Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice Volume 5 | Issue 1 Article 6 Fall 2013 The Dynamics of Ethnic Identity in Iranian Azerbaijan Fereydoun Safizadeh Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp Recommended Citation Safizadeh, Fereydoun (2013) "The Dynamics of Ethnic Identity in Iranian Azerbaijan," Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol5/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Lesley. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Lesley. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Safizadeh: The Dynamics of Ethnic Identity in Iranian Azerbaijan 55 The Dynamics of Ethnic Identity in Iranian Azerbaijan Fereydoun Safizadeh Introduction The population in Iran has doubled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and today it stands at nearly 75 million. Iran has a multiethnic, multi-tribal, multilingual, multicultural and multi- religious society. In addition to the historic Persian-Iranian identity, the population has a multi-layered and multi-faceted cultural, linguistic, tribal, religious, regional identification and affiliations. The diversity of society harks back to an earlier era, prior to the imposition of either/or dichotomous principles of ethnic nationalism at the turn of 20th century in Europe and elsewhere. Today, this dichotomous envisioning of society is best exemplified by the figure such as the one below where you have a highly simplified chart representing the composition of the society that is ethnographically unable to capture any of the multi- faceted and the multi-layered dimensions of group identity in Iran.