CULTURAL STUDIES & COMMUNICATION
Year:2006 | Volume:2 | Issue:4|Papers Count:14

Extraordinary developments in the field of communication technology and growth of consumerism have increased the role of media culture and global mass culture in the youth's socialization. Emerge of various subcultures and lifestyles among youth are inevitable outcome of the development in a way that they do not harmonize with the formal culture of the society and sometimes are challenging it. In this survey report based on a representative sample of high school female students in Tehran, the teenager girls' attitude toward sub-cultural behaviors has been studied and rated. This study has shown that gap between the mental and behavioral tendencies of the teenagers toward sub-cultural elements results in some contradictions in their simultaneous attention to traditional and modem values. In addition, their tendencies toward sub-cultural behaviors are so widespread that it is difficult to distinguish them from the accepted formal behaviors and it will change and redefine the borders of these two levels of look and behaviors.

One of the main theoretical concerns in sociology of culture is what major factors determine people's cultural consumption. The more the role of cultural goods and their constructing effect on identities and also the economy of culture develops, the more important becomes dealing with cultural consumption. Similarly, asking about cultural consumption is a part of attempts to make sense of socio-cultural trends. The main concern of this article is, through social class theory, to examine which factors affect on the type and amount of music consumption. Social class and cultural capital are two major variables in classical theories of cultural consumption and here we have tried to determine each factor's proportion in explanation of Iranian's music taste. This article also criticizes the classical theories explaining music taste.

The authors of present paper aim to re-read the history-oriented novel of "Showhar-e Ahoo Khanom" from the perspective of reconstructing the collective memory and narration. First, the theoretical perspective of the topic is addressed, and then a description of the narrative facts of the novel is introduced.Eventually the features of the novel and its narrative level will be analyzed. Also, the historical reconstruction process of social history regarding dominant discursive components of that era will be analyzed.

Here, the root of the concept of "everyday life "in the literature of social science is studied. The author aims to point out the significance of everyday life in cultural studies. Although we have a look on problematic of western everyday life, we are to know how effective and appropriate this theoretical tradition could be applied in society like Iran. In this article it is revealed that Iranian cultural studies should categorize its everyday life's problematic differently. Then this article addresses some existing differences between Iranian and western everyday life.

According to existing agenda and documents, Iranian education system is planned to train a special religious and political subject. In this article I tried to show how education system presents itself in Iranian school spaces and how students consume ideological spaces creatively. It seems that incompatibility of two stages, production / consumption phases of religious and political messages, is the dominant position among the students. The current condition is the product of "students' resistance or inattention" to their schools" ideological messages. Here, political -religious dominant discourse present itself as an ineffective one and sometimes tastes failure in discursive combat.

According to the public and the critics, Chaharshanbe Souri is one of the most successful screened films in 2006. Since every artistic work carries a piece of truth this essay is to clarify the philosophical foundations of the film and illuminates its truth content. Chaharshanbe Souri is itself a reflection on this foundation and its resulting impact upon the individual and social life. Discourse of "Science" in the last two decades has claimed that it could manage Iranian's individual and social problems. And Chaharshanbe Souri is a reflection on this claim. Here the author is to examine role of science and power in Iranians everyday life in these two decades through underlining this reflection.

This paper will firstly explicate the defining features of modem society -including the quest for equality- by referring to Alexis De Tocqueville's ideas. As an important consequence of the trend towards equality is the formation of 'social power', the paper will secondly illustrate how this social power will enforce itself on individuals in modem society in different forms -such as apathy of citizens, determination of public belief and expert ideas. Surprisingly, Tocqueville, contrary to his beloved teacher, does not regard the conventional ways of control ling power- including power of judiciary system, newspapers, activities of cultural, artistic and literalistic circles, and criticisms of intellectuals- as sufficient and prescribes the religious faith and moral individual as the panacea of the problem. By emphasizing on five reasons, the paper will end arguing that Tocqueville's sociological vision is highly beneficial for understanding and controlling the 'social power' in Iranian society.

This article is based on a research about 21 of the best selling Iranian popular novels, which were published in the last decade. Article can be conceptualized as a genre study. It uses Schatz model as its main theoretical framework. Schatz studying Hollywood cinema had identified two genres: genre of order and genre of integration. In order to define the conventions of such genre in literature, article also uses Radaway"s definitions of Romance.Article identifies 14 textual conventions. After defining each convention, all sampled novels are searched, in order to estimate the occurrence of such convention, in each text. Article comes to conclude that most of the identified conventions accrue in most of the sampled novels. This can also mean that housewives as the main reader of such novels have become the opinion leaders of the literature market. Such finding can have special consequences for both cultural policy makers and publishers. Experienced, creative and educated authors by gaining a better understanding of the conventions of genre of integration can create works which might help to improve the aesthetics of today's popular novels and by doing so the taste of its readers can also be improved.

ICTs have created far-reaching changes in society and in its functions and fabrics. These changes have been so deep and pervasive (and even revolutionary) that the new world and society can not be explored by existing theories and concepts. One of the most affected fields is that associated with the interaction of media and social groups. Media audiences have gained a new power and, therefore, simplistic notions of sender/receiver of the past (or center and margin) do not hold much credit. These changes are all results of series of characteristics in the Internet which allow the user to have unprecedented control over the communication medium as well as the content. Thus, the audience is no longer a passive receiver of media content, rather an active participant in mobilizing communicative means to represent themselves to others, even to a global audience.In this article, we study the effects of the Internet in the field of representation of social groups and especially muted groups. Thus, using concepts such as "muted groups" theory and the idea of "voice" and combining them with some classic concepts of social and cultural studies (like social capital and empowerment), we will explore how the Internet empowers muted groups to represent themselves and to make their voice heard. Furthermore, the role of the characteristics and utilities of internet are discussed in more details.