The Construction of the National Subject with the Mediation of Education in Iran (First Pahlavi Period)

There are three major paradigms in relation to the origin of nations; primordialism, modernism and ethic symbolism. It seems that the modernist paradigm considers the nation as a construct and the result of the bureaucratic processes of the state, and in line with this, Anderson`s ideas on the role of education in nation-building have expanded. Foucault`s discussions about the concept of governmentality on the creation of subjects as mediators of disciplinary institutions have also recently been addressed by researchers in this field. In this research, by using the concepts of these theorists and their methodology, the genealogy of education and nation-building in modern Iran is represented. At first, based on the genealogy in this research, the conditions for the emergence of the discourse of authoritarian nationalism in the late Qajar period were summarized. Then, the study explains minds and subsequently bodies were harmonized in the Reza Shah period. In this step, the method of materialization of this discourse is presented with the power of mediator, which shows itself in the curriculum, educational content, and educational processes. Finally, while explaining the conditions for the discovery of Iranian nationalism, the results showed that the two main concepts of homogenization of minds and homogenization of bodies with mediation on discipline were present.