STRATEGY FOR CULTURE
Year:2014 | Volume:6 | Issue:24|Papers Count:7

The study of the function of religion in creating meaning in man’s individual life and its social effects is one of the significant subjects in sociology of religion. The significance of meaning in life stems from the fact that with the advent of the modern world, the traditional value systems encounter a challenge and the volatility of the modern world life, its multiple of meanings and its various narrations, have landed man in bewilderment and caused him anxiety.Sociologist of religion, with different intellectual orientations, have agreed that religion has the power to justify happiness or unhappiness of man and plays its role and function mainly by formulating human experiences in a regular and interpretable framework and finally works as a firmament for creating meaning.The present paper is an attempt to measure the relationship between religiosity and meaningfulness of life through an empirical study. The sample of this study included 372 students of the Kharazmi University. The data were collected by questionnaire for this survey.The findings of the study indicate that religiosity has a positive direct relationship with meaningfulness of life, while among different aspects of religiosity, the creedal dimension has the highest level of positive relations, while its ritualistic aspect has the weakest relation. The connotations of these data have been analyzed as well.

From sociological point of view, films represent our conceptions of fundamental social, economic and political problems and shape the ways we think about these problems. Among the fundamental problems that film represents, the issue of consumption is of high significance which is reflected in the relationship of film personages with the consumer goods. The present article is an attempt to explain the way of representation of consumption in cinematic films of the Reconstruction Era. The main question of the present paper is: how consumption is represented and intertwined with the social identity of the actors in the cinematic films of the Reconstruction Era (1989-1996) Research methodology employed in this research is semiotics through which four films produced during the period under study have been analyzed. The findings of the research indicate that connoted consumption is shameful, i.e. the personages of the film are shameful of their own consumerism and censure themselves when they look at the poor people of the lower stratum and their low consumptions.

In order to develop a knowledge-based economy and reduce its gap with the developed countries, Iran has but to adopt the policy of knowledge-based development. Knowledge-based development requires a dynamic and vibrant knowledge economy. Effective planning and policymaking for development of Iran’s knowledge economy requires a proper understanding of the existing situation and its developments compared to other countries. Therefore, attempts have been made in this research to compare the developments of Iran’s knowledge economy with those of the regional countries during the past fifteen years. In this regard, while developing a new conceptual framework for knowledge economy, a combinatory index, including elements of knowledge industry, knowledge-based industries, learning society, information society and knowledge government, was made for this concept. The measurement of the combinatory index on the basis of international data and experts'views indicates that the condition of knowledge economy in Iran during the past 15 years has considerably improved. In fact, Iran’s rank was upgraded from 17 in 1995 to 6 in 2010. However, the development of components of knowledge economy was not balanced. In order to preserve the balance and sustainability of development of Iran’s knowledge economy, the weaknesses of infrastructures of information technology and knowledge government must be removed; commercialization of research results and innovations must be expanded; and investment in research and education should be increased. If these shortcomings are removed during the fifth and sixth development plans, one can expect Iran to achieve the first rank in the region in 2025.

Alienation is a problem that some of the students are afflicted with during their study. Alienated students usually turn into adults who are afflicted with social alienation and lack of political and economic capabilities. According to self-determination theory, the living environment as well as basic psychological needs of the students affect their alienation. The main objective of this paper is to study the relationship between school culture with academic alienation in the light of the intermediary role of basic psychological needs. Hence, 289 students of intermediate schools of the city of Qum were selected through cluster sampling who responded to the questions of the following questionnaire: Academic Alienation, School Culture and Basic Psychological Needs. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results of the research indicate that basic psychological needs play an intermediary role in relationship between school culture and academic alienation. Basic psychological needs has a significant negative effect on academic alienation and the effect of school culture on basic psychological needs is significant and positive. Overall, the tested model had sufficient fitness and predicted 60 percent of variance in academic alienation.

The main objective of this paper is to study the complexity theory challenges and horizons for religious education through descriptive-analytical method. Complexity theory is a survival, adaptive and evolutional theory, which can be described as the science of study of comparative systems which deals with complex problems and has its roots in biology. This theory maintains that causes in this world are very complex and that the effects are not the result of one cause and hence lays emphasis on feedback, adaptation, disturbance, autocatalysis, communication, self-organizing, high sensitivity, unknown attractions and non-linearity. The main thrust of this paper is to explain the challenges and horizons for religious education in the light of the characteristics and presuppositions of complexity theory. Religious education lays emphasis on such issues as hierarchy, absolutism, voluntariness of behavior, reality, esotericism, and certainty of boundaries. The findings of this research indicate that in the light of complexity theory, such issues as vague skepticism, no-responsibility, anti-representation, rejecting hierarchy, moral relativism, uncertainty and breaking of boundary can be considered as challenges of religious education. The horizons of religious education are faith in a metaphysical force, generalism, role of human freewill and determination, goal-orientedness of existence, unity in multiplicity, hidden and inner aspects and mutual causal relationship.

Cultural diplomacy is the main pillar of public diplomacy and soft power in relations among states. Globalization is a key factor in practicing diplomacy. The process of globalization, particularly in its cultural aspect, can provide an opportunity for cultural diplomacy in the global space. The objective of the present research is to find out the effects of globalization on the approach of cultural diplomacy and within the framework of peace-building theory explain the opportunities of globalization for cultural diplomacy. The findings of the research show that culture, globalization and international relations are increasingly becoming dependent on each other, for domination of these three would empower the countries to become more powerful, more effective in cooperation, more peace-builders and would strengthen solidarity. This goal will be achieved by adopting cultural diplomacy in relations among states.

One of the issues preoccupying economic planners is effectiveness of different enterprises working in economic sector. Culture is an important pillar of the society that through ensuring effectiveness in economic sense brings about effective developments in the society. The main objective of the present paper is to determine and analyze the effectiveness data of provinces in economic indexes of culture. By employing data envelop analysis method and using the existing data related to 2000-2007 as well as the official cultural statistics, attempts have been made to measure the capability of each province or their relative effectiveness in utilizing the existing resources in the cultural sector. The findings of the research indicate that during the Third Development Plan, Tehran, Qum and Kerman provinces enjoyed the highest effectiveness figures. During the first three years of the Fourth Development Plan, Tehran, with a great gap, is still at the top of the effectiveness table. Compared to the Third Development Plan, the highest decline in effectiveness goes to Kerman, Qum and Sistan provinces. Also, the highest increase in effectiveness figures belong to East Azarbaijan, Chahar Mahal-o-Bakhtiari, Hormozgan and Lurestan provinces. The sensitivity index analysis shows that the productions of the State-run Television was the most sensitive model index, while Semnan Province had the highest effectiveness.