Iranian Journal of Anthropological Research
Year:2023 | Volume:13 | Issue:2|Papers Count:12

Purpose: Nightlife was formed due to the developments related to the industrial revolution and gradually became a kind of modern lifestyle, which has undergone many changes until today, and its late form is influenced by postmodern developments. The modern human, who is now caught in the wave of postmodernity, reproduces himself socially in these relationships and as he becomes socialized in metropolises, he starts recreating the metropolitan arena and its social and cultural relationships. In the meantime, the most important of these relationships is the projection of modern capitalist culture and its social and cultural requirements, and as a result, the lifestyle associated with it. Tehran, as the capital of Iran, despite its great capacities and with a population of more than eight and a half million people, lacks nightlife. The purpose of this research is to investigate the social and cultural barriers to create nightlife in Tehran.Methodology: The required information was collected by ethnographic method and using semi-structured interview and observation along with participation. The coding of the interview data in the next step has led to the finding of categories that we have analyzed in the conclusion. This research was conducted between February 1400 and April 1401 by ethnographic method. In order to carry out this research, the night life around the four main squares of Tajrish, Azadi, Pizarh and Shush have been directly and collaboratively observed on a total of 20 occasions due to their different spatial, class and leisure characteristics. The impressions of each field session, which lasted nearly four hours on average, were obtained based on recording points from observation, semi-structured interviews, and field notes. Interviews were often short, sudden and random, and only in a few cases led to a follow-up appointment and a longer interview. The conversations lasted between 10 and 50 minutes and these conversations were held between 10 pm and 2 am. After detailed implementation, the notes of the interviews were coded and evaluated at the sentence and phrase level for each of the interviews, and conceptual codes were extracted from the transcripts of the interviews.Findings: After coding the interviews, we found 5 main categories of obstacles to creating nightlife in Tehran. These categories are: lack of infrastructure (including: lighting, public transportation, sidewalk construction, tourist guide and green space), lack of feeling of security (including: lighting, possibility of independent presence of women, possibility of family presence, access to police kiosk), Lack of attention to local culture (including: attention to regional subcultures, the agency of religious, scientific and recreational centers of each region), lack of management and planning (including: facilitating the presence of women, institutional participatory planning, needs assessment and creating space and program, understanding consumption cultural-leisure, legal facilities) and lack of sense of belonging (including: feeling of being forgotten, recognition of marginalized groups, empowerment, creation of nostalgic programs).

Purpose: Court portrait paintings in the first Qajar period are mostly known with the faces of the king and courtiers, but part of the paintings of this period are painted images of women dancing and playing music. These images also follow the rules of court portraiture, but the portraiture of women independently has never been the goal of research. This type of painting, unlike court portrait painting, does not have a political or propaganda aspect and is used to decorate palaces with the standards and rules of court portrait painting, and it is painted without the artists' signatures. The purpose of this research is the analytical study of court portrait painting of women in the first Qajar period and its aesthetic criteria. The question in this research is as follows: what are the aesthetic criteria for portraying women in the first Qajar period? What are the similarities and differences with the official portrait painting of the court in this era?Methodology: The research method in this research is descriptive and analytical, using library sources and examining examples of portrait paintings of women and museum examples. Women in the first period of Qajar.Findings: The results of this research show that the portrait painting of women in the Qajar period was an important part of the official court portrait painting in this era, the paintings have a decorative and idealistic aspect and have more diverse motifs and decorations. In the rules of aesthetics, idealism, the use of decorations and motifs, exaggeration in the facial expression has something in common with the official portrayal of the king and courtiers. In these paintings, according to the patterns defined in Iranian literature, women are young, beautiful, dancing, playing instruments and performing acrobatic movements.

Purpose-One of the most important characteristics of contemporary society is the increasing trend of women's employment and their entry into the field of economic partnerships. Simultaneously with the arrival of modernity in Iran, women redefine their identity in the struggle between tradition and modernity in the shadow of social transformations. The consequences of gender in women's employment are clear things, which becomes highlighted with the passage of time and the presence of more women in various fields of employment. On the other hand, the presence of women in Iran's labor market has gone through ups and downs but in all these ups and downs, it is certain that women have had a very impressive presence in the fields of knowledge and learning, and this shows that they have understood the need to be present in the society to improve their status and make an impact. This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the lived experience of female employees of Karaj city of gender discrimination in the workplace.Methodology: The current research is applied in terms of its purpose, and in terms of method, qualitative and sampling method in this research is in the form of a snowball using semi-structured and phenomenological interviews. The statistical population of the research was 15 female employees of Karaj city. In order to analyze the data, the seven-step Claysey method was used. In this way, based on the first three stages of the Claysey method, the concepts deduced from the interview with the participants were placed in 155 codes. In the next step, it was tried to place the extracted codes in the specific categories of the subject. For this purpose, first, sub-categories were created, and from their integration, sub-categories were formed from the combination of several sub-categories, finally, the main concepts of the research were created. Next, by juxtaposing the corresponding codes extracted from the above tables, the main concepts were identified, which is actually a combination of several codes.Findings: 34 concepts were identified and three main categories were obtained, which were the underlying roots of gender inequality, consequences of gender inequality, and strategies to deal with gender inequality. It also turned out that gender discrimination in the workplace has many consequences that may lead to a decrease in the productivity and overall performance of the organization or the loss of capable and effective workforce, as well as lack of motivation and frustration among employees and cases like that. In this research, it was found that psychological problems, exploitation of women and decline in productivity at work are the consequences of gender inequality in women's work environment

Purpose: Customs play a prominent role in ethnic identity; because ethnic identity is constructed, revealed and experienced in the context and context of everyday life. Patterns of migration and accompanying social and cultural displacement lead ethnic minority groups to find ways of cultural resettlement in new places. Dealing with the cultural identity status of immigrants by emphasizing the component of customs can help to understand the mechanisms of change in identity, the state of acculturation and identification, rethinking and reconstruction of identity. In this regard the aim of research is to study the cultural identity of Lak immigrants living in Namjo district of Tehran, emphasizing the component of mourning and mourning customs.Methodology: This article is done with qualitative method. The studied community includes men and women of the Lak tribe who live in Namjo neighborhood of Tehran. The process of gathering information using the techniques of semi-structured and in-depth interviews continued until the saturation stage and finally reached 17 people who were selected using the snowball method. Thematic analysis method was used for data analysis.Findings: The findings include 24 concepts and 6 main categories of "emphasis on the implementation of customs in the hometown”, “limitation of the conditions of the new environment”, “facilitation of participation”, “compulsion of tradition”, “strengthening solidarity" and "collectivism". From the perspective of the participants, the culture of their ethnic hometown is different from the culture of the host society. Due to being traditional, uniformity and cultural-ethnic similarity of the hometown, the challenge of identity or acculturation was not very important for them before migration and there were only small differences between the generation of parents and the generation of children in the field of choosing identity elements. In fact, with migration and change of location, they have faced ambiguities, doubts, questions and choices in the path of finding identity and belonging to the inherited culture or the culture of the host society. As social activists, they are forced to reflexivity and redefine the traditional components and sources of their identity in many situations.Conclusion: The local customs and rituals of mourning and wedding as a cultural resource can play an important role in the identification and resettlement of Lak immigrants as a minority group of immigrants in the new environment and like a bridge in a symbolic way to and connect it to the hometown. In addition, reflexivity, commitment and adherence to the components of cultural identity are not the same among immigrants, and it is not possible to see an equal combination among people of the same generation or between two generations. Local-trans local identity is more dominant among the second generation than among the first generation. Although in many cases, the local cultural identity of the second generation may fade and they are not very interested in and adhere to some local customs and traditions, and they do not have much knowledge of Laki's identity; Despite this, they have the feeling of being Laki, and in general, Laki identity is a concept to which they have an emotional attachment.

Purpose: Roland Barthes, a famous French literary theorist, cultural critic and semiotician, has important works in the field of semiotic analysis of literary texts and cultural phenomena. Among these cultural phenomena, we can mention the clothing system, which can be read as a visual symbolic system. Clothing as a sign contains different and multi-layered codes, expressing different concepts and meanings. One of the important pillars and layers of meaning in performing arts and cinema is clothing, which plays a colorful and key role in the interpretation and analysis of the work. Der Cheshm Bad series, as one of Iran's enduring national works, reflects important parts of contemporary Iranian history and has many characters, each of them is worthy of reflection in terms of social, cultural and political aspects. The cover can be analyzed and read. Also, in terms of the presence of characters in different time and place situations and having different clothes, it can be a good example for semiotic reading in order to achieve cultural and social issues. The point of departure of the current research is the semiotic reading of the men's clothes in Chesh Bad in the light of Roland Barthes' opinions and the answer to the question, how does the design of clothes in Chesh Bad express the personality, class, cultural and social characteristics of people? Methodology-This research is fundamental in terms of its purpose, and in order to achieve the stated goals, descriptive-analytical research method was used, and essential and needed information was collected in a library manner. In this regard, the selection and selection of images from different sequences and seasons of the series in Eye of the Wind has been made based on the emphasis on men's clothing, and images have been presented that best display men's clothing and are useful for semiotic interpretation and reading. And it is efficient. Findings- The obtained results show that one of the distinguishing factors of the characters is the category of clothing design, which in a way reflects people's thoughts, views, social position, tastes, political attitude and generally indicates their social class. And this category contributed as a meaningful element in the introduction of different characters and despite the behavior, speech and performance of each character, their clothes also show the connection of the characters with cultural and social metatexts. The clothing design in this series has been able to display important parts of social, political and cultural classes as a meaningful system and also express the historical developments of contemporary Iran. In other words, the gender, color, model, and different combinations of clothes have been examined, each of them has many meanings that introduce the character and culture of that historical period. The examined clothes show the geographical region, historical period, social class, job, personal characteristics, tastes, moral characteristics and even the character of people

Purpose-In this article, an attempt was made to discuss the representation of gender identity in the textbooks of the second secondary school. The main idea of this article was that the gender patterns in the society are reproduced by means of dominant discourse and it is tried to naturalize some existing gender roles or their continuation in the society. One of the most important of these tools is textbooks, which try to internalize the dominant gender patterns in the sensitive period of socialization in order to shape the gender identity in teenagers and to do this, they highlight the desirable and reference roles in textbooks. Methodology-To answer the research question, the qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze the textbooks of the second secondary school. The unit of analysis in this research was male and female characters in the majority of images and writing. The sample population of the research included the second secondary school textbooks (in the first, second and third grades). In this research, purposeful sampling was used, and all the contents that somehow dealt with issues related to gender were analyzed. Findings-The research results supported the main hypothesis of this research and showed that traditional identity patterns existed in different dimensions of female identity representations in textbooks and that traditional female identities were indicated as exemplary and successful women. Also, our data showed that these texts aimed at naturalizing these identity patterns and tried to show women's social roles and activities as having secondary importance through displaying some of the traditional roles of women in the family as desirable. In this regard, it seems that the textbooks largely ignore the social changes in the society or introduce them as a social harm. On this basis, according to the main discourse in these textbooks, the ideal female identity is composed of housewives who try to fulfill their roles as housewives in a desirable way. Therefore, a successful woman will be the one who can move in the best way towards the satisfaction of her husband and children. Therefore, things such as the motherhood feelings, possessing emotions and feelings, being the center of affection and love, and the like are mainly among the components of gender identity interpretation for female students and playing this role is emphasized as a strength for women. Moreover, when women play a role in housework and raising children and play the role of mother and housewife, it is associated with a kind of sensory and emotional favorability. Also, the obtained data showed that compared to men, women are represented to a much lesser extent in outside jobs and social roles, and it seems that the current educational system tries to increase the emphasis on women's role in the home by hiding or underrepresentation of women's jobs.

Purpose: In the past few decades, the rapid growth of internal migration in the country has caused the demographic composition of the cities to be disrupted and the population of suburbs to increase every day, and the consequence of this issue in its pathological form has been overpopulation, the formation of cultural conflicts in the new way of life, unemployment, and various social problems. Regardless of the pathologic approach to the development of suburbs, the important issue is how these communities can survive despite economic, social, and cultural tensions and problems and what are the mechanisms that contribute to the resilience of such communities? This study aims to investigate the mechanisms and strategies used by the residents of suburbs in order to analyze the consumption patterns of families living in Azizi town of Quds city.Methodology:  The present study uses ethnographic techniques such as participant observation and interviews to gather information. The time spent in the field to gather the data was 18 months, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the presence in the field has not been continuous. During this period, thirty-two families living in Azizi town along with owners of local enterprises were interviewed. The criterion for continuation of these interviews was theoretical saturation. During these interviews, sensitive theoretical concepts such as the context of individual actions, resilience, and local rationality was used and by focusing on consumption and how daily needs are met, the consumption patterns of families were studied. The extracted texts from the interviews were coded using thematic analysis.Findings: The results show that given the economic and cultural conditions of the field of study, the management of the economic consumption pattern in the studied families has been influenced by social components such as social network support in various ways, intelligence in choosing the type of store or purchasing methods, purchasing based on acquaintance, roaming for optimal purchase, and relying on installment and credit purchases. All of these components indicate that a particular form of local rationality based on collective resources and capital prevails in the studied community, which does not necessarily have a particular form of rationality in the face of instrumental rationality, and does not provide a theoretical perspective for understanding and interpreting the decision-making and mechanisms of economic actions of individuals in the studied community. The residents have intelligent behavior in life due to their daily environmental limitations and use various strategies to meet their needs. It was concluded that local resilience in such communities is the result of collective resources and capital. This means that the residents of these communities’ benefit from available resources, especially social networks and collective capital, to meet their needs. It seems that the existence and use of such strategies help maintain the informal settlement areas, while attraction of such areas will increase the flow of migrations to the suburbs, and this can lead to the emergence of new issues.

Purpose: Beauty and aesthetics have a thought-provoking course of evolution and development in the history of the world, in such a way that the known cultures before written history such as China, Egypt, Iran, Africa and Europe considered its examples to be human characters, behaviors and virtues, and on the other hand, beauty was constructions, functions, skills, creatures and natural objects; Animals, trees and rock shapes were described. But the history of beauty in the West is full of ups and downs, and from the ancient Greeks, who considered beauty to be the product of the artist's thinking, to Augustine, the western philosopher in the Middle Ages, who described beauty from the innovative doctrine of "Afaza" of absolute existence, the theory of beauty in The aesthetics of the Middle Ages, in a relatively artificial way, served as a substitute for the useful aesthetic interests and the origin of the work.In 1790, the important book of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher and a leading figure in the modern philosophy of the 18th century, called Critique of the Power of Judgment, was published, which is known as one of the most important sources of aesthetics today. In the pre-critical period of his thinking, he wrote a small treatise entitled Considerations on the Beautiful and the Noble (1764), in which he mainly focused on social and anthropological reflections. Kant denied the principles of taste and believed that the judgments we issue about beauty are only based on pleasure and are completely subjective and only work for empirical studies (anthropology or history). Kant made extensive changes in the subject of aesthetics and made it It became a theory related to art and beauty. (Masika, 2011: 3) In Kant's criticism, sense is lower than knowledge and understanding, and taste is not based on moral foundation, and the judgment of the beauty of something is a judgment of taste, and taste is the power of judgment. knows about beauty. Until the end of the 19th century, as a result of Kant's theories, in Western culture and studies, art and works of art were examples of aesthetics, and the understanding of beauty also depended on the values ​​with the sensory experience of objects or events. At the end of the century, with the spread of the study of anthropology of art, the topics of aesthetics were also raised at the same time, and a new perspective appeared in the topics of aesthetics. Kant's aesthetic theory was systematic and comprehensive, he related experience and judgments about natural beauty and art to the basic concepts of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. The continuation of this legacy in aesthetics after him is clearly visible, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the evolution of the philosophy of beauty to the anthropology of aesthetics, and the question is based on what historical developments have occurred in the thought and philosophy of beauty from the ancient period to the anthropology of aesthetics? Methodology: The research method of this study is analytical-descriptive with a qualitative approach centered on historical developments based on written sources. Findings: The findings show that the most important developments in the 19th century of anthropology are related to the two attitudes of evolutionism and diffusion (expansion) in the years 1930-1880, so that the evolutionism approach focuses on the growth of the (intrinsic) aesthetic power in humans, and its growth or lack thereof depends on hierarchical principles. And it is a stage, and diffusionism emphasizes on the expansion of the components of beauty in different societies, until with the emergence of aesthetic anthropology in the contemporary era, more attention was paid to the components of native beauty and the creative society in researches, and beauty was criticized from the perspective of the creative society

Objective: Indigenous knowledge systems of human livelihood in various fields, all born out of the effort for sustainable living in the environment, are highlighted. The documentation and collection of this knowledge is often the responsibility of ethnographers. One important area in ethnographic research is the documentation of indigenous knowledge in the preparation of food using various plants in their habitats. Therefore, given the diverse effective practices in the preparation of indigenous foods from wild plants and the fading of associated indigenous knowledge in recent civilization acceleration, it is essential for ethnobotanists to document this valuable knowledge. In this study, the focus was on the study of edible plants and the methods of cooking various foods using them in the Sefid Cheshmeh village of Golestan province. Method: This study is of ethnographic nature, and the method of selecting participants or samples has been purposeful sampling, which continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. The data for this research were obtained through open and semi-structured interviews, and efforts were made to gather information through participatory observation as well. Regarding participatory observation, it is necessary to mention that researchers were involved and participated in the collection of plants, preparation, and cooking in a way. Findings: The results showed that local communities use different parts and products of plants for various nutritional and medicinal purposes, sometimes using food as medicine. In this study, 19 local foods that were prepared from plants by indigenous people were identified and examined. Among them, 11 foods were purely for nutritional purposes, and 8 foods had both medicinal and nutritional uses. Additionally, it was found that indigenous people cook special foods for occasions or specific seasons. The foods are as simple as possible and cooked quickly for family members to meet their physical needs. Given that food and its cooking methods are among the most important intangible cultural heritages and endangered among human societies, these studies can play a crucial role in preserving cultural and biological diversity..

Purpose: Cultural ecology is a science that analyzes the cultural aspects of the human relationship with the surrounding nature. Therefore, one of the aspects discussed in cultural ecology is local ecological knowledge. In this research, an attempt was made to identify and analyze the local ecological knowledge of Nishtifan Asbads in the vicinity of Khaf city, Razavi Khorasan province. Methodology: In order to achieve the purpose of the research, the information needed for the research has been collected using the direct and participatory observation of the researcher and in-depth and targeted interviews with 12 informed millers and rishisfidans. The present research is based on anthropological methods and in the framework of a qualitative approach Grounded theory was used. Data analysis was done according to Glazer's instructions and in three stages of open, central, and selective coding with the help of MAXQDA software. The number of 73 open codes and general concepts were identified, which were classified into 4 main categories. Finally, the findings were classified in 4 levels: local terms and names, system performance and methods and tools, social institutions and cooperation mechanisms, custom and belief, tradition and laws as basic categories in selective codes. The findings of the research identified the local knowledge levels of Nashtifan asbads as a central phenomenon. Findings: The results indicate that the local knowledge of the Asbads in four dimensions includes these things: in the first dimension, local knowledge and ecosystem performance, including the 120-day wind blowing parallel to the harvest season, the continuity and high speed of the wind in the region, the lack of resources Powerful water, the height of the village compared to the neighboring areas, the geographical situation of Nishtifan, the strategic location of Nishtifan, the free energy, the needs of the surrounding villages, the absence of mountains in the direction of the wind. In the second dimension, the method, tools and system performance included the point that most of the materials used in the tools and structure of the Asbad structure are organic materials and are compatible with the climate. Stone, wood and iron are the three main components of the building materials of Nashtifan. In the third dimension, social institutions and cooperation mechanisms showed that the traditional society of Nashtifan depended to a large extent on help and various types of help including self-help, co-help and other help were established in the relations between Asiban and Ghanim. And finally, in the fourth dimension, the belief, custom, tradition and laws expressing the privacy of the asbads, their construction outside the residential area, placing them in the form of a complex, allocating the open space of the cemetery behind it, building the asbad on the hill without foundation, design Behind the asbad towards the wind was the failure to build the asbad separately and placing them on the highest area of the village. Therefore, the results showed that it was possible to know the different aspects of the local knowledge of the Nishtifan Asbads. The local knowledge of the Nishtifan Asbads includes those factors that have caused a significant increase in productivity in the region and in accordance with the climatic and cultural conditions of the local people

Purpose: Custom as one of the legal sources among lawyers and legislators is of special importance next to the law and a law cannot be established, implemented or repealed without paying attention to the customs of a society. In addition to law, custom also has its own place in social sciences and in the meantime, legal anthropology as an interdisciplinary trend can examine the importance of this concept from a different angle. Therefore, the role of people's behaviors and beliefs in giving importance to custom or law can be examined. Another issue that this research seeks to answer is the place of custom and law in women's lives, From the point of view of legal anthropology, how do women view custom? And where do they follow the rules? In their interpersonal and social relationships, they value custom or law more. These are the points that the questions of this research are trying to answer. Methodology: Since this research seeks to investigate the place of customs among women and customs are considered unwritten rights, a qualitative method has been used. In this research, an interview was conducted with 10 women whose academic field was law or who had experience in the judiciary. Findings: Cultivation and lawlessness, customizing for lifestyle and custom as a sub-court, the relationship between gender and custom, as well as the conflict between custom and law from the perspective of social solidarity were the issues that were extracted from the perspective of legal anthropology. From the perspective of this research, the custom is more correlative. Conclusion: From the point of view of the participants in this research, who were intentionally all women, the custom has a feminine look and the law has a masculine look. In another way, it can be said that the custom of the unwritten law is for the unwritten gender

Purpose: One of the new areas of studying in the field of culture of developing countries is post-colonial studies, which deals with the relationship between culture and its elements. One of the important elements in this field is the issue of identity. On the one hand, the colonizer, with the idea that the colony lacks an independent identity, aims to create a new identity for the colony. Literary works as an important cultural tool play an important role in expressing and confronting these issues. Methodology: With a post-colonial reading of the story "Wolf" by Hoshang Golshiri and "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys, the present study deals with the efforts of the main characters in the story to preserve their identity. Akhtar and Antoinette, the two main characters of these stories, despite their differences, both have defended their identity. The current research deals with the efforts of these two characters with a descriptive-analytical method and a comparative approach and seeks to answer the question that what are the similarities and differences between the characters of these stories in the face of colonial factors and the issue of identity? Findings: The research comes to the conclusion that although the characters face factors that intend to take their subject, they try to protect it with their own efforts. In other words, although various colonizers want to turn subjects into objects, they have not given up knowingly and are still trying to remain subjects.