IRANIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Year:2006 | Volume:4 | Issue:8|Papers Count:12

The aim of this paper is to recognize the image of city by seeking the etymology of the word shar "the city". The findings of this research show that the word "shar" has been rooted from an Avestan word which has not been denoted to earthy human settlements and has usually been indicated a spiritual territory. The development of the meaning in Pahlavi language and its application as human settlement could be an attempt to represent the earthy rei earn to its spirituality. Also, there was an attempt in this study to identify concepts such as shar, shahrestan and shares tan which could be useful in the correct application of these words.

The main goal of the paper is to study the historical and cultural types of urban neighborhood management in Iran. Old cities had different neighborhoods based on ethnic, profession and religion and each neighborhood had its own semi-authority and specific physical and social territories. The neighborhood manager was Kadkhoda. His duties were management of public affairs and tax gathering that done under the supervision of Kalantar and Hakem, the main power authorities in tradition cities. The main factors for neighborhoods conflicts and riots were intense internal solidarity in neighborhoods, weakness of intra connections among them and the benefits of city government in people disunity. The Central State interventions in cities and implementation of modernist urban planning policies especially from 1960 fundamentally changed traditional structures of urban life including neighborhoods and their management. We can distinguish two other types of neighborhood management in recent times. One is emerged in informal settlement for resistance and opposing to formal organizations interventions. The other emerged when the city councils established in 1998. Some councils in cities like Tehran, Sanandaj, Zahedan and Torbat Heydareeyeh experienced participatory neighborhood management. The study of Torbat's "neighborhood municipality" shows that factors such as the centralized system of urban planning and the gap between urban managers and professionals from one side and ordinary people on the other side reduce the achievements of these experiences.

Rock reliefs are one of the important resources to study previous societies. These monuments are reflex ion of beliefs, values and historical events of the epoch that they belong to. With more accuracy, rock reliefs associate ideas of culture, art and policy which rules and forms the society that they come from. Despite of the large amount of rock reliefs that remain from pre-Islamic-most of the reliefs belong to Sassanid period - after Islam no rock relief of the Iranian (out of building) ruler were found in open spaces until Qajar period. Cause of this trend was the prohibition of animal and human images after Islam. Masonry tradition revival (of shahanshah) in Qajar epoch was the result of the Fathalishah interest to pre-Islamic Iranian culture. This interest that was followed both by Shahanshah and the public society of Iran, influenced Qajar art and led to resemblance artistic elements of ancient Iran specially Sassanian art. In this article, we tried to recognize the effective factors in shah's interest to the ancient Iran and his aims of stone carving revival. Also to distinct whether the administrative and social structures of Qajar period have been either affected by.

Human beings have a wide and unlimited range of needs which vary depend on time and space conditions and also socio-cultural levels of societies. These needs as a sort offered drive from mentality, perceptions, thoughts and behavior of individuals in a way to change existing condition in order to comply with expectations.Therefore, needs in their hierarchy create particular expectations that society has to deal with. The way of responding to the needs in the societies through the history has not been the same; rather it has developed from the traditional type of charity to more formal and organized one. In the process of evolution of the social protection systems, Social Security Organization as a formal form of providing services and complying with needs of people was established to handle the issue.In Iran, social security organization with different names during the periods was also established to play the same role. This organization not only has a general responsibility towards the public but also, has a particular responsibility towards its own staffs needs. In a field-based research, we were supposed to survey the cultural needs of the remaining members of the family of the Social Security Organization's passed away staffs. In this research along with giving definition to and different classification of needs, we criticized the old and stereotypical approaches towards culture and emphasized on material aspects of culture and necessity of meeting them first in order to lead people to more high level divinely needs and expectations.The data's of this study are collected by qualitative and quantitative methods of data gathering and then statistical information were described and analyzed. The result shows that among remaining members of the family of the social security organization's passed away staffs, the priority is the livelihood means as well as welfares and only then, second comes the non-material cultural needs and expectations. It is crystal clear that if we do not consider this priority and go for providing divinely and spiritual elements as sole cultural activities, it will pave the way for a series of social problems.

In order to remove existed gap and reciprocity among the governing concepts over human and experimental sciences. Meantime, through emphasis on induction as a particular basis of anthropology and its similar branches it needs to focus on the role of aesthetics as a Leading factor in the human activates and it should be noted that the essence of aesthetic and the human being cannot be eliminated from the scope of science. It is necessary to review descriptivist’s' revisionist approaches as well as the deadlocks which have been emerged as a result of subordination of the Human Sciences from the experimental Sciences theories and experimental sciences scholars admit that the ambiguities made them to resort to religion and philosophy.Recognizing the huge power which plays a role adjoining the instinct in human nature made it necessary more than before and only by accepting that the human nature enjoys two focal dimensions, definition of aesthetic is accessible. Hence, finding a relation among such categories as theology, ethics and law along with the problem solving potentials of the aesthetic is possible and it removes the preventive dualism existed in theories and access to a more appropriate description about anthropology and other involving sciences and responding to the requirements of tendencies to the induction and avoiding from analogism.

In Iranian anecdotes Fairy like Apsara in Rig Veda are water-bodied women with mutually similar behaviors. Concurrent investigation shows that the two are in fact one by temperament. But it seems that fairies in Iran, have changed into half-goddesses through magical transformation and blending with people's flourishing imagination.Eventually both seraphs and apsara return to heaven in Iranian's and to the sky in Indian's Rig Veda and the reason for their return is the exposure of a secret which has sourced from their meta-intellect and the revolution may open their divine sanctuary to the mortal human beings who neither have the patience nor the understanding of that covert.In this domain of yarn, some legends from all over Iran that are told about "Khezr the Prophet" have many common points Whit this seraph’s anecdotes.

Based on Levi-Strauss's article, "The Structure and the Form", which is a critical reflection on Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, an attempt has been made to find and establish a relationship between myth of Siavash and the fairy tale, "The Sea Foal", among some other tales mentioned here. Levi-Strauss believes in his essay that the morphology of fairy tales can get nowhere unless their relationship to myth are shown in their classification. Until now, neither we have a formal proper classification of fairy tales in Iran, nor has their relation with the myths been investigated. Myths and fairy tales represent an identical motif in their structure and narrative style with two different approaches and two different goals. The discovery of Such a motif in these tales opens new doors to studies in Folk's Culture.

This paper is an outcome of a field research among Quaderiyeh Dervishes in the various parts of Kurdestan Province, which is done via typical anthropological methods, i.e. interview, participatory observation and library sources. To acquire information, researchers spent one year in Quaderiyeh Dervishes TEKKYE (priesthood) in various times during the year and in their special ceremonies. In this paper, the totality of Dervish's religion is studied in different situations. The Shaikhs of the Quaderiyeh Dervishes assume the self and temper as the two major impediments of seeing the Truth and know the self-rejection as the sole way of researching it. The result of the survey shows that the sphere of the religious practice and believes of individuals depends on their social status. It is safe to say that temporal-spatial and social-cultural status of individuals has undeniable effect on their religious practicing. Therefore, it seems that various social circumstances require special kinds of religious practicing and these circumstances encourage a special kind of religious practicing whether in group level or individual level.