SOCIETAL SECURITY STUDIES
Year:2010 | Volume:NEW | Issue:12 (21)|Papers Count:7

«Community – oriented Raising the issue: With respect to the growing shift of the Iranian youth tendency from traditional drugs to synthetic ones, the present article is aiming at responding to the major question: «What are the most important factors effective in the youth growing tendency toward synthetic drugs?» Research method: The present article is of descriptive type which is conducted through using Delphi technique. In the second stage of the research conducted through using survey method and questionnaire, it has been dealt with looking into the factors effective in the youth tendency toward consuming synthetic drugs such as Ecstasy, Shisheh and Crack among addict youth.Article findings: The most important factors involved in the youth tendency toward consuming synthetic drugs are prioritized as follows: friends’ encour- agement and harmony with them, addiction fostered and facilitated by social organs, young lifestyle, society being in need of fun, disruption in the process of being accepted by the society, weakness in informal surveillance and control, lack of proper facilities to spend free time, drugs consumer’s worldview about drugs and life, Iran’s community structure potential to lead individuals toward addiction, weakness in formal surveillances and control, presuppositions, weakness in decision making, addiction of other members of the family, curiosity, not being aware of the bad effects of new synthetic drugs, and being released from social pressures, such as unemployment and lack of university degrees.

Formation and expansion of informal habitations with undesirable physical, economic and social characteristics are among the consequences of urbanization growth in the city of Zanjan. «Biseam» informal habitation is among the big informal residential regions in the city of Zanjan, which is the outcome of anomalous and uncontrolled immigrations of peasants to cities. The region is faced with many problems and insufficiencies with respect to its physical aspects. The entire physical characteristics of the region along with demographical and social characteristics dominating the region have led it to become the focal venue for a considerable level of crimes in Zanjan city. The present research aims at surveying the impact of «Biseam» informal residential region in formation of delinquency patterns in the city of Zanjan and expressing the factors effectively contributing to delinquency in the region. The research method, which is of analytical-comparative type used medium centre and oval criteria deviation tests, clustering test, nearest neighbor indices, and Kernel density estimation for analyzing delinquency patterns. The statistical community of the present research includes all the drugs trafficking related crimes occurred in a period of one year in city of Zanjan.The findings of the research indicate that «Biseam» informal habitation is the region, which is prone to drugs trafficking crime. The relative population density in «Biseam» is higher than that of other areas in the city of Zanjan, so is the unemployment rate compared with other areas in the city of Zanjan. On the other hand, excessive numbers of houses, lack of the required urban facilities such as parks, cultural centers, sports facilities and police stations, which have made formal surveillance over the activities of the inhabitants of the area difficult, have been so effective in the geographical distribution, type and level of crime, and formation of delinquency patters in the area.Therefore, it seems that organizing and allocating per capita facilities, equipment and services, establishing healthy recreational and leisure centers, widening pavement networks, determining suitable places for settlement of police forces and improving the physical conditions of houses in the region can reduce the vulnerability of the region against crime occurrence in the region.

Feeling secure, as a psychological and social phenomenon, is influenced by direct and indirect experiences of individuals achieved in various social circumstances, which is required by human beings to access a healthy life and continuity of social relationships. The present study considers existence of the objective and subjective aspects of societal security in relation with the status of social capital, which will be provided along with paving grounds for respecting norms, conventions, traditions, social values and partnership in social life to speed up societal health and sustainability of mental health in the realm of security architecture.The present research, aims at examining the relation between societal solidarity feeling and social capital taking into consideration four major constituents (societal trust, social relationship, social partnership and social solidarity). The research is conducted through using survey method and the tool used in it is questionnaire. The research data from all over Ardebil is gathered through sampling method. N=251, and the research was conducted in 2009.The interpretational results indicate that the more the social capital is, the more the level of feeling secure will be. Final analysis of societal trust indicates the highest level of correlation with societal security. Among personal characteristics some factors such as gender, employment status, household monthly expenditure and the neighborhood where people live, are the most influential items in feeling secure.

The present article aims at considering the level of relationship between national and ethnic identity among Azeri speaker youth in Urumiyeh. Along with this, the level of loyalty of the youth of Urumiyeh toward social identities -national and ethnic- have considered. The statistical community of the research includes Azeri speaker youth ranging from thirty to twenty in Urumiyeh. The research is of descriptive survey type. The measurement tool is questionnaire -Lickert range comprised of five choices ranging from very weak to very strong. The volume sample determined by Cochran formula is 380. The data is analyzed by SPSS software and descriptive and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation coefficient, X2 and T test). The research hypotheses in relation with level of loyalty of Urumiyeh youth to national and ethnic identity and the mutual relationship between these two are taking into consideration. In order to measure the national identity level, the research has used some constituents such as having tendency toward Persian language and literature, national affiliation, political tendency and religious tendency. Some other constituents such as tendency toward Turkish language and literature, Turkish music, ethnic history and ethnic affiliation are used to assess ethnic identity level. The results of the research indicate that Azeri speaker youth in Urumiyeh, who have tendency toward national identity have high tendency toward ethnic identity, as well. There is a positive relationship between these two collective identities. Therefore, the present research discusses and evaluates the most important and influential variables to reinforce the convergent links and reinforce divergent tendencies.

Over the past three decades, suicide phenomenon has led to death of some women and youth in western provinces in Iran: Ilam, Lorestan and Kermanshah. Statistics indicate that suicide is one of the most important reasons of death in the above- mentioned provinces. The present research is an analysis of circumstances leading to suicide in Lorestan’s rural society (Koohdasht and Poldokhtar towns) over the years 2003 to 2006. The article specifically aims at examining impact of cultural beliefs over suicide in the under-survey region. The research statistical community concentrates on 621 selected suicide cases in rural regions during the aforesaid period. Through purposeful sampling interviews, which were arranged with 50 members of the victims’ families and 20 individuals who planned to commit suicide i.e. all together 80 individuals were selected for this purpose. The cultural beliefs of the people in the region such as deprecating divorce, vision toward love before marriage, social marks, gender-wise understanding of job and manly vision toward training in family, have either direct or indirect effect on committing suicide.The pivotal reasoning of the article is that suicide is significantly influenced by social marks and traditional norms and values dominating rural communities including protecting reputation, individual prejudices, and beliefs concerning deprecating love affairs before marriage. Marking individuals with negative points has had a significant influence on individuals’ tendency toward committing suicide. Considering relative relationship among boys and girls before marriage as a taboo has had more impact on committing suicide compared with other factors.

The origin of this article is a research project entitled: «Survey on Tendency toward Superstition and the Factors Contributing to it» conducted among Hamadan citizens through using survey method. Questionnaire used for gathering information. The required information gathered from a 321 sample individuals from among Hamadan citizens through multiphase cluster sampling. The most important result of the survey indicates that women are more superstitions than men. As people grow older, they feel they are not as competent as others are due to not recognizing themselves, and this leads to having more tendencies toward superstition. Those involved in jobs requiring brain activities, and native speakers of Farsi have fewer tendencies toward superstition; while people involved in manual professions such as agriculture, and Kurds and Lors have more tendencies toward superstition. The higher the level of education, income, awareness, rational deed, feeling secure and life satisfaction among individuals, the less tendency toward superstition they have.While analyzing the multivariable regression in order to determine the type of equation which enables us to predict level of superstition, we came across with an equation including various variables: level of education, rational deed, solitude, feeling secure and feeling insignificance. Finally, 30 percent of the variance of the dependent variable is determined through using the equation.

Despite the ineligible history existing on security-related studies, security by itself as a social issue is as old as manhood history. With respect to this issue and the crucial role of police as the security provider, the present research is conducted to discover sociological factors effective on feeling secure while stressing the role of police. The present research, in terms of methodology, is of survey type conducted in micro level. The sample includes 319 individuals (over 16years of age) who live in 24 different neighborhoods of Tehran.The theories used in the theoretical framework include Bari Bouzan theory of maximum and minimum governments, Anthony Gidins and Elrich Beck.The descriptive findings indicate low level of security in terms of people’s security and financial security- 28.94 and 45.39-, respectively. According to the results of the multivariable regression analysis, there are two factors having the most influence on feeling secure: anomy and social capital. In this regard although vision toward police might not directly have such an effect on level of feeling secure on the part to Tehrani citizens, this variable can play an important role in improving the citizens’ security in an indirect way through having correlation with feeling anomy.