The Festival of Nowruz and Consumer Identity Politics: An Ethnographic Case Study of Persian Consumers in the UK

This ethnographic case study aimed to address a lacuna in Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) research investigating the nexus of seasonal festivals, ritualistic consumption, and the politics of consumer identity. While there is much research on experiential consumption and identity in CCT, there is little about how immigrant consumers deploy festivals and ritualistic consumption to work on their identities. To address this lacuna, this thesis draws upon CCT research and the theories of ritual and festivals to shed light on how Iranian émigrés negotiate their identity through mobilising elements of Persian culture, especially Nowruz (the Persian New Year). To this end, I adopted a qualitative research approach and undertook 20 semi-structured interviews, mainly over Zoom, analysed manually by using a hermeneutic method of thematic analysis. The findings of this study indicate that Iranians in the UK suffer from and, in turn, perpetuate internal exclusion and conflicts, resulting in a fragmented diasporic community. However, this study demonstrates the potential capacity of Nowruz as a pertinent temporal and spatial context in which to alleviate communal fragmentation and identity work. Specifically, this study reveals a redemptive form of identity politics in the context of Nowruz that responds to expatriates’ ideological tensions and their desire for authenticity and to reclaim recognition. Finally, the findings demonstrate that Nowruz has become increasingly commercialised in a Western culture. This means that the marketplace allows UK-based Iranian consumers to deploy consumption resources and a marketised mode of communality (e.g., ticketed Nowruz parties) to pursue pleasure and project a secular Persian identity. This identity is attractive and meaningful for expatriates in resolving their ideological tensions as they seek to challenge and transform social, cultural and political stigma underpinned by their religiosity and nationality as Muslim Iranians in the UK.