CULTURAL STUDIES & COMMUNICATION
Year:2007 | Volume:3 | Issue:9|Papers Count:8

On the basis of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, which is a framework to study socio-political discourse; this paper seeks to show how dominant social discourses reproduce themselves through cultural products such as films. To do so, parts of the film ‘Party’ by Saman Moqaddam are studied as an example. The main questions asked in this paper are: What social discourse/discourses produced the film? And, how is this social space represented in the film? Finally, through analyzing and describing both the dominant social space and the film, the paper tries to put the film in a bigger social context and show how discourse theory can help us to study cultural products such films.

Recently, news about the behavior of football spectators has been as important as news about football itself. This survey studies subculture factors and group dynamic structures influencing the violent behavior demonstrated at football games. A sample of 1020 football spectators who were present at important football matches ,especially between Esteghlal and Piroozi teams, have been used for this research. According to the findings, football hooliganism, in part, is subject to some identical, group and situational variables: age, behavior, affectivity, suggestibility, group contagion, reading sports newspapers, police performance, and excessive appeal to specific sports teams. Moreover, some factors which influence football hooliganism in Europe and other countries like social class, alcoholism and racism do not pose an influence on Iranian football violence.

One of the key issues related to the area of «information geopolitics» is discussions about information flow in various societies and the visible and invisible powers governing it. Using library surveys and content analysis methodologies, this descriptive, cross-sectional research attempts to quantitatively and comparatively study the main issues discussed in the political pages of two Iranian newspapers Aftab-e-Yazd and Kayhan in 1385 (Tir month). The questions posed are as follows: Which key subjects are discussed in these newspapers? What people and countries are focused on in the political pages? How are news resources cited in these newspapers? Which national and international news resources are most often cited? Is the political information published on various days quantitatively different? Is there any significant difference in the political news published in these two newspapers? The findings showed that Aftab-e-Yazd and Kayhan newspapers were different in terms of news coverage, range and subject, resources cited, focus on newsmaker individuals, quantity of political information and news distribution during week-days. While Aftab-e-Yazd pays more attention to the internal challenges and problems inside Iran, while being more critical about the government’s performance, Kayhan pays more consideration to the foreign policy of Iran and other countries. In terms of the information offered, both have considered focus on the same countries, though differently. Presumably, one can conclude that the reason for the observed differences in news and political information of these two newspapers is due to opposite political party dependency. This, in turn, affects their political attitudes and interests, and their selection and publication of political news.

Constructionists as a critical school argue gender identity is a social construct. Accoridng to this perspective femininity is something beyond the mere essential characteristics of womanhood and females. This study focuses on the variety of gender identities among female high school student’s girls and insists that the plurality in values reveals the importance of gender and its use in the study of women and girls arguing that femininity is a key concept in such studies. Using survey methodology with a sample of high school female students in Tehran the gender identity of girls and their attitudes towards feminine values in relation to their socio-economic status were studied. The findings reveal the diversity of feminine identities among the sample and also reveal some discrepancies in the perception of feminine values. According to the results girls with a higher socioeconomic status show a lower degree of commitment to feminine values, while girls from lower statuses show a higher commitment to them. Although other findings reveal no meaningful relationship between socio-economic status and gender identity and there are similar distribution of the following gender identity, feminine, masculine, bi-gender and androgynous amongst both higher and lower socio-economic groups.

Individualism, as a modern term, stands contrary to the communalism of traditional society in sociological literature. Re-interpretation of the self and various spheres of life constitute the basic characteristics of individualism. Within such circumstances and with the absence of social approval religious orientation may become questioned and evaluated. This situation often occurs amongst seculars of society most exposed to modern epistemology. Accepting this presupposition, we examine the existence of individualistic and communistic values among university students and the relationship between religious tendencies and liberal interpretations. In doing so we have used Stock and Clark’s measurement of religiosity combined with indexes on rethinking religiosity and individualist/ communalist values constructed by the researcher. This study showed that despite the dominance of communal characteristics individualistic tendencies exist almost with the same intensity. The co-existence of these two was shown using both survey and construction methods. The study also showed that among the students’ belief and experimental dimensions of religion are more acceptable than other dimensions. The study of the inter-relations between the indexes reveals that communalism has a direct and meaningful inter-relationship with all dimensions of religiosity but acts independently from re-thinking religion. Contrary to this, individualism shows strong relationships with experimental as well as rethinking dimensions of religion.

As a Country with enormous ethnic, linguistic and local diversity, Iran has great potential for national development and empowerment. Although usually perceived as a threat to the organization of national government and ethos, ethnic and linguistic diversity could be used towards such aims. This paper, based on research carried out in 2005, tries to show the positive implications of the diversity of Iranian society in the scientific development of the country. The article focuses on the territorial and global continuity of Iranian ethnic groups, which can facilitate trans-border exchange of students and lecturers and increase cooperation with various regional and international science and research organizations. The article argues that the management of higher education has not succeeded in exploiting this potential and, therefore, calls for action in four cultural linguistic regions studies; Azeri, Baluchi, Arab and Kurd. The article focuses on language and calls for a linguistic policy within higher education which would combine international languages, particularly English, with national and ethnic languages.

The huge progress of communication and information transfer over the last few decades has facilitated worldwide interaction. In such a world, consciously or unconsciously, individual preferences are affected by other nations cultural, behavioral, and relational patterns. According to some theorists, the entrance of new cultural elements amongst the youth, via the internet or satellite, has created new cyber-tastes which, according to some analysts, are gaining prestige and status. On the contrary, some others believe in the power of ICTs as enabling people to be aware of the world as whole in which consuming various elements brings global ecumenism and the diffusion of positive universalism. The main goal of this research is to study the relationship between the way Tehrani youth became acquainted with Valentine’s Day, a foreign holiday and the way they celebrate it. Using survey method and a sample of 230, the findings have proved positive universalism.