Journal of Applied Sociology
Year:2012 | Volume:23 | Issue:1 (45)|Papers Count:10

The aim of this paper is to investigate the view of methodological individualism towards explanation of social phenomena. This view explains social phenomena in terms of individual actions. Therefore, social institutions are reduced to individuals and their desires. In this view, psychology is so important. However, two interpretations are regarded in the methodological individualism. One is maximized and another is minimized interpretations. Most of social scientists tend to regard minimized interpretation. One of the theories which is regarded in the framework of the methodological individualism is the rational choice theory. According to this theory, society consists of individuals who behave based on rational action. Methodological individualism has always been challenged. For example, whether explanation must be presented based on individuals or individuals and relations among them. Moreover, there is not consensus on the meaning of methodological individualism while this concept is free from any political commitment.

Today science world changes sharply in a high speed. In a way that in all areas such as research methods these changes are obvious. Although concepts such as validity and reliability in Positivist methodology have been used with distinct and general rules, in post positivist period in which they have paid much more attention to qualitative research, these principles have lost their general form. In one hand some thinkers stress on applying common validity and reliability quantitative techniques in qualitative studies, on the other hand, some groups focus on distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods. Therefore, in this study we try to introduce the qualitative research methods and applying validity and reliability concepts in this way.

In this paper relationship between social welfare and its categories with social capital has been surveyed. Social capital is a material and nonmaterial of resources to which individuals can have sustainable relations. Social welfare includes main indexes: teaching, hygiene, nutrition, housing, employment, population, workforce, income, expenses and social security.And it includes sub-indexes: leisure, environment and life-financial security. In this paper social capital includes social confidence, social solidarity and social commitment and social welfare includes: housing, teaching, hygiene, employment, income, leisure and population.Theoretical framework of this paper including pervasive and high level of social welfare is related to high level of social capital. Hypotheses of the paper are relationship between social welfare-by means of its categories with social capital. Relationship between social welfare and social capital and relationship between leisure and social capital are proved.

This study aims to inverstigate the social participation of marvdasht’s city. In this research from the views of intellectual choice, Mazola’s needs and provocation, the formalities of Randal Collins’s reciprocal action, Antony Geiddens, Dull, Lerner and Huntington’s structure, and at the end the theoretical analysis of the hypotheses of the investigation was chosen.In this investigation a statistical society including individuals form 18 to 65 ages, residing in Marvdasht city was chosen accidentally 385 individuals. The method of this research is metrial and we used a questionnaire to collect the data.The analysis of the data is done by using the statistical methods of analysis and variance, t-test, the correlation coefficient, and linear regression. The f results show that the variables of gender, age, education, job, income, civic dependence, having political power, political alienation, a feeling of satisfaction about the operation of city responsible, administering civic rights, and using the collective communication systems, have a meaningful relation with the variable of social cooperation. Also, the numerous relations of the effective factors on the social cooperation were investigated by using the regression model. The final pattern showed that the income variable is most effective in cooperation, from all of the independent variable. This means that the more the individual’s income, the more his social cooperation in civic affairs. Furthermore, among the other variable, in order, the following ones are more effective in social cooperation: having political power, political alienation, CIVIC dependence and user of factors the range and influetionas of the collective communication systems.

The examination of the relationship between social trust (generalized and institutional trust) and feeling of social security of the youths of Shiraz and Yasouj cities are the main goals of this paper. The quantitative method is used to collect the necessary data for this study. The role of social trust in increasing of feeling of social security have been noticed by many social theorists. On the evidence of data analysis, and accordance with theoretical framework of the research the level of social trust and feeling of social security of respondents of Shiraz city is lower than Yasouj city in every dimension of two variables (higher modernity=more distrust and higher feeling of insecurity). But the result of ancova analysis showed that higher feeling of security among the city of Yasuj related to their higher trust to institutions not to their placement. Further, both of generalized trust and institutional trust have positive and direct effects on every five dimensions of feeling of security. But, the effect of institutional dimension of trust on political and juridical security is very higher than its generalized one and, the effect of generalized trust on feeling of public and economic security is the same as the institutional dimension. Therefore, the result of this research reflects the importance of both generalized and institutional trust in security studies.

This study aims to testify empirically Bernstein’s (1962a&b) theory of communication. By treating social classes as important independent variables in the socialization of communication, Bernstein argues that their linguistic performance is either an instance of “restricted code” or “elaborated code” illustrating a relationship to working class and middle class respectively. To test this model, 13-year-old students including 40 boys and 40 girls of worker and middle class were asked to write paragraphs about “their school” and “their life in ten future years” as well as doing some sentence completion tests. The data gathered from their written performance, was then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results confirmed Bernstein’s claim, that is, the working class people and middle class people use restricted code and elaborated code respectively. Further analysis showed girls’ more complicated linguistic behavior than that of boys’ in each social class. Also, quantitative analysis, as a support for the qualitative analysis, showed a positive correlation between one’s social class and elaborated linguistic performance.

Body management means constant monitoring and manipulation of visible features of body that consists of following indexes: weight controlling (through exercise, diet and medication), medical manipulation (plastic surgery) and paying attention to health care and cosmetics (daily bathing, hairdressing, makeup, using of perfume, deodorant and nail makeup and colored lens for women).Cultural capital, as one of the key concepts in contemporary sociology, has great importance. Cultural capital refers to concentration and accumulation of different types of tangible cultural goods and power and ability to provide and take these kinds of goods as well as individual talents and capacities in understanding and application of these goods. According to Bourdieu cultural capital can be divided into three categories; internalized, internalized and institutionalized cultural capital.The present study makes an attempt to investigate the theoretical relationship between cultural capital and body management through the framework provided by “Bourdieu” and “Giddens” theories. The procedure adopted in the present paper is the survey one through a questionnaire with a sample population of 402 youths (male and female) aged between 15-29 living in the city of Gilan-e-gharb. The sampling method was Multistage cluster sampling.Results of the application of both descriptive and analytic statistics point to the fact that the average of cultural capital (3.37 out of 5) is higher than body management (2.82 out of 5). The results show that both cultural capital and body management in the society under investigation are in an average amount. The comparisons made between the coefficient indexes indicate that cultural capital among girls with 0.335 is higher than among boys with 0.298. Moreover, multi-variable linear regressions for variables independent from body management (boys and girls) indicate that from among independent variables (internalized cultural capital, objective and institutionalized) in the linear regression for boys only the objective cultural capital remains in the final model. Beta comparison shows that the extent to which objective cultural capital is effective is 0.294. However, the multi-variable linear regression for girls shows that objective cultural capital and internalized with beta indexes of 0.202 and 0.164 have that most significant and least significant relationship, respectively, with independent variable of body management for girls.

Mental or physical health is heavily depends on the social responsibility of immigrants. Since the Tabbas city attracted many immigrants from surrounding especially rural areas, this study aims to analyze the relationship between social responsibility and mental health of the immigrants by using logistic regression. The research method is survey and structured questionnaire utilized as the tool. Population was the immigrants of Tabas. The sample under study were 200 immigrants. To achieve validity, formal validity and factor analysis were utilized, and Cronbach’s Alpha was used for reliability of the tool. Statistical techniques were compare mean, correlation coefficient and test of research model propelled by logistic regression. Research results shows the means of the mental health in dimension of physical is 26.94, dimension of disruption equal with 25.23, in the stress dimension is 20.16 and social function is 31.50. The statistics available in the table indicate that the mean of the dimensions of mental health according F-test significant. Also Research results show that five variables such as residence situation, social responsibility, education, marital status and social class entered in the logistic regression equation model. The Beta equation for five variables; marital status (B=0.27), social responsibility (B=0.62), residence situation (B=0.12), education (B=0.19), age (B=0.17) were significant and could have an important role in prediction of immigrants mental health.

Considering the importance of women’s social capital as a huge part of the society and their role in developing it, and with the aim of studying this capital and the effect of factors on it, the present lines have been written. The theoretical framework of this research is a combination of “Robert Putnam” “James coleman” “Pierre bourdieu’” viewpoints and radical feminism from which 9 hypotheses were extracted to answer the main questions of the research. These hypotheses were tested through survey method. Along this method, and after the operational definition of the variables, a questionnaire was used whose “cronbach” alpha was equal to 0.89. The sample which was extracted by using “cohran” formula, consisted of 376 women. After distributing and gathering the questionnaires, the data was processed and analyzed by using descriptive statistics and bivariate regression, the extracted data was analyzed. The important results of this research are: -the rate of women’s social capital is 40.5 from the total 84, which is considered at an average level. The impact of following variables on the women’s social capital in the city of Boroujen is meaningful: -Family’s social capital with 0.748 beta, Kinship’s social capital with 0.664 beta, Social class with 0.052 beta, Piety with 0.2 beta, Traditionalism with 0.235 beta, West orientation with-01l44 eta, Patriarchy with 0.113 beta.