CULTURAL STUDIES & COMMUNICATION
Year:2008 | Volume:4 | Issue:11|Papers Count:7

Feminist Criticism in Cultural Studies is particularly distinguished from other approaches in modem literary criticism in that its emergence and expansion is the consequence of a social movement.Women's self-consciousness of the inequality of their civil rights compared with men not only led to the formation of social movements aimed at achieving goals such as universal suffrage and equal pay for equal work, but it also inspired a reconsideration of culture and how cultural mechanisms have helped to place women in their inferior position in society. Consequently, literature as an undeniable constituent of culture has been one of the main foci of feminists' attention. The development of women's studies in the 1970s and 1980s was combined with its merging with some of the other critical approaches (in particular poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis). This combination led to such a diversity in the cultural studies of women's issues that in the opinion of most feminist theorists we can no longer talk of a single feminist approach, but a variety of these approaches.The present essay starts with a review of the theoretical foundations of feminist criticism and then examines a short story entitled "The Model" by the contemporary female Iranian writer Simin Daneshvar.The next section of the essay deals with the effect of Marxism and poststructuralism in the cultural study of the images of women in literary texts and offers further readings of Daneshvar's story in the light of these theories. Particular emphasis is laid in these readings on both the images Daneshvar presents of patriarchal culture and women's status within this culture, as well as how her story activelychallenges this very culture.

Social and demographic changes during recent years have had an important effect on various aspects of social and family lives of the elderly in Iran. Cultural backwardness (cultural lag) is among the issues that have been instrument in creating a number of problems for these people. Higher probability of death for husband and more common widowhood of wife is the expected outcome of the dominant marriage and mortality patterns in Iran. Prior to these changes the widowed elderly women used to live in extended families and enjoyed the lifelong protection of the clan and were rarely subjected to the kinds of vulnerabilities and deprivations that they are exposed to these days. Modernization and globalization processes in today's society have brought about the age of the nuclear family structure, high mobility and pursue of individual goals and self interests. These changes in conjunction with existing, and relatively stable, traditional cultural values and civil and legal limitations have made such protections almost impossible and have left elderly women in an especially vulnerable position. This article is an attempt to address this issue. Using data on living arrangements and health statuses of a representative sample of 527 elderly men and women from Tehran, the findings clearly show that aging and the relevant living arrangement problems and difficulties stemming from it are mainly a female problem in Tehran. Elderly women live alone more than elderly men, are less capable economically, and are less equipped in dealing with the problems that these changes have brought about. Persistence of traditional cultural values, and the incompatibility of laws and regulations regarding inheritance have imposed an unequal living condition on the elderly women and have deprived them of their most basic needs and necessities such as decent retirement income and shelter.

This paper tries to gather the experiences and understandings of Tehrani women toward their bodies before and after cosmetic surgery, and seeks to document the ways women express their viewpoints on their cosmetic surgery. This research has been conducted qualitatively and quantitatively and its findings indicate that cosmetic surgery is a matter of individual decision and social structures and should be regarded as a balance between human choice and structural compulsion.

The covering of women in Iran is simultaneously a cultural, religious and ideological issue. Therefore its representation is dependent on the values and norms of these dimensions. This article looks at the representation of women's clothing and the changes that have occured therein. The authors, using discussions on popular culture, have tried to explain cinema's impact on the forms of representation of women's clothing. According to the findings that come from content analysis of 103 films during 3 periods after the Revolution, the covering of women has changed so that the total coverage of body and head has diminished in importance. The domination of chador from the Iran-Iraq war period has decreased in favor of other types of dress. The authors reveal that cinema has gradually moved from a hegemonic representation of women's dress (chador) as a formal ideology towards the representation of counterhegemonic dress (presenting a negative image of chador) in the third phase of films analyzed.

Considering the importance of consumption in the modem society as a means of defining modem identities, especially that of the youth, a very important and creative group in any society, investigating consumption patterns among young girls seems necessary. The central question of this study is what are the patterns of girls consumption in cultural goods, material consumption and leisure time, and whether they are related to their national, religious, gender and class identity.After a review of the literature, we introduce findings from a questionnaire completed by 382 single girls between the ages of 15-30 in Shiraz. The findings show eight distinct patterns of consumption.We discuss the relation of these patterns to personal variables (age, monthly family income, family size, occupational status, and location of birth). The patterns were significantly related to different types of identity (national, religious, gender, and class identity). We conclude that girls in Shiraz are more attracted to patterns of consumption containing activities which cost less, can be done in the family context, indicate a moderate national and religious identity, and which distance them from an entirely traditional view of women.

This study, conducted in the field of sociology of communication, seeks to investigate the different dimensions of women's use and gratification through watching television soap operas (WUGSO), as well as to analyze the influence of socio-economic status (SES) on the degree of WUGSO. The Use and Gratification approach has been applied as the theoretical framework of this study. The research was conducted via surveys, and data was also collected through questionnaires along with interviews. The subjects of the study were 383 married women, all residents of Esfahan, and aged between 20- 54.The findings of the study showed that the average time spent watching TV was 3.24 hours per day. Many respondents regularly watched soap operas, which were indeed their first priority in their TV viewing patterns. Respondents were moderately gratified with watching soap operas. Furthermore, there was a significant and reverse relationship between SES of women and the degree of their use and gratification.For example, time for watching soap operas and also the degree of gratification among those who belonged to higher SES, was less than their counterparts in the lower SES.

In this research we have tried to study the effects of the occupational status of women on their lifestyle. Our theoretical framework is based on Pierre Beurdeau's theory and the research has been done with survey method.The dependent variable OF this research is life-style and its components are social relations, leisure time, taste, and body management. The independent variable of our research is occupational position and its components are occupational prestige and economical position.The findings show that with increases in the women's occupational position, their social relations decreased. Besides the women who worked in the middle occupational positions had more leisure time than those who worked in high and low level occupations. But women who had higher occupational positions, spent more times for sports activities and consumeed more cultural commodities than other women. Also in this research we have not seen any relationship between occupational status and body control. Finally the findings show that the women with high occupational positions kept distance from consumptionism and paid more attention to the functions and benefits of goods. Moreover in this study we found that we cannot explain lifestyle, consumption patterns and women's identity distinctions just by their occupational positions and we should consider other cultural factors (such as gender, education and values) in the formation of people's identity and life style.