Iranian Journal of Sociology
Year:2004 | Volume:5 | Issue:1|Papers Count:9

The different types of dialo gue, from ordinary conversa tions to discussions, also, disputes and intellectual exchanges have such an essential role in the world of science that one can also describe this world as the world of dialogues and exchanges. This paper tries to examine the development level of our knowledge of sociology using the quality index of the dialogues and interactions among Iranian sociologists. The distinction between paradigmatic and pre-paradigmatic science provides the necessary conceptual background for the knowledge of sociology to be evaluated as a pre-patterned knowledge. This paper, referring to the evaluation conducted by Iranian Sociologists and combinations of conceptual bases with these empirical data and insists the necessity to promote dialogue levels among the professors and students of this field on the one hand and among them and the people as well as the public interests on the other, while introducing this as a basic strategy for the development of paradigmatic sociology in Iran.

Dialogue, in an anthropological analysis, can be considered as a type of "exchange" in which the parties involved get into an interaction with each other while participating physically and mentally in a special sphere (the exchange sphere). The dialogue sphere itself develops in a field of interaction between two other spheres. On the one hand, there is the taboo sphere where any disorganized or irregular intrusion into it will cause tension and conflict. These tensions can turn into serious crises and transfer into the exchange sphere as well. On the other hand, we have the sphere of totems dynamically and interferentially involved in different levels and strata while the intensity and endurability of these totems are considered as two major elements in this regard. Any type of outgoing from the whole sphere, any displacement among the levels, or any alteration of the intensity and endurability of totems, happened in a disorganized or irregular way can lead to the same consequence as that mentioned about the tensions. Eventually, dialo gue can be said to be a function of actions and reactions taking place in the two spheres of taboos and totems. The theoretical basis in the anthropological approach to this issue is based on a series of, theories starting from Malinowski"s analysis of "kula" as well as Mauss"s theory of "L"echang" moving to the theories of Levi Strauss and Fran<,;oiseHeritier regarding incest. These altogether serve as a basis to determine the spheres of taboo, totem, exchange and dialogue and to provide a theoretical as well as analytic framework for the concept of "dialogue among cultures".

The existence of a public sphere and distinguishing it from the private and governmental spheres is an essential element in a civil society. The public sphere is a real or virtual atmosphere where private entities can have rational discussions or dialogues about their points of concern so as to reach an agreement. The fact that all individuals should have equal access to this sphere and should be free to initiate any kind of discussion with no sorts of interference of power and force onto such discussions are among the main conditions one can name for such public spheres. This paper is a survey on the minimum necessary conditions required for emergence of a public sphere in some student-led associations.

This paper is a survey on the conceptual evolution trend of such terms as "dialogue" and "dialogue among civilizations". The lexical similarities as well as the historical backgrounds of thes~ two terms do not cause the necessities and exigencies that have led to their re-introduction at different social and practical levels to be neglected. Nowadays, dialectic approaches to philosophy, linguistics, sociology, communication and political sciences have gained especial significance and the idea of "dialogue among civilizations", beyond the stressful political and international relations, has been warmly welcomed in cultural and scientific fields. Besides, this idea has the required potential to turn to a sociological theory using the new dialectic approaches. The present paper attempts to describe the components of dialogue and classify the theories in this regard to establish the theoretical foundations of the dialogue among civilizations.

This paper mainly aims at distinguishing "discourse" from "dialogue". Dialogue has a dichotic aspect while discourse is of paradigmatic features and represents the pattern and the logic behind the dialogue. Discourse does not just deal with the syntactic and lexical elements composing the sentences of a text. It goes much beyond this and covers the external elements outside the text such as the situa tional, cultural and social contexts and will thus turn to a subject of sociology. This paper, having examined the two terms distinctively, presents 16 key indices (12 direct and 4 indirect indices) for dialogue and discourse. The direct indices enumerated in this paper are relativism, perfectionism versus considering oneself perfect, equality of status, enjoying equal security, equality of sects or lack of segregation, qualification of the exchange, comprehensibility, prejudgment. criticizing the speech rather than the speaker, documentedness of speech, reasonability, and ethicality. Besides, rationalism, humanism or human reverence, human rights, and democracy are the indirect indices introduced for discourse and dialogue in this paper. In spite of the fact that there may seem to be some similarities and overlap among some of these indices, one can still find some delicate differences between them.

This paper is a survey on the historical as well as cultural sociology and mainly seeks to compare two periods of cultural development in the East and West which happened with a time interval of about seven centuries. In the 3rd and 4th Century A. H. (9th and 10thcentury A. D.) a great cultural revolution was initiated in the East Whick led to the extensive development of the knowledge and scientific experiences of some of the oriental communities. On the other hand, people of the Western Europe witnessed the origination of an influential culture called Renaissance from 15th to 18th century. A. D. The historical evidence and references show that there are basic and content similarities between these two cultural developments. The most important of these similarities is that they were both accompanied with the origination ofrationalism and humanistic thoughts. However, the variables of time and space have caused some explicative and content differences between these two developments. On the basis of these similarities and differences, one can introduce the hypothesis that the origination of cultural developments (in different places and at different times) has to follow a general rule and that the partial differences between them are due to their origination at a different time and place. Also it is interesting to be noticed that the two above-mentioned developments, occurred in different historical and cultural conditions, have had considerable historical relations with each other continued up to the present time. Now the question is that can these common backgrounds, the historical and cultural relations, and the fact that the cultural developments, follow common given rules lead to a sort of relative unity in the 2ISt century world?

It is said that the recent phenomenon called "globalized world" has caused the major components of the modern society such as democracy to be seriously reviewed and this paper focuses on one of these attempts. First,. the paper discusses the theoetical challenge put forward by Antony Giddens, the theoretician who proposed the idea of the "run away world", as well as Fukuyama"s theories of liberal democracy and David Miller"s "deliberative democracy". Then onc of the reasons why there has been an increasing growth in seeking for democracy in the present world (including Iran) is elaborated from the viewpoint of dialogic democracy theory. At the end, presenting five reasons, the author proposes that the contents of dialogic democracy arc quite essential for Iranian community and thus should necessarily be taken into account.

As the idea of dialogue among civilizations is a relatively new concept which lacks precedents in public opinion, it requires a greater effort and dedication on the part of journalists to publicize it as far as possible. However, the basic and essential question here is what the journalists themselves think about this term. More important, is how they think about their own civilization as well as other existing ones. In order to obtain proper answers to these major questions, questionnaires were prepared and distributed among the editorial board members of 27 national newspapers published in Tehran. The questionnaires were filled and returned by 86 journalists from 19 newspapers most of whom believed that the Iranian-Islamic civilization was "rela tively" live and dynamic. They mos tly reflected nega tive views and assessmens about the components of this civilization. 52 to 75 percent of the respondents considered the components of Iranian- Islamic civilization to be in a state of increasing recession, crisis and transformation and believed it to be at the verge of destruction. Regarding other civilizations, about 80 percent of the respondents held that the western civilization (Europe and North America) is a live and dynamic one and that opening a dialogue with the west will have positive effects on Iranian-Islamic civiJization. However, they mostly evaluated the overall condition of the developments in the future decade as ambiguous and unpredictable.