Nativism, Post Developmentalism, and IRI Escape from The Development Discourse

The conflict between tradition and modernity, has led to the identity crisis in Iran's contemporary society. This identity crisis with the arrival and spread of nativism took an anti-western and anti-modern direction. At the beginning it was seemed that Islamism can get both tradition and modernity together and solve the conflict between them. But the Iran's post-revolution experiences has not confirm this idea. A combination of nativism and the critique of development with an anti-modern and anti-western stance, constructed the Islamic Republic of Iran’s development discourse. Although the forming conditions of the former are very modern, it was trying to enter a traditional and original content, mostly with religious themes, in the meaning of development. And the latter, inspired by non-traditional and largely by western and postmodern thinkers sought to deny and reject modernity and the prevalent meaning of development in favor of the traditional content. Moreover, there are several and antagonistic signifiers in the discourse of the Islamic Republic, as the dominant post revolutionary discourse, that are not articulated firmly and this activated the tradition versus modern debate again. This created conflicts that eventually led to the departure of the Islamic Republic from development discourse.