JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES (KHARAZMI UNIVERSITY)
Year:2006 | Volume:13 | Issue:50-51|Papers Count:6

This article examines some social factors affecting the attitudes of university students towards immigration to foreign countries. To accomplish this aim, a secondary analysis of some data of the "Survey of Attitudes and Behaviours of State University Students" was made. The survey was conducted based on a sample of 1552 male and female students in 2001. The findings infer that 59 percent of the respondents moderately and 17 percent highly tend to migration, while only 23 percent of them do not think about migration at all. Positive attitudes to national community and religiosity were two variables, the prohibiting effect of which on migration tendency was confirmed. In contrast, holding a negative attitude towards social and political situation of the present and the future of the society, was found to be an encouraging factor to migration. In general, the inclination to migration among men and those of higher socio-economic status is higher compared to women and those of lower socio-economic status. Finally, for evaluation of the simultaneous effect of independent variables, a multinomial logistic regression analysis was used.    

This article deals with the comparison of Western cultural discourses on globalization with those applied by Iranian scholars. In recent years, globalization has provided many opportunities as well as threats for developing countries including Iran. Amongst these opportunities and threats the reference could be made to those of culture and identity, the consequences of which for our country have been critical. Taking account of the conditions and importance of the globalization phenomenon and of its possible great impacts on the socio-cultural structure of the country, this paper makes an attempt to examine existing theories and thoughts on globalization in Iran. In this regard, based on the theoretical frameworks of Schultz, Giddens, Castels and Robertson, the opinions of Iranian writers and scholars on the causes, nature, and cultural consequences of globalization was assessed. This accomplished by a meta-theoretical method in which the content of texts was analyzed by a reverse questionnaire. The examined texts included a sample of 110 articles and papers published in newspapers and magazines (57 from newspapers and 53 from magazines). The study reveals that the diversity of the approaches of the theorists of globalization on its nature, causes and consequences can also be seen in the works of Iranian writers. In other words, to analyse globalization process, Iranian writers also have adopted different theoretical frameworks, such as Neo-liberalism, Radicalism and Reformism.      

In this article, based on the theoretical framework of Bazrup and McNichle, the population changes of rural areas of Iran are examined in terms of demographic', environmental, and developmental characteristics of the areas of the study. From 125817 rural areas of the country the population changes of 45085 areas were analysed based on the data of the National Census of Population and Housing from 1335 to 1375. The data revealed that during the last 50 years big villages (over 1500 inhabitants) have been account for more than 85% of the rise of rural population during the studied decades. The data also inferred to the polarization of population and infrastructure facilities, the growth of local plain villages and the decline of mountainous villages, and depopulation of villages with less than a hundred inhabitations. The results of a multi-variation analysis indicated the main variables affecting rural population changes included diversity of economic opportunities, level of agricultural intensification, developmental facilities, ecologic condition and natural location, the proportion of agricultural activities, and type of village and agricultural technology. These variables explained 57 percent of the changes of rural population.    

Comparative-historical studies are typically based on small number of cases. These studies, therefore, face the problem of "too many variables and not enough cases" in the testing of causal inference, this problem especially is fundamental when we want to test the rival hypothesises. To overcome the problem some comparative-historical researchers apply Mill's methods (agreement - difference) to infer causality and test the rival hypothesises based on a small number of cases. However, the methods of agreement and dit1erence seem to be outdated and inappropriate for comparative-historical analysis even when they serve as excluding. This is because of their failure in 1) employing a probabilistic perspective, 2) dealing with measurement errors of data, 3) using multivariate analysis, and 4) taking interaction effects in to account. This is not surprising that Mill himself recognized that these methods were inappropriate for most social research studies. Secondly it seems that methods of agreement and difference can not cope with the main problem of comparative-historical studies, namely, "too many variables and small-N", could not provide any solution to the problem.