CULTURAL STUDIES & COMMUNICATION
Year:2006 | Volume:2 | Issue:5|Papers Count:21

The rise of cultural studies in recent years has exerted far-reaching influence on the humanities researches, so much so that it can be claimed that this new methodology has revolutionized our conception of the object of the humanities scholarship. Cultural studies practitioners have reached beyond the conventional boundaries between high and popular art, thus covering new domains which in the past were considered to be outside the confines of the humanities scholar's work. Prominent amongst these new domains, are advertisements. It can be argued that beyond the "neutral" and "innocent" appearance of commercial advertisements, implicit discursive practices are exhibited that offer definitions of social reality and ultimately determine our subjectivity. Adopting an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach, this article analyses a typical advertisement from the national Iranian television network (about Haier washing machines) with the purpose of illuminating the mechanisms of the construction of feminine identity in contemporary Iranian culture. As such, the images of women in this TV advertisement are investigated from a feminist perspective, while also drawing on some psychoanalytical, sociological and semiotic concepts. The final part of this article offers a conclusion about the potentialities of cultural studies in the humanities.

City can be subject of love and hate. Particular elements of the city can be subject for popularity and dispopularity as well. In this paper my main attempt is to apply the concept of popular culture to the city and examine the popular elements of the city of Tehran through examination of peoples' love and hate in relation to the city of Tehran. This paper will first discuss the concept of popular culture and its relationship with elitism and symbolic power then from this perspective idea of respondents to the question about popularity and dispopularity of Tehran together with question about symbol power will be the core of the discussion in this paper. The result of qualitative research based on 120 comments of the respondents to popular/dispopular aspects as well as symbol of Tehran is' major source for cultural approach to the city of Tehran. This research carried out on the neutral space of weblog which gives opportunity to receive the profound and reliable answers.

Death is a problem that modernity cannot solve it by internal referential knowledge. Death and dying should do out of the public sphere because they are important taboos. More people in modem society currently die at hospitals, hospice, and palliative care, and experience old age and dying in different way of past, because; first, their life spans increase. Second, they reach to old age. Third, infectious conditions shift to degenerative conditions as causes of death. While dying place and time are change, it is quietly natural that dying patterns to transform too. Clive Seale identifies four "cultural scripts ", or ways (patterns) to die well: modern medicine, revivalism, an anti revivalism scripts and a religious script. Cultural scripts are guiding rules for individuals. People in Iran have belief to religion strongly. Thus, the aim of this article is answering to this question that how cancer patients in a religious society and in hospital- a modern institution- can make meaningful process of dying themselves. In this research had used grounded theory methodology. Gathering data techniques were observation and deep interview (with patients, physicians, nurses and social workers) at hospitals. Totally, we do thirty-two deep interviews. We observed that having" spirit" or moral support is important for make meaningful dying processes. Failure of hospital facility, lack of medical ethics in physicians and speaking to patients, and destructing cancer metaphors in Iran, causes "spirit drop". Drop of spirit itself is cause that patients discontinue "struggling" to cancer. Also other result indicate that criteria for recognizing "deed" and meaning of " miracle" have change in Iran since two recent decade. Those rise due to social changes and equipment technologic progression of medicine. "Dead" is who his/her brain becomes die, namely death of brain equal" departing soul of body" and” death of man". Thus, not only decease of body equal with end of exists, but also" death of brain" (center of rationality) means" death of man". This kind of death determines and declares by physician not God, in the other hand once, that his/her brain die, else patients family and her/his self do not anticipated performing miracle.

In this paper, we first consider the behavior of religious propagandists on a scale with extreme stimulation of people's emotion in one side and the strong reasoning in the other side. Then, we briefly review the evolution of the two different approaches: "emotional stimulation" and "reasoning". We argue that using the former in order to improve the religious insight will indeed distract the followers from the core of the religion and leads to the so-called "vulgar religion ". We specifically focus on answering the following two questions: 1) was the spreading of Islam in Iran at its early ages based on emotional stimulation or reasoning? 2) Is the current procedure of religious propagandists in Iran, including the mass media, based on emotional stimulation or reasoning?While developing the relationship between reasoning and evidence, we explain that since reasoning is the consecutive appearance of evidence and human kind does reasoning mostly based on its previous knowledge, we can refer to the events and information’s of early ages of Islam in Iran and somehow simulate that era to be able to "guess" the answer of the first question.The last part of the paper is on studying the consequences of following a religion based on emotional stimulation in the contemporary Iran. We argue that the contribution of mass media to form vulgar religion can specially lead to a phenomenon in reverse of the "spiral of silence" in which the objection whispers of talents cannot be heard.

In this article we will be concerned with the type of relationship of everyday life with religion and mass media in Iran. Therefore in addition to impact of TV, in the reproduction of cultural dominated system, we will also focus on social- cultural and human factors in the cultural residency forming.The hypothesis of this article is that religious users based on their judgment and approach on religious ceremonies in everyday life are able to reproduce a new kind of typical religiosity and cultural expectations ,which are affected by mass media. To know this process in the article it has been used the social theory of Gramchi and Fiske.

The Internet as a new kind of popular communicative medium is going to find its place in social interactions, and then has likely some implications for social identities in different levels. The paper reports the findings of first hand research carried out in the field of the Internet's effects on peer group identity. Peer group identity measured by a scale which developed by author applying Tajfel's social identity theory. The research plan was a cross-sectional quasi-experimental one. In a non-probability sampling 365 students selected from University of Tehran to test the research hypothesis.The sample divided into two subgroups as the test group (n=180) for those who had some Internet experiences, and the observation group (n=185) for whom had not such an experience. The hypothesis tested by two techniques: Man-Whitney and multiple regressions. There was no significant relation between the Internet usage and peer group identity. The main result and two side findings are discussed. The latter findings includes "any significant relationship between gender type and peer group identity is not observed", and "there was a significant positive relation between the time which spent to use video cassette recording (VCR) system and peer group identity".

This article aims to study how off-line and on-line leisure activities interact in different leisure styles and what factors affect their interaction. Drawing upon 32 interviews with internet users (18 to 28 years old) in Tehran, three different leisure styles have been identified: namely "Transition", "Knowledge-based" and "class based" leisure styles. The study reveals that in all leisure styles, user's online leisure style usually follows the same pattern of their off-line leisure. It further shows that internet use for leisure purposes, in people with "Transition" leisure-style has increased leisure time qualitatively and quantitatively through creating new leisure activities like chatting, while in youth with "knowledge-based" leisure style has replaced their cultural leisure activities without any impact on their leisure time and it has had no effect on leisure time and experiences of those with "class-based" leisure style.

This article aims at qualitative content analysis of "Rahnamai and Ranandegi Clips". 44 clips were chosen (They were at reach) and then, their social, technical and ideological codes were described according to semiotics approach. It was shown that these clips' signifiers have both apparent and hidden meaning structure. We have tried to show different representation of diverse social types such as "Lat", "Sosoul" and "Mohandes". Also, we tried to appear paradoxical messages which are situated in connotation. In this way, we believe that the signified of these clips are constructively cultural and discursive.

Such useful concepts as "ritual" and "popular culture" have been used by various approaches to clarify mechanisms through which religion, culture and society work. Consisting of two main parts, this article attempts to elucidate the sense in which we can talk about "religious popular culture" in the context of Iranian shi'i culture and society governed by an Islamic state. The first part presents a brief theoretical overview of the rich literature on these concepts. The following part consists of an ethnographic study of Ashura rituals and iconography. My ethnographic data comes out of my observations in 1984(2005). From a symbolic- culturalist approach, this part is aimed at explaining the interaction between Ashura rituals and iconography and popular culture in recent Iran. In spired by a de Certeauian view of popular culture, the second part discusses Ashura rituals as means modified and used by people as tactics against dominant strategies manifested in the form of current ritualization or the ongoing Islamization.

Value system, beliefs and people's life style have a mutual relation with public policy-making and decision-making about the resource allocation. In every society, policy-making is the reflection of selected values in that society. Therefore, understanding any policymaking is not possible unless with regards to the cultural and value evolution in that society. Studying mutual relation between culture and policy-making and the resulted interaction is affected by the main issues and problems existing in the process of development and evolution of Iran society. Analyzing policies, plans and their consequences show that the State has always been confronted with significant value and cultural challenges for implementing macro policies. The unsuccess of policy-making and planning in the last 6 decades (1937-2007) represent the existence of cultural, value and institutional limitations, in the one hand, and the impact of production styles and social structure which have been resulted from oil incomes, on the other hand. Economic liberalization and privatization have been the center of economic policies in the last two decades. Declaring macro policies of the article 44 of the constitutional law concerning expansion of participation, private ownership, and competitiveness, and development of job opportunities for people has led policy-making into a new phase. Implementation of the mentioned policies requires understanding of the background cultural of society. Because of the resulting economic and social consequences, the importance of understanding and analyzing of interaction between policy-making and culture becomes significant.