Open letter to the president elect: an example of heritage activism through the media in Iran

This chapter examines Iranian heritage activism, focussing on an example of activists’ use of mass media to bring public focus to heritage as a contested field and persuade authorities to take action. Studies of growing and increasingly vocal heritage activism in Iran are scarce, although occasionally the implications of their ideas are discussed in passing in fields such as politics and international relations.2 This paper reinforces and elaborates on some of the findings of a previous study on the terrain of heritage activism in Iran,3 providing an example of activism’s manifestation in mass media. It focuses on the analysis of an open letter to President-elect Seyyed Hassan Rouhani, which was drafted in 2013 by heritage activists and signed by more than 60 heritage NGOs. To complement this examination, I also draw on field interviews (see below) and other contextual information. Considered in its social context and history, I argue that heritage activism is a specific instance of social movements in which the cultural framing of activism and the changing structure of political opportunities largely provided by the state play a decisive part. This is particularly apparent in relation to reframing the perceptions of collective identity and homeland of both the state and the activists.