Social Problems of Iran
Year:2015 | Volume:6 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

The association between type of political system and the stability of the system, in recent decades has been a considerable subject for political sociologists. Current theories can be divided in to three groups as democratic stability theory, which argues that democratic governance contain more stability and democracy increases the rate of stability. Authoritarianst stability theory argues, in contrast, the rate of political stability increases by authoritarianism. And finally, the consolidated stability theory argues that for achievement to a high degree of political stability the combination of the features of both regimes is necessary.This article, based on the theory of democratic stability, tries to test these three perspectives. The authors believe that democracy according to its characters is more prone to political stability.Research method is quantitative comparative analysis of cross national data. The assumptions are examined based on the data reported by international organizations in years 1996 to 2009 among 182 countries that had valid data. The samples size is equal with population size.The findings generally confirm the perspective of democratic stability, but in democratic systems, those countriws who have a consolidated democracy are more stable. Hybrid systems, monarchies, parliamentary democratic systems, one-party to totalitarianisms, presidencies and militaries stand respectively in the rankings of political stability. The effect of "rule of law" as an intervening variable in relationship between democracy and political stability was confirmed, but the role of government economic efficiency was not approved.

The feminization of educational migration in the country leads to questions such as: to what extent do temporary migrants experience cultural estrangement from the place of residence? Does cultural estrangement direct to mismatch between one's demand and surrounding opportunities (social exclusion), and one's reduction of well-being? The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between cultural estrangement and well-being (satisfaction and psychological well-being) through exclusion of transition to adulthood (evaluation of regional and gender inequqlity in transition opportunities to adulthood) and social relationship exclusion. The research method is survey and the sample size is 231 female dorm students of Tehran and Al-Zahra universities. According to Sussman, cultural identity's change in temporary migrations demonstrates four different types of cultural estrangement. The research's findings confirm this theory too, and the results represent significant differences in satisfaction, evaluation of transition exclusion, and relationship exclusion, based on four different types of cultural estrangement. Indeed, there are relations between cultural estrangement from the origins with exclusion and all its dimensions, also with satisfaction. However cultural estrangement is not associated with psychological well-being.

The present study is an attempt to review the position of women’s writings in the press of constitutional era, with an emphasis on Women’s Language newspaper editorial by Sedigheh Dowlat A’badi, as one of the most prominent women press in the late Qajar Dynasty. This newspaper, by printing material that had contents of gender equality, with a particular attention to women’s social rights, including equality with men and their political participation, played an indispensable role in the awakening and awareness of Iranian women. To do so, the documentary method and content analysis technique were utilized to gather the data. The importance of addressing this era is due to the active presence of women for the first time in a Guild-like association. In this period, women brought up their social rights, together with their most crucial request which was opening schools for girls. The fruition of women’s social efforts to get their social demands, is the focal resolution of this study.

The present study examined the effects of the introduction of new technology and industry to Kurdish regions of southern areas of Western Azerbaijan province in Iran based on a mixed model. The data were collected using 7 focus groups, 60 in-depth interviews, and 401 structured-questionnaires as well as a combination of theoretical, purposive, and probability sampling. The findings of the quantitative part of the study indicated that there is a significant difference between at least one of the samples out of the factory system and the employees working in the factories in the region, concerning the participants’ attitudes towards constructs such as rationality, competitiveness and attitudes about time. However, there was no significant difference between place and motivation for happiness and place and attitudes toward women's rights. Besides, the results of multiple level analysis suggested that although place is regarded as an important factor for making value-normative changes among the population under study, the participants showed similar reactions to value-normative changes in both factory and non-factory systems when their socio-demographic characteristics were controlled. The findings of the qualitative part of the study indicated that the introduction of new technology and industry to Kurdish regions has promoted modern, developmental, ethical and rational values. On the other hand, the introduction of such technologies has not undermined traditional values such as traditionalism, God-centeredness, and tendency for contentment. On the other hand, environmental pollution was seen an inevitable consequence of factories operating in the region under study. Accordingly, the concept of uneven development was proposed in the final model.

The present paper aims to study previous researche studies on youth risk behaviors related to drugs and alcohol abuse, and smoking. This paper tries to identify causes of youths’ risk behavior in Iran. Also, it tends to evaluate the quality of existing researche studies on the matter and therefore indicate unseen and ignored areas of this subject for further investigation. After assessing more than 3000 researches, 21 studies were selected which all had the criteria consistent with this study and were thoroughly examined.The results show that most of previous studies do not have required quality, social factors are mostly ignored, studies are not in accordance with proper research paradigms and theories and therefore there can be no aggregation. So many of these studies just examine the same cliché variables and are incapable of offering new findings. Some of the influential factors that have been identified from these studies are age, sex, academic achievement, family members or friends that drugs and alcohol abuse, social and economic status of the family and accessibility of drugs.Aggregations of research in this area, creating settings in which researches are bound to have proper theoretical framework in accordance with Iranian context and further research in unseen zones, are some of essential suggestions of current study.

The purpose of present study is the typology of divorce and its grounds. Accordingly, a qualitative approach and a semi-structured interview technique were used to study the interpretation of divorced people from their divorce grounds.In this research, the result of interviews with 36 divorced men and women in Tehran showed that there are six categories of divorce each of which has its own characteristics and context. The results suggest that there are different types of divorce named as ambitious-rational divorce, nominative- rational divorce, agreed-rational divorce, passive-rational divorce, forced divorce and hasty divorce. This typology of different types of divorce was classified based on the "agency" of individuals in their divorce action. Also, this agency is under the influence of two factors as the amount of "rationality" and the amount of "emotional orientation" of individuals towards divorce. Moreover, the interpretation of the "divorce causes" and also some micro and macro variables play an important role in the formation of various types of divorce. Also, the findings indicate that the way in which actors deal with the divorce and post- divorce life and also the current quality of their life is under the influence of divorce types. Therefore, this study offers the necessity of prevention of hasty divorces and ambitious divorces and emphasizes the empowerment of actors who are engaged in forced Divorces.

This paper investigates the micro concerns (worries about self and relatives) and macro conerns (worries society and the world) by Bohenke’s scale of concern. In this article we describe micro and macro concerns of citizens residing in the district 9 of Mashhad with a sample of 240. A systematic random sampling method was applied for choosing the sample. The findings revealed the citizens were more concerned about social affairs than personal affairs in all subjects including economic, cultural and environmental subjects. Moreover, the level of concerns of different groups of citizens were not the same. The worry of women in health and religious issues were more than men. Also singles, youths and those who had university education showed more worry on success and the meaning of life.