SOCIAL STUDIES AND RESEARCH IN IRAN
Year:2019 | Volume:7 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:8

Life satisfaction has received considerable attention in scientific research during last decades. This paper addresses the relationship between life satisfaction and the level of religiosity in Iran. Using the data from the third wave of national survey of Iranian values and attitudes, this paper investigates the effects of religiosity dimensions including faith in God, personal prayer and mosque attendance on the level of life satisfaction. The national survey was conducted in 2015 with a national sample of 14, 906 participants including both urban and rural population by ministry of culture and Islamic Guidance. Unlike previous studies, results indicate that difference in life satisfaction among Shiites and Sunnis is not statistically significant. In addition, findings of the regression models show that, at the national level, all three variables of trust in God (Tavakol), daily prayer, and mosque attendance have a direct positive relationship with life satisfaction. However, if the sample of the research is confined to the province of Tehran, such a relationship cannot be verified. It is concluded that this difference in the findings may be due to statistical constraints or the lack of proper knowledge regarding the relationship between religiosity and a sense of life satisfaction in the Iranian society.

This paper studies the lifeline of women under methadone treatment, by using qualitative research method and phenomenological interpretation studies. Hence, in-depth interviews have been conducted with 15 women under treatment at the Drop in Center (DIC). In this study, the lifeline of women was studied in two periods of before and after consumption. Results show that five main categories including anomy in the family, living in deviation-oriented families, marital crises, victimization experiences, and attempts to heal and curiosity and adventure have been identified in the study that show how women are on the trail of drug use. Furthermore, results show that women interviewed in describing their course of life in post-use period have narrated several narratives of narcotic effects on their lives, classified in four categories including consumption and physical and mental transformation, consumption and increasing sexual relations, the collapse of the family, and declining social status.

This paper attempts to interpret the ways through which the consumers construct pleasures, meanings and identities in urban public spaces in Sanandaj, and to explain how these spaces integrates the consumers. Urbanization provides public spaces imbued with signs and images that send different implications to people. In fact, people are participating in urban public life through consuming these signs and images, which in turn affect and change individual social behaviors. This research, by using critical ethnography to study the young consumers in Sanandaj, gathered data through techniques such as direct observation and individual deep interview. The sample was selected by purposeful sampling and the data were analyzed through thematic interpretation. Results showed that the youth consumed signs and images in a mood embed with both resistance and assimilation. On the one hand, consuming signs is a way to resist the dominant codes and discourses, and on the other hand, is a way of being assimilated to social codes and meanings produced by culture industry.

The formation of cycles of boom or recession and price fluctuations in the housing market affects the economy and households. Housing market trends are affected by the speculative demand and the experiences, attitudes, and expectations of actors, including intermediary investors. This paper explores the agents’ living experience and their perception of the intermediary investors in the housing market. The research is qualitative in terms of nature, exploratory in terms of approach, applied in terms of purpose, and cross-sectional in terms of time. Accordingly, by employing Strauss and Corbin’ s ground theory approach, 20 of agents in the housing market in Mashhad were deeply interviewed. After coding scripts, 228 preliminary codes were obtained, and after several coding steps, 17 core categories were identified. Finally, based on selective coding, the central phenomenon namely “ intermediary investors as professional speculators” was revealed. Results showed that the central identified idea is affected by a set of underlying conditions including the improvement of middlemen in metropolitan life, variety of land ownership and housing patterns in the metropolis of Mashhad, the pattern of welfare policy in Iran, and historical changes in investment in Iran. Interventional conditions include intermediary investor as an informed actor, awareness of rival markets, and occupation and age conditions. The causal conditions include multiplicity of density and experience, having enough capital, and favorable personality features. The social actors (intermediary investors), taking strategies such as collusion with the real estate agency, temporary role replacement, suspension of presence, and double presence, which lead to consequences, e. g. dependence on market flows, flexible position in the market, conflict with a social status challenge, and maximum profitability.

One of the responsibilities of sociological studies is understanding and finding out the structure of social stratification in city’ s spaces. This paper tries to provide a sociological description and analysis, and map the social stratification in Tehran’ s neighborhoods. The methods of data collection is quantitative. The sample of households was 12, 000, and the sample of neighborhoods was 105. Two social stratification indicators (economic power and social statues) and two clustering indicators (local belonging and using neighborhood’ s service) were analyzed. According to the findings, distribution of social stratification is almost clear for residents of Tehran based on the uptown and downtown; although there are exceptions. Results show three indicators: economic power, social status, and local belonging as the signs for wealth, dignity, and satisfaction with the place of residence are significant and strongly correlated with together. The aggregation of these three indicators in the neighborhoods of regions 1, 2, and 3 is high, and in the neighborhoods of regions 15, 16, 17, and 18 is very low. This represents a clear bipolarity in Tehran. It can be the source of important social problems in the city, and should be thought out to mitigate its consequences.

This paper is to study the fashionism types among citizens of West Azerbaijan province. For this purpose, the status of fashionism types (leisure, identity, protest, pleasure, passive, and functional) and its influential factors have been investigated. The statistical population of this study is the citizens aged 15– 64 years in West Azerbaijan province. Using survey method and multistage cluster sampling method, 350 people were selected as samples. The data collection instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire that was evaluated for validity and reliability. Data were collected using questionnaires, which were filled out by individuals, and were analyzed by using SPSS and AMOS. Results indicate that the mean of different types of fashionism was lower than the expected average level, and only the average passive fashionism was above the expected average. Results of Pearson correlation coefficient showed that there was a positive significant correlation between cultural capital and leisure, pleasure, and functional fashionism, but there was no correlation between identity, protest, and passive significant. Correlation between different types of fashionism and economic capital is not meaningful. Also, there was a positive correlation between social capital and identity and pleasure fashionism. In sum, results showed that fashionism was less than the expected average among the citizens of the West Azerbaijan and among the modes of fashionism, the tendency to fashionism is more passive.

The second constitution, following a year of resistance and the armed struggle of militia under the auspices of the priests, was once again established in the Iranian society. Nevertheless, the second constitution, similar to the first constitution, had an unsustainable, fragile, and instable. The life of this foundation lasted less than two years, and eventually was eliminated with the Russian ultimatum in 1950. This paper studies the fragile living cause of the second constitution through studying the role of priests by employing the theoretical approach of Tocqueville. For this purpose, the process of the political activities of the priests as one of the most influential political forces in uprising the constitutional revolution has been studied in two stages: 1. revitalizing activity, and 2. stabilizing activity. This paper emphasizes that the centralization of political transformation without considering the socio-cultural transformation project in line with structural changes is one of the most effective causes for the short life of the second constitutional revolution.

Today, in our society, due to widespread social changes, inheritance can bring about many issues. One of the issues that we face in our society with regard to the phenomenon of inheritance is the formation of inheritance disputes. Such disagreements, if continue, will generates an irreconcilable social interaction between the heirs, and ultimately will make irreparable damage to the social capital of the families and kinship system. By employing qualitative approaches and using the views of the research collaborators, who all live in Rasht, this paper seeks to answer the fundamental question that what hatred effects and consequences causes for heirs. Results show that the process of hatred among the heirs is unprovoked, has devastating consequences, and eliminates empathy and affection within the system of families and kinship. So, in the first instance, it corrodes the social capital of the family as an entity that has a decisive role as the source of production and the strengthening the social capital of every society.