Togetherness in rupture and plurality: An interpretive ethnography of urban gatherings during the Ramadan War in Tehran

Khazaei, Tahereh

doi:10.22035/jicr.2026.3742.3931

Togetherness in rupture and plurality: An interpretive ethnography of urban gatherings during the Ramadan War in Tehran

Document Type : Scientific Research Manuscript

Author

Tahereh Khazaei

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22035/jicr.2026.3742.3931

Abstract

War, while disrupting the socio-emotional order of everyday interactions, can create conditions for the emergence of new forms of collective togetherness. War, while disrupting the socio-emotional order of everyday interactions, can create conditions for new forms of collective togetherness. Focusing on the intensification of the divide between the state and the people and the growing polarization of Iranian society, this study, drawing primarily on Collins’s theory of interaction ritual chains and related concepts, examines togetherness amid social ruptures and disruptions of everyday interaction among a heterogeneous population. Methodologically, the study adopts an interpretive ethnographic approach based on the researcher’s reflexive field notes from participant observation of nighttime gatherings during the Ramadan War in Tehran. The data were analyzed thematically. Themes emerged: liminality and the normalization of living through war through the reconfiguration of the affective–interactional order; social atmosphere and the co-presence of different worlds in war; from encounter to absence and spectatorship; togetherness and the reconfiguration of urban spaces across diverse interactional situations; and ritual atmosphere and moments of heightened affective intensity amid ritual density. The findings suggest that togetherness is neither a stable condition nor an outcome of social homogeneity, but a situated, temporary, and reconfigurable accomplishment emerging through differentiated forms of co-presence, micro-interactions, spatial reconfigurations, and ritual density. Thus, social plurality in crisis does not necessarily become unified solidarity; rather, temporary possibilities for being together emerge amid existing distances and differences.

Keywords

interaction ritual chains

social atmosphere

togetherness

urban gatherings

war

Subjects

War, Society and University

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