Social Problems of Iran
Year:2010 | Volume:1 | Issue:1 (NEW SERIES OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES)|Papers Count:7

This paper attempts to, address two major questions: Why did the structure of State in Pahlavi period become different from that of Ghajar? Which Structural Factors can account for the modification of the state. Structure from a traditional to a modem form? To do so, based on the literature of modem state, an ideal type of modem state was developed and its components were identified. Following a structural approach, the emergence of the modem state is explained by the integration of Iran into the world system in the Ghajar era. It is argued that the failure of Ghajar state to adjust with the world system requirements resulted in Misroute (Constitutional) revolution. However, due to the weakness of Mashroteh State in the establishment of a modernized state structure, the country experienced anarchy and chaos. This situation prepared the ground for the rise of Reza Shah and the Seize of power enjoying the support of Britain, the main power in the world system then. The new state adopted policies to modernize the State Structure. These policies resulted in the increase of state power, marginalization of local powers and other sources of authority, the development of state supremacy, the improvement of social relations of different segments of society, the integration of ranian society and its unification into a National identity. These polices paved the way for the transformation of the state structure and the emergence of an authoritative modem state for which the social conditions of Iranian society were also in line with.

This article intends to review some features of democracy culture in the poems of the era of Iranian Constitutional Movement. To this end, first the notion of democracy is defined based on Mannheim’s theoretical notion of distance removal. Within the boundaries of this concept, a democratic culture seeks to remove or limit the vertical distances. This turns out to be manifested in different ways and formed the whole picture of a democratic culture. Some aspects of these manifestations can be observed in literature. The article presents some samples of democratic culture in the literary tradition of the Constitutional era based on which it is concluded that Persian poetry in the Constitutionalist Movement enjoyed democratic elements.

Social values of different generations are important factors in the study of social changes. The experimental study on this subject can improve our sociological knowledge and provide fundamental data for planning and making strategies in socio- cultural realms. This research, done in 2006, focused on examining of social values of two generations including young people and their parents. The sample was selected randomly from 120 paired parents and their children living in Hashtgerd. After the pilot study, the data were gathered using questionnaire and direct interviews. The findings show that there are significant differences between parents and children in terms of their ideas about the age of marriage, importance of beauty, honesty, higher education, family novelty, having relationship before formal marriage, and marriage with relatives.

The main objective of the study is to identify and to explain university female students' attitudes towards violence against women. A survey method was adopted and data were collected through self-administered questionnaire with a reliability index of 0.78. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by construct validation procedures. The sample was taken from all female students of Mazandaran University. Totally, 450 female students were selected on the basis of stratified sampling. Theoretical Framework was Social Learning Theory. Some Independent variables such as model of different reinforcement and punishment, violence experiment, violence observation, gender role "socialization and observation learning were used to explain the variations of dependent variable (i.e. attitudes towards violence against women). The results of regression analysis showed that all of nine hypotheses were confirmed. Among five independent variables, violence experience (0.78). Was the most important variable for predicating attitudes towards violence against women followed by socialization (0.23), violence observation (0.22), model of reinforcement and punishment (0.14), and observation learning (0.11).

A review of secularization theories indicates that very little attention has been paid to the impact of increasing global relations on the secularization of the world people. The present paper attempts to examine the relationship between cultural globalization and individual secularization of the world people with regard to contextual variables influencing this relationship. The contextual variables in this study include non-Islamic religious tradition, the development level, ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversities. The results indicated that cultural globalization has a direct and positive relationship with secularization. However, when the effect of variables referring to theories of modernization and religious markets (as the competing theories) was controlled, the relationship between globalization and secularization significantly reduced. The findings also suggested cultural globalization had non-secularizing effect in Islamic countries and secularizing effect in non-Islamic countries. Also it was found that the secularizing effect of cultural globalization in countries with ethnic diversity was higher than its effect in countries with ethnic homogeneity. In addition, there was an unexpected finding indicating the secularizing effect of cultural globalization in religiously homogenous societies was much more than its effect in religiously heterogeneous societies.

Despite the historical and cultural importance of the family institution and the support of different country's laws and plans for strengthening bases of family, the literature indicates that the family and marriage are subjected to serious problems. This situation can be studied from different perspectives but this paper stresses the effects of public policies on creating and continuing of the crisis. The main goal of the article is to assess critically diagnosis of the problems of family and marriage as well as related public policies and plans. The critical and analytical framework of the study is extracted from Habermas' views about colonization of life world by social system. According to the theoretical base, mediation of family and its becoming as a milieu for transfer of economic and political messages resulted in weaknesses and breakdown of the family and a big part of existing difficulties of family all£ marriage can be understood with reference to such a perspective. Data were collected through content analysis of conducted studies and formal policy documents. The closing section of the paper proposes an alternative policy approach that is argued to be more consistent with sociocultural nature of family and marriage.

Religion or religiosity as a cultural factor has been rarely (at leas in Iran) used to explain demographic issues like fertility. This paper alms to answer the following questions: Are fertility differences between the Shiites and Sunnis widespread? Are the differences significant? Would the differences remain significant, if social, economic and demographic factors are controlled? Explanations are done using the Characteristics, Particularized theology, and Minority group hypotheses. The sample survey was used as the research method. Target population comprised married women aged 15-49 years residing in Galedar city of Fars province in Iran. From the population, 306 women (156 Sunni and 150 Shiite) were randomly selected as the sample. Data were mainly analyzed using the Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA). Our findings show that Sunni women had substantially higher fertility than their Shiite counterparts. The difference in fertility between the two religious groups remains significant when all other impendent variables are controlled. This situation, which shows the net effect of the religion on fertility, can reflect the priority of in-group (religious or non-religious) values against those for the out-group.