Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Professor, Sociology Dept., Faculty of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Department of Sociology, Social Science, Allameh Tabatabai University: Tehran, IR
3 Professor, Department of Regional Development Planning, Faculty of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The aim of the article is to analyze the process of establishing automobile-related engineering discourse in the physical structure of Tehran during the period 1346-1400, so that the mechanisms of employing specialized language by the mentioned discourse becomes visible. Revealing the reliance of the automobile-related engineering discourse on power institutions, new technologies and its transformation into the central core of urban policy-making in Tehran is the consequent goal of the research. Comprehensive documents of plans of Tehran, regulations, driving license-oriented laws, urban signs, and media are the data sources of the research. The data were collected in a purposeful manner according to the considerations of theoretical sampling and explored based on Wodak's critical discourse analysis and Foucault's genealogy. The findings of Wodak's critical discourse analysis have made the "metaphorical meaning" and the "role of language" in "legitimizing engineering engineering policies visible." The concepts contained in the official language and technical documents - while forming a new urban identity and regime and marginalizing biological, historical and human readings of the city - have reproduced and consolidated the “others” of the automobile-related engineering discourse. Providing a clear picture of the historical course of the evolution of key concepts related to “vehicle ownership”, “traffic order” and “right of way” are the central outlines of the findings derived from Foucault’s genealogy. The most general interpretative conclusion is constructed in the terms of a historical narrration based on the integration of the findings of Wodak’s discourse analysis, Foucault’s genealogy and the theoretical discussions of the article. According to the constructed narrration, automobiles, traffic and driving signs, property documents, and highways, through their overlapping activities in urban power networks and playing an effective role in shaping the spatial and discursive structure in the physical context of modern Tehran, have, in addition to hegemonicizing specific patterns of movement, speed, and control, ultimately turned non-car-oriented neighborhood spaces and local memory into rejected othernesses in urban-automobile relationships; thus, the totality of relationships arising from the automobile’s technical-engineering discourse, by determining the decline of human livability, have succeeded in creating a technocratic and alien image of Tehran.
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