SOCIAL STUDIES AND RESEARCH IN IRAN
Year:2020 | Volume:9 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:10

During the past two decades there has been various public and official rituals going on in Iran and Itikaf has been one of them, where people stay in Masdjeds for at least 3 days, fasting. Therefore studying Itikaf can lead us to the recent approaches toward religion in Iran. Obtaining a Durkheimian-Weberian approach, and by applying Marcel Geuchet’ s theories, the main aim of this essay is to analyze the tendency toward participating in Itikaf. Two main types of Itikaf have been derived: the first percieves Itikaf as a mean to religious “ self” return. In this vision Itikaf plays a self-maintaining and spiritualistic role. The second type sees Itikaf as a media, identifying the participants in Itikaf with each other. Studying Itikaf in the context of post-revolutionary Iran, I argue that the differentiation of social fields during the years after Iranian revolution (1978) has caused a gap between social and religious values among believers. On the other hand, the identical integrity of which followed the crisis eras of revolution and war, gradually fade out. Thus considering these two main types of Itikaf and their perspectives, We can conclude that Itikaf is a way to form a new identity, though focusing on individual demands or social ones.

The consequence of the Islamic Revolution as a political event was a wave of efforts to Islamize social, cultural and artistic backgrounds and making them sound religious. One of the areas that has significantly changed in the creation of culture in general and its institutional construction was transformed was the phenomenon of cinema. In this study, with the study of the forty four sample of the works of religious cinema after the revolution with the method of discourse analysis and discursive semantics, it has been tried to answer the following questions: what are the discourses of religious cinema after the revolution and what they have in discourse formulation and context. The results of this study show that, after the Islamic Revolution, cinematic texts have been found in five discourses of the Islamic Revolution, Sacred Defense, escaping urbanization and favoring life in villages, individuality, tolerance, pluralism and return. These discourses have, in turn, arranged their ideal and normal object as the sacredly revolutionary subject, the place of meaning, individualist, tolerant, and responsible truthful believer. Moreover, there are some overlaps regarding common denominators between the discourses of the Islamic Revolution and the Sacred Defense, urbanization and favoring life in village as well as the return. In the discourse of religious cinema, we do not see plurality of subjects and they have a limited space for functionality.

The aim of this study was the analysis of change trend in political culture among social generations in Sanandaj city. The theoretical and conceptual framework of research extracted based on theories of Almond and Verba, Pye, Inglehart, Elazar and Rosenboum, and especially Tessler and Gao, and hypotheses were formulated so on. This study was carried out in a quantitative method, and the data was collected by the field approach and by questionnaire technique that its validity and reliability was confirmed in the field. The population statistics consisted of all people both men and women aged 15-74 residing in different localities of the Sanandaj whom 485 persons were selected as sample and by combined methods. The results shows that the political culture of the social generations of the Sanandaj is changing from confined political culture to other political cultures, especially democratic political culture, and this trend is accelerated by assuming resolve many issues and structural barriers facing younger generations and increasing their active participation in socio-economic and political backgrounds. According to the results, the adult generation are more representative of the confined political culture, but youth generation with the representation of democratic political culture have demonstrated a mixture of indifferent and pragmatic cultures more than intermediate generations that is not consistent with theoretical expectations. Finally, the variables of study have explained the change and difference of the political culture of generations to a large extent, and the results of the study were highly enjoyed theoretical and empirical support.

Scientific elites are one of the most indispensable pillars of a country development. For this, retention or attraction of elites is considered as one of the main priorities of the country. However, the statistics show the country's highly undesirable situation in terms of emigration of elites. Due to the importance of the issue, in recent years, the Iran's National Elite Foundation (INEF) has been established to address and improve the situation of elites. Understanding the way through INEF and its bureaucracy represented in the elites' minds could lead to the understanding of their subjective world, as well as the recognition of the INEF's impacts quality. Therefore, in this study, we tried to explore the elites' experience of confronting the bureaucracy of INEF. To do so, through using qualitative methodology and grounded theory, 11 intensive interviews with elites were conducted. Participants were chosen according to the purposive and theoretical sampling, and then open, axial and selective coding was done. Findings consisted of 15 main categories, 36 subcategories and 317 concepts. Finally, the final core category was extracted. The results indicated the constant and diverse tensions originated from bureaucratic structure, have made elites alienated from INEF. Finally, the results were presented and discussed in the form of paradigmatic and the theoretical schematic model.

The two dominant paradigm on sociology of religion since the late 20th century sparked a hot and heated controversy around the relationship between religious pluralism and religious participation. On the one hand, the secularization paradigm argued that the power and authority of a religion in society is in its monopoly; and religious pluralism causes the erosion of religious faith, and has a secular effect. On the other hand, the economic / market of religion’ s paradigm argued that the diversity and free competition among different religions in a society not only does not lead to secularization, but rather contributes to increased religious participation and mobilization. These arguments, for empirical testing in social research, lead to two contradictory hypotheses: (1) Religious pluralism has a negative relationship with religious participation (the secularization paradigm); and (2) religious pluralism has a positive relationship with religious participation (the economic / market of religion’ s paradigm). Nevertheless, a large set of sociological researches has yielded conflicting results; some empirical findings support the hypothesis of the secularization paradigm and imply rejection of the hypothesis of the paradigm of the economy / market of religion, while some others have supported the hypothesis of the paradigm of the economy / market of religion and implies rejecting the hypothesis of the paradigm of secularization. On this basis, a general problem was raised for the present article about the question of why the common pattern in the social sciences in general and sociology in particular is that multiple empirical studies on a single subject, produce contradictory results? To answer this question and to solve this problem, the arguments presented in the perspective of critical realism was used.

Research on future family changes requires a comprehensive theoretical model which embraces both the dynamism and the state of change. This article is intended to formulate such a model. The method of study is theoretical analysis. In this regard, three theoretical approaches including individualism, social capital and morfogenisis approach were selected. The theoretical model of future family change has been developed through these three approaches. Based on this model, future family changes are the result of strategies that the current generation is using to adapt to structural conditions. This generation plays a role in shaping different structures in the later period by reflexivity on the structural conditions of the society that are crystallized in their politics of life and their tranning approach towards their children. The second generation affected by their parenting strategies will have a different habit and they will make choices in their family life that may complement or reproduce previous structures. The proposed model was evaluated by conducting a qualitative research with 33 participants from the general population and 12 participants from family experts. The results showed that using this model, if there are forecasts on the economic and social status of the country and determining the share of each social class of the total population, it is possible to predict family changes with different scenarios.

The present article seeks to explore the sociological factors affecting social demand for doctoral studies. In order to achieve this goal, a quantitative survey method and a questionnaire tool have been used. The statistical population of the study is all students of Ph. D. in Tehran, which is in the academic year 2015-2016, which is equal to 20956 people. The statistical sample was performed using a probabilistic stratified sampling method. In this way, 364 people were selected as samples from different universities. The research findings indicate that by applying the regression test and Pearson correlation coefficient among the five hypotheses, four hypotheses were confirmed. with the comparison of the part effects of squares, it was observed that the value system with part squared (0. 226) had the highest share in explaining social demand for continuing postgraduate studies. Subsequently, in terms of having the largest share in the explanation of the dependent variable, the variables of social change (0. 127), the motivation to improve the job status (0. 052), social pressure (0. 038) and ultimately extension policies for higher education (0. 015) are respectively. Finally, the total squared of the part effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable of the model is 0. 458, meaning that about 0. 46 of the changes in social demand for studying in the PhD are explained by the set of independent variables of the research.

In the era of globalization, the development of modern institutions has created fears and hopes for social actors on a global scale and regional. Because, according to the views of scholars such as Giddens, psychological sense of meaninglessness, anxiety, depression, stress, choices, ontological insecurity, etc. are unintended consequences of modernity. In the situation of postmodernism, some of the social actors to exit the challenges of late modernity and overcome the pressure and feeling of meaninglessness rather than follow over the religious values and maximum capacity of meaning-making religion in all fields, the they is sometimes superstitious scientism (the action is inherently illogical and inconsistent with religious teachings). Academic Human as well as other social actors are not excluded from it. Thus, present study aims to understanding the lived experience of superstitions among M. A. female students of Tabriz University through establishing qualitative methodology and phenomenological approach. Statistical society of present study is M. A. female students of Tabriz University who referred to soothsayer at least two times from 2015 to 2016. Interviews conducted via In-depth and semi-structured approach. Interviews has continued till reaching theoretical saturation from researcher’ s perspective. Research validity measured by author regarding to time and location of study and with minimum value interface. After collecting the data, interviews’ transcripts have been studied. And after repeated reviews data was encoded and categorized. The results of present study suggested that the phenomenon of superstition leads to negative mental consequences such as Fatalism, intellectual dependence and negative impact on the minds of respondents. Also, in this study, among the affecting variables on superstitions disability in solving problem, family background (learned experience), prevailing patriarchal system in the society and Anomie could be mentioned. And at the end of study resultant of effective variables obtained for tendency to superstitions of conditional matrix of mental stupefaction.

Social scientists, while using the methodology of Bourdieu's Genetic structuralism, are confronted with ambiguities, such as how to start a research, how to analyze habitus, how to investigate the logic, the purpose and position of social agents, and how the relationship between the logic of explanation and the methodology of Genetic structuralism. . In response to these questions, Bourdieu's theoretical and experimental works and other theorists and researchers were examined. The results indicated that in the field of the starting point of the research, the field must first be analyzed in terms of the field components, then how the field situation in relation to the field of power can be explained. In the context of the analysis of habitus, the results also showed that, based on empirical research, habitus analysis in the field can be done in two forms of “ type and typology of habitus” and “ the level (amount) of habitus” . In order to clarify the position of field logic, the objectives and positioning of social agents in the methodology of Genetic structuralism, the results indicate that the study of these cases is necessary in Bourdieu's research, and in the second stage, methodological analysis of the Genetic structuralism should be investigated. Comparison of the similarities and differences between the mix method research and the Genetic structuralism approach also suggested that the two are different paradigmically. The only aspect of sharing and similarities in these two approaches is in the method section. In the context of the relationship between the logic of explanation and the methodology of the Genetic structuralism, the results also showed that the logic of the explanation and methodology of the Genetic structuralism correspond to each other, only their starting point is different.

The elderly are one of the most important strata of society that will face problems and problems in the near future. The present study aims to investigate the social and cultural factors affecting the satisfaction of the elderly with the welfare services of Tehran Municipality retirees. The method of this study is quantitative and the required data are collected through a survey and using a researcher-made questionnaire. The statistical population consists of retired persons over 65 years old covered by the Tehran Municipality Retirement Organization, which is 2, 255. Of these, 389 individuals have been selected and questioned using the existing formulas. Also, in order to describe the data, the indexes of intermediate distribution, dispersion and distribution are used. For data analysis and statistical inference, multivariate regression analysis has been used. Results show that there is a significant relationship between age and satisfaction of retirees. Respondents' satisfaction is also affected by their cultural status. But there is not a meaningful relationship between the dependent variable, ie, the level of satisfaction of the retirees and the variables of gender, education, social class and sense of social justice. However, the results of multivariate regression analysis show that the regression model is the predictor of the dependent variable of the research.