An Anthropological View of Constructing the Meaning of Vows in the Lived Experience of Women Living in Tehran

Vow is a ritual and religious behavior and although it is important as a religious act in many religions, but among Shiites, vow is also integrated with the daily life of the people and like other religious behaviors, both in social and cultural context. It is a voluntary ritual-religious behavior, and and in some cases might be completely innovative and unique. By deciding to make a vow, a contract is made between the person and the sacred, and usually has no connection with the social and cultural system until he/she makes his vow. It is entirely internal, mental and semantic. But as soon as the person makes the vow, the vow rises from a mental matter to a cultural and social construct. Nevertheless, vows are made in a cultural context as a ritual behavior. In this article, an attempt has been made to analyze the meaning of vows as a ritual behavior from an anthropological point of view. For this purpose, the historical view of vows has been analyzed and an attempt has been made to analyze the meaning of this ritual in everyday life by reviewing the cultural history of vows. The emphasis of this study is on the position of vows among women in Tehran. In this article, we will try to study the meaning of vows in the lived experience of women living in Tehran, women's mental constructs about vows based on the concept of "security", fear of world ignorance and insecurity caused by unknown, vague and frightening events. This study was performed using interpretive phenomenological method.