions of affect. In the process of
teasing out these new forms of sociality, we also encounter the
reconfigurations of notions of "public" and "private". This paper explores
Iranian interactions on an online friend community and the webloggs of
several Iranian immigrants in Orange County, California. I examine social
interaction on these sites and supplement empirical data with participant
observation and interviews. Cyberspaces maintain a dynamic connection to the
'home'/'real world' to which they refer and simultaneously create. Iranian
webloggs and online communities, as forms of technosociality, raise the
question of how 'overseas Iranians' negotiate particular social
constructions of reality and how they engage in particular technoscapes.
Based on preliminary ethnographic research, my hypothesis is that this
particular Iranian immigrant community approaches cyberspaces such as online
communities and webloggs with particular cultural understandings of public
and private. As the separation between the two is disrupted by this new
technology, forms on sociality emerging in these spaces can be said to
create possibilities for cultural awareness, transformation, and resistance.
Intimacy in social relations in particular, is uniquely transformed as
blogging itself becomes a process through which informants describe Obeing
themselves,¹ or Oexpressing their true selves.¹ I argue that this process is
a significant one which has real effects on sociality and the behaviors of
its participants in the Ooffline¹ world.