Iranian Journal of Anthropological Research
Year:2019 | Volume:8 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:8

Nowadays, market and its profit-based logic has become an inevitable part of many people's live all over the world. This issue has been mixed with social, economic, political and cultural complexities and produces a new style of trade which brings its own cultural thoughts and economic behaviors. In the same way, the free market logic dominates all social spheres. In this paper social and cultural consequences of profit-based logic of this market in network marketing companies have been reviewed. Analysis is done with critical ethnography and five step Carspecken approach. Findings have extracted from both emic and etic approach with hidden participative observation (one year) and deep interview with sixteen canceled persons from network marketing companies. Extracted themes are: fence work, implement of leverage skills, repetitive restricted training, authoritarian training, public persuasion strategies, regular psychological session, promotional and personalized celebration, release of unusual emotions and charismatization of successful members. Results show that network marketing companies persuade people with authoritarian instrumental strategies and their ultimate goal is not profit making for members, but maximizing the profit of companies.

The current article compares the memory of various generations of Mirzakuchak Khan in Guilan province. This study applies the present-day approach and the theory of social memory frames. The residents of Fouman, Shaft, Talesh Astara and their sub-regions form the statistical population. A total of 76 samples were selected based on saturation and the method of theoretical sampling, data collected by fieldwork and investigated by using an unstructured interview approach. The findings illustrated that generation as a social frame impacts Mirza’ s place in forming the collective memory of people in Guilan. The memory of Mirza in the first generation is concrete, scattered or a separated combination of oral narratives of relatives and locals. The second generation recalled Mirza with historical realities, due to use of official media and oral narratives from local communities. The memory of Mirza in the third generation, was represented vaguely and inefficient under the influence of the national media, Movies and TV shows due to the lack of information resources. Beside issue of generation, religiosity was another effective social frame affecting the collective memory in this research. Many people pointed that founding a religious system was one of the purpose of his uprising.

Through studying the case of Garmsar, this article addresses the relationship between urban spaces and the human agent who both reproduces and consumes these spaces. The main focus of the article is the concept of ethnicity because it is the specific character of Garmsar which is made up of many different coexisting ethnic populations during several decades. It is a descriptive-analytical research and methods for data gathering are documentary method, focus group and interview. Findings did not show any meaningful relationship between ethnicity and the formation of neighborhoods. Different ethnic populations have been spread randomly throughout different quarters of the city. The people of Garmsar do not involve ethnicity in the images of the city in their minds; in the other words they have an integrated image of their city. They introduce themselves by referring to their city, not to their ethnicity. However, in choosing their spouse and voting the city council candidates and also making new friendships they prefer a member of their ethnic group.

The problem in understanding the meanings and narratives of built spaces of the present situation, where the position of humanity and the world has changed from subject-object position to the witness-evident situation, is that how the mechanisms for transfer of meanings and narrations through space is defined and how it relates to the human body. If we accept that the construction of any architectural work comes from world-view, values, norms, culture, and the unconscious mind of the creator of it, it must be accepted that what it expressed is beyond what it represents. In this research, based on the philosophical basis of post-structuralism in research, with the qualitative approach and by using the "Discourse analysis" method of research and "rational reasoning", while defining the concepts and historical genealogy of the narrative mechanism, factors affecting the understanding of space narratives are described; including "dialectics of space-time" and its relation to the role of "body" and the embodiment presence of the human in any built space. The results of the empirical theorem (space-time and presence) and the analytic and metaphysical theorem (architecture and meta-historical and meta-cultural narratives) show that narratives based on the ratio between the human body and the body of built space, the built space, physical proportions, and what is perceived in human sight, provides a position that the architect, with the help of design tools, can directly or metaphorically, beyond time and space, translate his narratives into the means of space for the present audience in it.

Today, achieving a water resource management plan is a vital goal. Adapting indigenous knowledge and local innovations which are compatible with environmental conditions, can be considered as an appropriate way to achieve this goal. Indigenous people have special abilities to recognize and use experiences gained through interactions between society and environment and transmitted between generations. In this research we tried to introduce and explain the role of indigenous knowledge and local initiatives in the common management of water resources of the Gezir plain. The study is a qualitative survey research, and field information is collected by direct observations, participatory observations and interviews with 173 informed farmers. The results showed that Indigenous structures of Maghsam, Algah, Band, Nozuo Well, Yowrad, Al, and Borcow have a significant role in conservation and management of water resources. In fact, they are highly efficient and adaptive in their climatic and cultural conditions. Therefore, sharing indigenous ecologic knowledge plays a significant role in improving adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems against water scarcity.

This research examines the ritual of Eide Qurban or the feast of sacrifice in the city of Bandar Turkmen. This ritual is one of the most prominent annual Turkmen religious events in Iran. This religious feast is based on God's request for Abraham to sacrifice his son that ends up with sacrificing of ram or sheep instead. Every year, at the end of the Hadj ceremony, on the 10th of Zihadje, Turkmen Muslims sacrifice animals like goats, camels, cows, and sheep in their homes. The men-heads of the families-are in charge of throwing the ceremony. The ceremony held in the name of someone who has to put his hand on the body of the animal. The Sacrificing ritual begins by digging a pit in the courtyard of the house, by placing some salt, charcoal, wheat, and blood of the sacrificed animal in it. A ceremony that may be considered as an indicator of a shamanic cult. The ethnographic method is employed in this research. The aim of this research is to discover the shamanic aspects of this ritual besides the Hanafi jurisprudence and Islamic traditions among Turkmens. The paper tries to explain the ritual of the sacrifice of the Aide Qurban ceremony, along with the days of Qur and Qurqun. The positive ritual derived from the book of "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" of Emile Durkheim, provides the theoretical base of this paper.

Since the first man appeared on Earth, illness-as a significant part of bio-bodies has played a key role in life. As the host, the body forms and experiences the existent illness through different periods of life. Though it is not necessarily experienced by the person or the life itself. Yet what is the illness? And what is its nature? For a qualitative understanding of illness and its nature, a cancer patient was studied in the present article, employing different but coherent methods of qualitative research including observation, interview, and the examination of material documents. We attempted to comprehend the illness using common definitions of health in contrast to the illness and experience of pain as evidence of the past illness from the prospect of objective presence of the illness and its material signs. The material aspects of the phenomenon of illness were studied as it is performed in medicine. The studies indicate that despite the notion about understanding the nature of illness through lived experience in anthropology, its nature is independent which is not necessarily in the framework of health and a nearly healthy life; But the nature of illness is formed from the view of death and its existence is separated from the existence of the body.

In addition to formic beauties (design, pattern, color and weaving quality) of Chaleshtor Lozenge Rugs, the reason which makes them permanent artistic works since long time ago is their various applications which have conceptual and aesthetic characteristics. The way audiences and users encounter Lozenge Rugs is important in this diversity, and it evokes solidarity between form and function during the time. This paper represents a qualitative and descriptive-analytical research in anthropology of art which aims to recognize the way Chaleshtor Lozenge Rugs are used and what meanings and concepts do these applications include? Field data is gathered by interview with well-informed people in Chaleshtor and participatory observations. Analyzing field data showed that the use of Lozenge Rugs can be considered in 5 categories: consuming, decorative, ritual, economic, social; and ritual (using Rugs in rituals) and economic (role of Rugs in people’ s livelihood) are the most important among them.