Lifestyle in Iran’s post-revolutionary development plans: culture-economics conflict and the chasm in politics

This paper studies the internal conflicts of cultural policy making in the sphere of lifestyle in post-revolutionary Iran. Employing content analysis, it focuses on six developmental plans. Critical study of cultural policy making in these plans shows at least two major conflicts in the policies: the first conflict is between the outcomes of economic policies and the desired values of cultural policy making, and the second one is between the political chasm caused by the duality of cultural policy making authorities. In all studied plans, disregard for the interplay between the fields of culture and economics has led to a constant conflict between government’s desired cultural policies and the outcomes of its adopted Economic Adjustment Policies such as growing consumerism, demand for luxury goods, and widespread corruption in the privatization process. These economic policies have created a capitalist class close to the government whose lifestyle and value system are completely at odds with those desired by the latter. These programs have also ignored, excluded, or even violated a major part of society. The greater the number of excluded people, the less successful these policies get. The dual nature of state in Iran has institutionalized a permanent tension within these plans, of which only the fifth plan is completely devoid. Furthermore, lack of consideration for the interplay between the fields of culture and politics has promoted cultural legitimacy for those excluded from formal cultural policies while those responsible for this exclusion have been promoted in the political field. Consequently, there has been a contrast between cultural policymaking and the culture of a major part of society. Only the third and fourth plans abided by the values of plurality and difference in society through a more serious engagement with “citizenship rights.” Conversely, the fifth program was in total opposition to plurality and difference.