NAMEH-YE OLUM-E EJTEMAI
Year:2004 | Volume:11 | Issue:2 (22)|Papers Count:13

A rapid and continuous mortality decline accompanied by a high level of fertility in ‎Iran has resulted in an unprecedented population boom during the last fifty years. The ‎average annual rate of population growth was around 3 percent in this period, ‎resulting in a four-fold population increase. While public support for family planning ‎began in 1967, a pronatalist atmosphere prevailed following the Islamic Revolution of ‎‎1978-9 and governmental family planning programs came to a halt. The population ‎boom of the 19761986 inter-census periods was the consequence of such an ‎atmosphere (supplemented by a refugee influx). By 1987, the recognition was made ‎of the consequences of the pronatalist orientation and public support programs for ‎family planning were resumed in 1988. The abrupt change in government views and ‎policies resulted in a dramatic reduction of fertility during the 1990s‏.‏

The article critically reviews a number of theories of globalization. Contemporary ‎sociological theories of globalization are criticized because they are often historically ‎shallow, they do not adequately consider forms of cultural resistance to global ‎standardization, and finally they often neglect the role of the state in orchestrating ‎responses to external global transformation. In order to develop these critical ‎assessments, the article concentrates in particular on George Ritzers study of ‎McDonaldization and especially his recent book on the Globalization of Nothing. ‎Ritzer contends that much global culture is devoid of authentic substance, has no ‎sensitivity to place or time, and denudes local cultures of their distinctive contents. ‎His work has taken an increasingly pessimistic direction, reinforcing his dependence ‎on Max Weber's notion of the rationalization of society. Against Ritzer, this article ‎argues that there are two important dimensions to cultural resistance to nihilistic ‎globalism, namely the presence of a strong cultural aesthetic and the mobilization of ‎political power to resist standardization. The argument examines a variety of ‎historical circumstances where societies with strong aesthetics and political will have ‎resisted external, global pressures towards standardization‏.‏

Following implementation of the Land Reforms in Iran, Agricultural Ministry ‎officials set about to establish joint stock companies, production cooperative units and ‎cultivation and industrial companies, in a bid to deal with problems caused by falling ‎crops and mounting rural emigration. They failed to succeed due to various reasons, ‎including lack of participation and cooperation by farmers and incompatibility of ‎applied models with the traditional Iranian rural community. These units disintegrated ‎following the Revolution, after which in some parts of Iran, such as the Sarband area ‎near Arak in central Iran, farmers drew, on their experiences based on indigenous ‎knowledge to bring about consolidation of highly scattered, fragmented farmlands. In ‎this way they could remove disadvantages of their lands being fragmented without ‎any bureaucracy and in some cases guided by agricultural experts who sought to mix ‎scientific and indigenous knowledge. In fact, they managed to make traditional ‎farming compatible with modern technology‏.‏

The argument in this essay is that conceptions of globalization as a system rather than ‎a process can be misleading, diverting our attention from fundamental issues ‎regarding nation-states, geopolitics, and international relations. In particular, the essay ‎contends that any consideration of political, economic, and cultural processes must ‎incorporate two areas that are often marginalized or ignored: 1) far from disappearing ‎as a central actor in international processes, the State-in particular, the US State-has ‎increased in prominence; 2) consideration of that US State and its place in global ‎relations must recognize the presence and power of an American ideology constructed ‎by that State in co-operation with many private groups. The essay suggests that ‎historical consideration of US foreign policy since 1945 takes us beyond both ‎traditional diplomatic history and globalization through the examination of a State-‎private network. This essay does not, however, submit to the notion of a hegemony ‎which is simply imposed by the American State private network upon the rest of the ‎world. To the contrary, tensions and even contradictions within both US foreign ‎policy and American ideology lead to a space, both physical and discursive, where ‎there can be local, regional, and international negotiations and responses. We are not ‎simply observers of American power, but our own power will be limited if confined ‎to abstract notions of globalization‏.‏

This paper will examine powerfulness and powerlessness of cultures in relation to the ‎process of globalization. It will present a model in the frame of glocal space which ‎explains responses of indigenous cultures, integrated of local and global forces. ‎Studying culture in glocal space provokes a serious challenge for cultural studies in ‎the field of anthropology, which traditionally relies on a spatially localized society. ‎Here, cultures are assumed to be powerful and that is when people and societies feel ‎proud of their culture, civilization and flag. Contrary to this, cultures are also inferred ‎as to be powerless when people feel apologetic about their culture and civilization and ‎therefore generally when people wish to become members of other societies and ‎citizens of other countries‏.‏

Risk and protective factors, predictive of, adolescent problem, behaviors are ‎promising targets for preventive, intervention, Acknowledging and addressing, ‎substance abuse and other problem. Behaviors, in the, youth population in general and ‎among high school. Students in particular, warrant, measuring and assessing the ‎predictors of problem, behavior as a necessary step to prioritize preventive ‎intervention plants Longitudinal studies have identified risk and protective factors ‎predictive of adolescent drug abuse, delinquency violence and school dropout. This ‎study measures‏ ‏risk factors for alcohol, and tobacco abuse among Iranian high school ‎students of ages 15 to 18. The survey covers female and male as well as rural and ‎urban populations using questionnaire modules designed exclusively for adolescents ‎to examine risk factors. A broad set of risk factors in the community school, family ‎and individual / peer groups are assessed. Peers, parental control, school, self-esteem, ‎and family coherence are found to be the most important risk and protective factors ‎affecting. Adolescents in this nationwide. Sample‏.‏

Ibn Khaldun's The Muqadimmah has received increasing attention in recent decades. ‎In particular, the concept of asabiyah has been interpreted in a number ways, causing ‎obscurity in its meaning and usage. This paper explores the concept of asabiyah from ‎a historical sociology perspective with the objective to initiate a discussion centered ‎on human agency and social structure‏.‏

This paper probes the different adjustment patterns of Iranian university students to ‎the contemporary social and political scene and the degree to which they accept or ‎reject the dominant cultural mores, traditional values, and the institutionalized ‎authority of the society .Two patterns of adjustment are distinguished: the alienated ‎activist who is not politically and socially active, and the passive retreatist who is not ‎likely to participate in social and political activities. The paper further examines two ‎groups of active and passive students to highlight their differences and similarities. A ‎total of 243 subjects have been drawn from university students in Tehran through a ‎disproportionately stratified sampling. Using structured interviews and focused group ‎discussions, detailed information about social ,economic, and demographic ‎backgrounds as well as information on the attitudes, ideations and behaviors of ‎respondent has been collected .In order to measure different psychosocial dimensions ‎of the subject" behaviors and attitudes related to alienation and activism ,24 scales are ‎utilized. Two -tailed Student's t-Test for continuous variables and chi-square analysis ‎for categorical variables are used to compare the two groups. Results indicate that the ‎two groups do not differ by age , marital status ,level of education , and the degree of ‎social and political alienation .However , the groups significantly differ in terms of ‎several background variables and some attitudinal and behavioral characteristics .The ‎activists and passive retreatist differed by gender , socioeconomic status, residency , ‎field of study, employment rate ,grade point average ,membership in organizations , ‎degree of exposure to mass media ,and group size. The difference between the two ‎groups was also statistically significant in terms of political ideology, family ‎structure, self efficacy, need to achievement, self-estrangement, reformism, ‎rebelliousness, altruism, egoism, optimism, pessimism, value isolation, conventional religiosity, moral values, intellectualism, romantictism, and humanitarianism.

This paper provides a critical reading of the contemporary English author Ian ‎McEwans third novel, entitled The Child in Time (1987). Arguing that McEwan ‎writes to dissect and criticize contemporary culture, I offer a reading of his novel as a ‎literary intervention into a cultural debate. In my reading, I consider the text to be a ‎dream about certain events and characters that are the metaphoric representations of a ‎psychic structure. More than the psyche of the author as an individual, this structure ‎pertains to contemporary society and its predominant culture. Therefore, my purpose ‎is not to read McEwans novel in order to identify his assumed repressed wishes or ‎personal fantasies, but to analyse the narrative as a literary construct that gives us ‎access to a societal unconscious. The nightmarish world that McEwan depicts in his ‎fiction, in other words, is regarded as the social context out of which the individual's ‎self is shaped‏.‏

Rural reforms have been an important part of the post-revolutionary government ‎policy. The government implemented various rural development programs to develop ‎rural areas-mostly with an ideologically populist and egalitarian oriented character. ‎Development policies in general and rural reforms in particular are considered as a ‎major process towards weakening the rigidity of rural social structure and producing a ‎number of positions and openness circumstances. This paper explores the impact of ‎the post-revolutionary rural programs on the occupational mobility of rural people ‎after the revolution through using ex-post-facto comparative methods in a selected ‎number of villages. It concludes that the mobility tended to be higher in the villages ‎that received the most rural programs than those which received fewer or no ‎programs. There was a higher inclination to self-recruitment in intra generational ‎mobility compared with intra-generational mobility. Most of the observed mobility, ‎both upward and downward, was short range and oriented towards the adjacent ‎category‏.‏

Through giving some evidences about the importance of ethnicity and ethnic groups in certain social settings, and evincing the significance of ethnocentrism in social, cultural and political disputes, this article tries to give a model for studying this phenomenon and its consequences. This is done by initially reviewing the theories about the subject matter, followed by presenting a case in Sistan-va-Baluchestan province. In the end a model for further studies is presented.

This paper examines the theoretical merits and the importance of so stratification. It re-conceptualizes social stratification based on the functionalist theory and works it into a more useful framework while avoiding confusion with Marx s notion of social class. The logic of this re-conceptualization lies in the response to the question of what a proper index for identifying social stratification should be. Our conclusion is that occupational prestige is the proper index for identifying social stratification. We confirm this by examining Iranian data and use our findings to critically review the commonly- used indices of social stratification.