Iranian Journal of Social Problems
Year:2014 | Volume:5 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

Social scholars and policy makers consider youth problems very important in contemporary Iranian society. Accordingly, this study is an attempt to investigate one of these problems, namely alienation among youth and its main social factors. To advance this goal, we used some theoretical and investigative experiences provided by psychological and sociological theorists like Melvin Seeman, Edgar Friedenberg, Herbert Markoze, and Eric Fromm. Our research method is descriptive-survey. The statistical population includes all youth aged 20-30 living in Khodabande, a small-sized city in Zanjan located North West of Iran. Applying Cochran sampling formula, we surveyed a sample of 350 young residents of Khodabande. Our main instrument to collect data was a researcher designed questionnaire. The overall result suggests that the rate of social alienation is high among youth (20-30) and its main affective variables include social discontent, individualism, and mass media.

The aim of this qualitative study is to understand the expectations of women over 40 years from their spouses. In this regard, the Grounded Theory methods and in-depth semi-structured interviews were used. The interviewees were fourteen women over 40 living in district 5 of Tehran metropolitan area. Our findings show that the expectations of women are affected by traditional marriage, normative pressure, cultural and economic capital, historical experiences, long-term experience of motherhood, authoritative parenting style, and intergroup social capital. To meet their expectations, women over 40 years use different strategies such as insincere talking, postponement of pleasure, concealment, seeking husband consent, obedience to husband, and finally, family-based interactions. Meanwhile, these strategies will lead to different consequences in women’s life. Also, the findings show that women adjust their expectations from their spouses in order to “stay in marriage at any cost”. This approach can be called "strive for survival ".

The brain drain can be defined as a type of social phenomenon or problem which has, in the reality of process of national development of developing countries, negative consequences and desirable outcomes in some conditions. In principle, in order to achieve a pattern of advancement, the Iranian society needs to train, educate, and employ experts in various aspects of the development where the internal talent reinforcement and bridging intellectual and material gaps are the necessity of advancement. Accordingly, identifying grounds, reasons, and consequences of the brain drain phenomenon requires further explanation and investigation. So far, wide ranges of studies have been conducted in regard to Iranian brain drain. This article, through the application of the qualitative meta-analysis method, investigates describes and evaluates 45 cases of produced scientific articles found in four data bases in Iran since 2001 in terms of questions, hypotheses, objectives, and outcomes. It seems that the necessity and the usage of this meta-analysis can be effective to monitor the country’s scientific community problems and also to provide appropriate scientific guidelines in legislative and executive aspects. Finally, this article provides a conclusion, the sociological analysis of Iranian brain drain, and the solutions of lessening the issue.

In recent years, considerable changes have been occurred with respect to the amount of cultural capital in Iranian society. Many theoreticians and sociologists have paid attention to these changes not only as powerful factors to determine social relationships but also as significant sources in identifying social, cultural, economic and political structures. In addition, social commitment is a prerequisite to social and cultural development. In this regard, the aim of this paper is measuring cultural capital and social commitment a well as analyzing the impact of social capital on social commitment among Tabriz citizens. We surveyed a sample of 400 Tabriz citizens, using a researcher designed questionnaire. Our findings indicate that there is a direct and positive relationship between social capital and social commitment. With an increase in social capital there will be an increase in social commitment. Some other statistical relationships are also discussed.

Paying attention to the social and physical organization of neighborhoods is important from different aspects. Tehran's Neighborhoods experienced different urban patterns during their formation and development. In particular, North Narmak neighborhood has experienced two different patterns in its eastern and western parts. The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between residents and their environment in two parts of North Naramk neighborhood by emphasizing social-physical organization of this neighborhood, and applying place theory. We concentrate on important factors that predict residential satisfaction. To gather needed data we distributed a questionnaire to 300 randomly selected residents in eastern and western parts of North Narmak. Our analysis has been based on three levels (residential, housing and neighborhood), two dimensions (objective- subjective) and five factors (housing, physical organization, environmental, social organization and cognitive- emotional) of satisfaction. The results indicate that the level of residential satisfaction in east part is less than the average (mean=3) and in west part is more than the average. In both parts, the housing satisfaction is more than the average and the neighborhood satisfaction is less than the average. Also, with respect to the subjective and objective dimensions, only objective satisfaction of west part is more than the average level of satisfaction and the others are lower than the average.

The current paper is exploring anomic situations and social participation of young people in Iran and Tajikistan. A conceptual space was developed based on the theoretical approaches of social anomie of Emile Durkheim, theory of social disorganization of Robert Merton and the theory of feeling of self- alienation of Melvin Seeman. A survey research and the questionnaire technique was used on 768 young people in the age group 20-29 years through a Multi -Stage Cluster sampling in the city of Tehran and Dushanbe. For calculating validity indicators, face Content validity was used. Also for calculating the reliability of the indicators, Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from zero to one was used. Research findings show that there are significant differences between the social participation of young people in both Iran and Tajikistan. In addition feelings of social Anomie, feelings of social and political alienation and feelings of self– alienation have had a significant relationship with social participation of young people in Iran and Tajikistan. It was explained 69% of the variance and changes in social participation of young people in both countries.

This paper attempts to investigate the social factors that affect addiction disuse. We attempted to look at the addiction disuse from a special perspective emphasizing social factors including family, NA association, friends, occupational attitude, social position, believing in norms and moral principles and religious edifications. Applying the theory of social control to analyze the issue of relapse prevention, our primary assumption is that there is a direct relationship between five principal variables of dependency, commitment, busyness, belief and social position from one side and drug abandonment from the other side. We surveyed young members of NA association in Miyaneh located in Eastern Azarbayejan. Our results regarding the relationship between research variables show that among the five independent variables, commitment has a direct and meaningful relationship with misuse cutting, and other variables have an indirect relation with it. Commitment has the most direct and indirect effect and busyness has the least indirect effect on the addiction disuse. In other words, social control has more effect on disuse persistence of those young addicted that consume both traditional and industrial narcotics compare to those who use just traditional narcotics.