Sociological Review
Year:2015 | Volume:21 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:8

This article explores the ontological nuances of space in Simmel’s sociology. We have demonstrated how two different conceptions of space coexist in Simmel’s social thought. By reviewing his “sociology of space”, we have traced a Newton-Kantian absolute space in Simmel’s thought; while through investigating his social ontology, exemplified in concepts of sociation, social interaction, significance of number for social life, we have demonstrated how this ontology presumes a relational space. Excavating these two seemingly paradoxical notions of space, we have tried to find a resolution to this ambivalence. We have come to the conclusion that this ambivalence is generated by two different explanatory devices that Simmel uses to illustrate social life.

One of the inevitable features of modern life is Apartment living. Therefore, it is important to design proper houses that amount to the residents’ social health. As one of the key components of social networking, housing plays an important role in promoting social interactions. Although social health is mainly regarded as a medical concept, in this study we have tried to indicate the socio-cultural components of social health through comparison with architectural patterns. The main question of this research is as follows: to what extent the new architecture affects the social health of residents? This study has applied Lee’s theory in the field of architecture and social health. The qualitative content analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with the residents of Chaharsad-dastgah neighborhood demonstrated that the interviewees believe that social sub-spaces should be created in buildings in order to increase the social interactions among neighbors.

While many researches have been carried out on Farhadi's A Separation, still major questions remain unanswered. Which discourses does the film represent and how are they related to dominant discourses of Iranian society? Resorting to Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, the present study offers a three- stage framework for answering the above questions. The results show that A Separation depicts four micro-discourses, i.e. Islamic, Iranian, Western, and official, as well as two macro-discourses, modernity and tradition. The opposition between these two discourses is the reason behind many conflicts visible in Iranian films.

Most of the studies on murder have tried to explain the difference in death rates in different areas. Despite being valuable, these studies and produced theories are not able to answer the questions of, ‘who kills whom’ or ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why,’ a murder occurs. Unlike more common ways that describe and interpret aspects of murder, the present study has applied qualitative method and has conducted 14 in-depth interviews with 12 men and 2 women that had committed murder, with the hope of obtaining comprehensive understanding of offenders.Hence, personal understanding of offenders and the way that they make sense of their lives, as well as the identification of their motives, are the main objectives of this research. The results indicate that the majority of murders are caused by conflict between people in various situations.The option of resorting to murder as a way to resolve the disagreements and conflicts between individuals, widely differs due to variables such as class, gender and age. The majority of murders have two main features: first, in most cases violence is regarded as an acceptable means of resolving conflicts, and second, the events are not arranged in a particular place and time.In other words, crime develops through a course of events and cannot be considered to be pre-arranged.

The present article is a theoretical analysis of the capability of Ibn Khaldun’s theory of “Rise and Fall” in explaining the state’s mechanism and its dynamics in the context of political modernity.To answer this question, first, on the basis of some theoretical approaches to political modernity, properties, functions and concepts of modern political discourse are introduced, and then encountered with Ibn Khaldun's ideas and his political discourse.Based on this theoretical analysis, this essay reveals that since the ideas of Ibn Khaldun, as a system of truth, are affected by the conditions and requirements of the society of his time and have nurtured in a peculiar social, political and economic context, theoretically in general and epistemologically and anthropologically in particular, they lack the necessary qualifications and capabilities for explaining the evolution and transformation of the modern state. Therefore, the efforts of some intellectual and even ideological circles to apply his ideas to the modern state, is only a waste of time and energy of the research programs on modernity and the modern society.

The movie Qaysar marks the entrance of Jaheli movies into the “revengeful” phase. This revengefulness was depicted in different ways in the movies, the protagonists of which were extensions of the Qaysar type. In this article we have investigated the post-Qaysar revengeful act by studying three movies: Reza Motori, Gavaznha (The Deers), and Kandoo (Beehive). My approach to the study of the film is that of a sociological intra-textual reading - a reading that studies the Laat in the context of the social world that is his condition of possibility, and is depicted in the movie itself. We have hypothesized a “situation of balance” in the narrative of the movie: a situation the disruption of which makes the formation of the movie plot possible. Having this situation in the background we have tried to answer these two main questions: In what situation would the Laat refrain from a revengeful act? And now that the situation of balance is disrupted, how does he react to the new situation? Our study shows that in such movies, we are dealing with a process that represents both the radicalization of the Laat and his losing self-consciousness in his acts. These two aspects eventually lead to a total conflict with all manifestations of the modern world. This total conflict is activated through a minor incident. The movies are coded through a qualitative content analysis. The categories achieved are not presented in tables, but in an analytic textual body instead, in an attempt to explain the radicalization process. The process could only be presented in the flow of text and not in the form of table.

This study is an attempt to present a systematic description of the current state of youth religiosity in Tehran. The description is based on the meta-analysis of 15 recent studies of various aspects of youth religiosity. The quantitative results obtained from these 15 studies have been interpreted and reorganized based on concepts and propositions derived from theories of cultural studies. By adopting this perspective, i.e. that of cultural studies, a new dimension of religious behavior and mindset of young people is revealed; one that has been neglected by classical sociological and also theological approaches. This dimension includes personalized interpretations of religion, tendency to permissive interpretations, attributing self-centered meanings to religious phenomena, and seeking pleasure and change in religious routines, among others.

Educational institutions are regarded as very important mechanisms for reproduction of values in every society, of which identity is an important component. Textbooks are the most important media of educational institutions for transferring the desired values. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the identity-based policy making in the textbooks of the second Pahlavi era. Due to the nature of the subject, qualitative method was applied. Six books were selected through purposive sampling and conventional and oriented content analysis was applied for analyzing them. Content analysis of different dimensions of social identity (including national identity, modern-western identity, religious identity, ethnical and local identity) in the social sciences textbooks reveal that modern-western identity was more underlined than other identities. The recurrent application of notions such as nation, homeland and Iranian ancient history shows that much emphasis was also put on national identity. This is while the other two identities are rarely mentioned; although religious identity is often presented in the service of other identities especially modern-western identity.