Document Type : Research Article

Author

Professor of Iran Modern History, Imam Khomeini International University.Qazvin, Iran.

Abstract

Social harms of a part of the citizens especially in the city of Tehran, was one of the consequences of the First World War in Iran. Therefore, the municipality of Tehran helped the orphans to reduce social crises, a large number of displaced women were covered by the social security assistances. In order to strengthen the foundations of the family and to monitoring marriage, divorce, inheritance and ownership, the provisions of the Civil Registry Law were taken more seriously, and for those who refused to register, there were many penalties. Until the following years, when the registry office, health centers and boarding schools were removed from the municipality, this institution was responsible for the process of Socialization. Therefore, the main question of this study is that what was the role of the municipality in controlling the social harms during the years between 1921 to 1941 for the process of reducing social harms among the lower social classes? Based on the descriptive-analytical method, this study shows that the municipality of Tehran in this period, according to the policy of centralism and with its wide power, was largely able to control some social disasters. But as the authority of this institution was limited, the former crises more or less continued.

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Main Subjects

Extended Abstract

Social Harms and the Operations of Tehran Municipality (1921-1941)

Since the constitutional revolution onwards, the administration of the municipality, which was formed during the Sepahsalar period but did not have the necessary efficiency, did play a great role in urban social affairs. Although, due to many social and political crises, this institution could not perform its duties properly again. From the coup d'etat of February 1921, in parallel with the policy of centralization, Baladieh found a very extensive duty description. The municipality Not only was in charge of overseeing construction and phenomena such as overselling and hoarding, but it also took on cultural and social responsibilities.

Organizing homeless children and street women, establishing vocational schools and boarding schools, controlling infectious diseases, establishing a nursing home, and, above all, passing a civil law to monitor the rules of marriage, divorce, property, and inheritance; were Only a few of these duty descriptions at that time. All of these measures, and most importantly the Civil Registration Law, were taken to regulate the social situation and prevent the damages were caused by lawlessness. This study shows that the tasks of the municipality were not just cleaning the city, development and modernization, but resolving the social crises that prevented the regulation of people's behavior and the institutionalization of civic ethics, was the top priority of this institution.

One of these crises was the problem of street children and women, who had lost their heads of household mainly due to the Great Famine of 1916 and resorted to social crimes. Another task of the municipality was to create health facilities to facilitate the interaction of urban people with each other. Also, it legalized the pillars of the family institution in order to determine the description of the duties and functions of family members in relation to each other. The focus of all these efforts, which were mainly carried out by force and through the issuance of bills, was the social health of the city's residents.

Due to the fact that the process of social exclusion was very intense among some social strata, efforts were made to help them socialize legally and, of course, by forcing them to socialize through the methods such as learning appropriate professions. Even the hospitals, as a part of the Tehran Municipality, were responsible for identifying and treating those who were not psychologically able to establish a proper social relationship with others in an urban community. The treatment and improvement of these people also helped to strengthen the family institution.

The importance of the issue was such that Reza Shah personally pursued issues related to sexually transmitted diseases as well as hospitals, by this way the state protected the society from the harms caused by these problems. However, the description of the duties of the municipality was not only fundamentally different from the similar institutions of the history of Islamic Iran, but it was also different from the municipality of the Sepahsalar era up to that time. Because before that, the duty of the municipality was to monitor the weights and quantities and to command the good and forbid the bad on the one hand and to clean the city on the other hand. But for the first time, the upbringing of the lower classes of society in order to protect the family institution, promote civic ethics, improve social relations and the process of socialization was given priority and the description of its duties was greatly expanded.

This description was so extensive that parts of it was later delegated to other institutions and ministries. Later, with the withdrawal of educational, upbringing, cultural and health tasks from the municipality, and the limitation of the tasks of this institution to cleaning and civil operations, the socialization process, which was expanding at a favorable pace, took the opposite direction. Since that, they tried to force the people to obey the law by relying on law by order of the gendarmerie in the absence of creating a culture commensurate and the needs of the society. However, due to the weakening of the legal institutions in charge of the administration of urban society, including Baladieh, when the Allied forces occupied the country in September 1941, the process of preferring personal interests over collective interests re-emerged and many crises arose.

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