INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES (IRANIAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH)
Year:2015 | Volume:7 | Issue:2 (26)|Papers Count:8

Political thought is the kind of thinking which is formulated in different disciplines; political philosophy, political ideology, political theology, and political literature are some of its important examples. Although in the course of history political science was transformed to the “science of power”, once again it has returned to its origins for articulating ways to achieve “good life” and “political thinking”. Considering this epistemic turn to ethics and the normative turn in the study of development and economics, benefiting from the practical implications of political thought seems to be a historical necessity. In the present article, first we discuss the main analyses and theories concerning the nature of political thought, and then a paradigmatic-implicative narrative is presented as an alternative for the interdisciplinary explanation of political thought.

The present article tries to study communitarianism as one of the important normative approaches in social science, and present its methodological components in the explanation of political and social developments. However, the question is: what are the concepts and methodological principles of communitarianism in the views of Alasdair MacIntyre? Communitarians select tradition instead of discourse and study five steps of rise, rationality, dialog, crisis and revival of thinking traditions. They are the constructivists of methodological domain. Their analysis is not at macro or micro level, but at local level. Contextual rationality and locality are very important for them. In sociological area, they put emphasis on communities and seek politics in them. Their rise is the result of the gradual fall of mobilizing ideologies such as the left and liberal in the political area, the decline of proletarian movements, the process of depoliticization of Europeans countries and the decline of the Green Party, the supporters of the environment, and the feminist movements. It seems that using this methodology instead of positivistic and hermeneutic approaches can help us develop a local approach for our perception of policymaking in the plural society of Iran and it can be used as an interdisciplinary theory for the humanities.

In the present article the challenges of doing cultural studies, as an interdisciplinary field, have been discussed. We conducted this research through individual interviews and focused group interviews with university graduates and Iranian experts on cultural studies. First, we present the lived experiences of cultural studies students at three universities (University of Tehran, Allameh Tabatabai University, Science and Culture University) and then, we discuss challenges and shortages of cultural studies in Iran through individual interviews with experts in this field. Finally, we discuss the future of cultural studies and examine the viewpoints obtained from these interviews.

“Space” was architecture’s main keyword between the 1890s and 1960s, but it lost its significance in architecture gradually; this was mainly due to the prevalence of postmodern semiotics and theories of “place” in architecture. Social science however went through an inverse path. In the nineteenth century, in modern consciousness and through historicism, space became subordinate to time, time became linear, space became marginalized, and the temporal “stages” of development gained importance. Space in this period was a Cartesian/Newtonian abstract notion which was neutral in relation to society, history and context; and thus it was not in the domain of social sciences studies. In twentieth century, however, the social analyses adopted spatiality gradually, to the extent that the late twentieth century transformations in this field were called “the spatial turn”. Through investigating these two lines of evolution, it will be discussed in this article that with the adoption of a relational ontology concerning space and its enrichment through inter- and trans-disciplinary studies, “space”, as a keyword, can continue to be of importance in architectural theory and play a mediating role in its relation with social science.

In safety sciences, accidents are unintended and non-scheduled events happening as one or more consecutive incidents as a result of unsafe acts or unsafe conditions, or both. Despite growing improvements in safety sciences in recent decades, the concept of accident, as a non-social phenomenon, is defined as neutral and meaningless, which occurs in an unintended and non-scheduled way through workers or machines. A significant amount of the research carried out in this field, following the tradition of epidemiology and behavioral psychology and by reducing the problem of safety and work health to a technical issue, emphasizes the role of individuals’ risk factors and human error in the occurrence of accidents. These studies neglect social, economic, cultural and institutional contexts in the analysis of accidents and take no advantage of interdisciplinary findings, as a result of which such reports only provide a list of risk factors and the statistical distribution of events in terms of quantitative and demographic variables; thus, they disregard the process of the social construction of accidents and the problematic nature of the concept of accidents. Therefore, the present study intends to expose the limitations of safety sciences and its conventional technical approaches in the unilateral and one-dimensional explanation of work-related accidents. For this purpose, in this research, qualitative methodology has been used as the dominant methodology, and critical ethnography has been utilized for the research process, and also thematic analysis has been employed for data analysis. The findings of the study include seven main categories which are shown in the form of the social construction cycle of accidents. Finally, the results show that work-related accidents are mainly due to the conditions governing the organization, unequal power relations and workers’ experiences of work environment than carelessness and the individual and psychological characteristics of workers.

The present research studies the pattern of the Internet usage by the third grade students of middle schools in the school year 2012-13 in Tehran. For this purpose, the needs of Iranian teenagers in virtual and cyber space have been identified and studied through an interdisciplinary approach. A researcher-made questionnaire and interviews with specialists and scholars in the fields of curriculum planning, educational technology, educational planning, information technology and communication were used based on an interdisciplinary approach. Finally, the needs of the students were divided and categorized into two factors of knowledge and skill, and individual and social characteristics on the basis of factor analysis method; the pattern of the Internet usage, including leisure factors and accessibility to information and sources, was designed and presented. Also, the results indicate that these factors have no direct effect on the network features and this effect occurs in relation to leisure factors through the location of the programs. Students’ interest in the Internet was mainly for the purposes of downloading videos and music and also playing online games and entertainment programs. This implies the necessity of attention on the part of planners to preparing and providing videos, games and educational, scientific and entertaining programs.

Humanism was introduced to psychologists through Maslow and Rogers’s views in the twentieth century. This school deals with the human needs and his innate tendencies. Utopia, exalted experiences, religious experiences, high motivations and human nature are among Maslow and Rogers’s ideas. Attar, one of the greatest Muslim mystics of the 6th and 7th centuries has also considered these subjects in his poems and has tried to explain and interpret them. Many of Attar’s ideas can be explained using ideas and principles in humanism and it can be highlighted that he has tried to advance some theories in this field. In fact, it is obvious that, like many other mystics, Attar has utilized psychological concepts in his teachings, and his ideas and theories in this regard can be unraveled through scholarly research on his writings on the part of experts in psychology. On the other hand, to interpret many of the mystical ideas, it is necessary to be familiar with some theories in psychology. The present research, as a descriptive analytical research, tries to explain Attar’s ideas about human needs, perfect man, exalted experiences and high motivation using the ideas and principles in humanism.