Iranian Journal of Sociology
Year:2010 | Volume:10 | Issue:4|Papers Count:9

The rate of divorce has been rising in Iran in the last few years and its extent is now alarming public officials. While a number of factors may affect the rate of divorce, this article focuses on economic factors only. We use a time series analysis to probe the relationship between divorce and literacy, urbanization, household expenditure, income, and income distribution in Iran for the period 1974-2006. Our econometric results indicate that as income distribution worsens, divorce rate increases. This observation is endorsed using the GINI coefficient as well as the ratio of the average earnings of the top income decile to the average earnings of the bottom income decile. Our results also show that as household monthly expenditures rise, divorce rates also increase. Furthermore, the rate of divorce is positively correlated with urbanization and negatively correlated with literacy rate. Overall, our results show that all the examined variables are significant in explaining the rate of divorce in Iran for the last 33 years.

The risk society is one of the most accepted theories or notions of contemporary sociology. As a constituent it has been central in a number of scientific analyses, models and explanations dealing with a wide range of issues within realms ranging from ecology to socio-cultural and politics throughout last two decades or so. While this idea and its related models originally seemed to be an ecological and environmentalist manifest in the early years of its construction, now it enjoys wide currency among scholars of social philosophy, politics, sociology, human ecology, economics and science & technology studies. Such a currency is attributed to the way it accords with theories such as globalization, late or reflexive modernity, and/or modernity as an unfinished project.Reviewing and introducing Beck’s notion of risk society in general, this article endeavors to reflect on implications and applications of the notion in its interplays between knowledge and society before and after 9/11, 2001. It is supposed that since 9/11 and with environment becoming a global social problem of our time, the notion of risk and accordingly the theories of risk society and risk culture have increasingly been globalized, as Ulrich Beck elevated the risk society a doomsday prophecy. In this view, the globalized world is no longer a risk society or risk culture per se, but it constitutes a surveillance-risk society. Thus, one can think of globalization as having a multilayer and serious nature.

The present study deals with the socialization of the new generation of high school students and compares it with the socialization experiences of two previous generations. Considering such issues like identity crisis, cultural and generation gap and the like, the question is raised as to how socialization in present time, which aims at transferring cultural knowledge from the previous generation to the new generation, is different from the socialization of the previous two generations.To answer the above research question, the theoretical background of the present study was inspired by two theories structuration and dual globalization. Based on the related literature and the available theories, two hypotheses were extracted from the given theoretical framework: first the weight of different socialization factors (family, schooling, peers, and the media) in three stages of traditional, initial and old model. Second, there is a relationship between the traditional socialization forces and the mode of socialization considering the virtual space.In line with the topic and the research questions, the qualitative approach of in-depth interview used. The sample for the third generation was the male students of the first and second grades of senior high school from 2.12 and 19 district of Tehran. The sample of the first and the second generations were father and grandfather of the students (the third generation). The In sample size was 90, 30 from each generation. The results obtained from the interviews corroborated the hypotheses of the study.

The present study aims at reviewing the effects of social support on public health of the elderly. The study was conducted on a population consisting of 300 persons (142 women, 158 men) residing in the city of Dezfoul, whose members are 60 years old and above. Theoretically in order to achieve the study’s goals, sociological theories on social network, social integrity, and the method of direct effect based on Berekman-Syme model were used. The study was conducted by sending out questionnaires to be filled out by the sample population in spring 1387 (2008). The multistage method of cluster sampling model was used. In order to measure social support structurally, the scales of Tarbiyat Modares University and Yale University were used. To measure the functional dimension of social support, the scale of Tokyo Medicine University was used, and to measure public health, the Goldberg public health consisting of 28 Questions, credited by Tehran University’s affiliates, Behzisty and Tavanbakhshi, was used. Results indicate that there exist positive and significant relations between social support and public health. The main findings are indicative of a direct effect of social support on the elderly public health. The multivariate regression analysis shows that personal social network, spiritual support and the strong binding variables have the most effect on social support.

In this article, the cardio-vascular patients are discussed. The main issue of the present article is that the rate of cardio-vascular disease in Bushehr city is increased. The article’s theoretical apparatus is constructed based on The theories of Bourdieu., Nan lin and Cocherham. The sample population is 320 cases. The sample has been selected among Bushehr’s hospitals patients from the second half of 1386 to the first half of 1387 (2007-2008). The empirical data has been collected by social survey and medical documentaries and also via hypotheses that have been tested by regression analysis. The independent variables are cultural, economical and social capitals and dependent variable is cases. cardio-vascular disease. The findings are indicative of correlation coefficient of cardio-vascular disease with a combined aggregate of cultural, economical and social capitals.

This paper attempts to study the rate and quality of the internet use amongst students of the University of Tehran. Following its focus, it measures the causal effect of the internet use on the students’ political participation. In order to address the above correlation, we will use a composite theoretical framework that combines conceptual considerations of Habermas’s "public sphere" and Michael Rush’s hierarchical model of political participation.In our study we conducted a random sampling procedure that resulted in the selection of 730 students, and then we used a questionnaire to survey them. Moreover, in order to test the study’s hypotheses we used three analytical methods as follows: correlation analysis, regression analysis and directional analysis.The study’s findings indicated that: the further the rate and quality of the internet use increase, the more the level of political participation would be. The quality of internet use, of course, has a larger share in the rate of students’ political participation. Accordingly, it can be argued that the findings confirm the fact that internet can result in increasing political participation. This result is in line with Habermas’s point on public sphere and here we witness that the internet transforms into means of acting as a major element of public sphere.Other results also indicate that 56 percent of samples’ political participation is categorized as mid-level political participation. This is while Rush had evaluated this as low level of political participation. Accordingly and in contrast to Rush’s claim, politics in virtual world and among educated people, is not necessarily limited to a small group’s field of activity. Such level of participation is also an indicator of the fact that new media, in general, and the internet, in particular, can play a completely different role compared to the classic media in creating open space for free lance argument and contributing to formation of public opinion. This in turn can contribute to furthers claim, development of rational-critical arguments and development of political action. These findings indicate that Habermas’s point on low-level effect of the media in formation of public opinion and low-level of the new media effect on political participation is not confirmed among the internet users in Iran.