Cultural Property and the Right of Interpretation: Negotiating Folklore in the Islamic Republic of Iran

In this paper I discuss how the longstanding patterns of foreign-local interaction in Iran affect attitudes toward previously collected folklore materials. On the one hand, my discussion contributes to ongoing explorations of the consequences of colonial and postcolonial positions in folklore studies; on the other, it illuminates how cultural property can be conceptualized and employed. After a brief introduction to some of the ways that folklore has been collected in Iran, I present three case studies from my own experience. The first addresses issues of cultural property and authenticity: who has the right to speak about/ represent culture? The second deals with the expectations of field collaborators: what happens to the collected materials? How are publishing rights negotiated and communicated? In the third case study I suggest how institutional expectations change with regard to archive access. Each case study concerns communication between foreigners and locals, particularly with regard to different expectations about how to deal with historically recorded documents of verbal art that are seen as important constituents of traditional culture.