فصلنامه علوم اجتماعی
سال نوزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 56، بهار 1391)

Traditional communal management systems and local people's experience and knowledge have been underlined in more recent sustainable rural development and livelihood paradigms. Recent studies on local knowledge and traditional production systems have resulted in a shift in general perceptions, moving them away from considering native farmers as weak managers towards having more appreciation for local people and their knowledge. These are people whose attitudes and actions towards their environment are considered sustainable and locally compatible (Fujisaka 1986). A livelihood is deemed sustainable if it has the ability to cope with and recover from stress and shock (Chambers & Conway 1992:6). This view, thus, sheds light on the significant role traditional communal water management and dredging system of Sistan area plays in creating a sustainable livelihood in the area. Observing the condition of Sistan rural areas, one can conclude with certainty that the main factor behind the current condition (desertification of Sistan) is the destruction of traditional production systems which were based on local knowledge and compatible with local climatic conditions.Currently, one of the most crucial challenges rural economics of Sistan face is the annual degradation of agricultural fields as a result of lack of water resources, congestion of sediments and demission of agriculture as a source of livelihood due to the inability of new rural management systems in provision and management of water. Inaccurate adoption of new technologies and desertion of local experience and knowledge have even worsened the situation and lead to unemployment, low income, poverty and immigration. Under the traditional management system of Sistan, thousands of local farmers dredged all water channels, rivers and streams in a three-month-long process called Hashr in order to transfer water and provide for cultivation of about 100000 agricultural fields of the area. However, today, desertion of local experience and knowledge of traditional managers of the area is considered the main factor behind the non-sustainability of agricultural-based livelihoods in the area.The main objective of this research is to introduce Hashr as a traditional communal technique and system and recognize the role of local knowledge and practical experience of communal traditional management in sustaining agricultural-based livelihood in Sistan area. This research is descriptive–analytical and has relied on documentary methods for acquiring and analyzing the relevant data. In some parts of the study, field observation and purposeful interviews with local informants and elders of the area have been adopted to gather the required data- whose names will be mentioned at the end of the article. Exploitation of local experience and knowledge along with the adoption of new technology within the framework of communal management could revive and improve the social and economical conditions of the area.

Academic alienation among the students of Shahed University and some factors contributing to it are addressed in the present article. Under the critical approach, some hypotheses were made and theoretical relations established among the variables. The statistical population of the study included all the students of Shahed University in the academic year 2008-2009, out of which 359 students were selected as sample size. It should be mentioned that sample size primarily was determined by Cochran calculation formula, and then respondents were selected through two complementary sampling methods, i.e. proportional and random sampling. Measurement of alienation rate was carried out according to Mau-Rosalind standard scale about alienation (1992) by which it is possible to measure four aspects of alienation, i.e. normalness, powerlessness, meaninglessness and social isolation.Research findings indicated that there is a direct relation at macro level between credentialism and ideological nature of educational system and the dependant variable of academic alienation rate. At meso level, there was also a direct relation between the variables of administrative bureaucracy, university-imposed limitations and the administrative style; however, there was a negative relation between the social prestige of the university and academic alienation rate. At micro level, there existed a negative relation between cultural capital and no meaningful relation between socio-economic status and alienation rate. In sum, the findings led to the conclusion that meso-level factors, i.e. environmental and administrative factors had the largest impact on academic alienation rate among the students of Shahed University.

Communication and sociology attach significance to the Internet communication mechanisms and tools due to their facilitating role in the development of interaction, participation, and communication networks among the cyber-space users. The study of man-man interaction in the cyber space and its impact would lead to the formulation of the hypothesis that the internet communicative channels have the potential to develop new patterns of interaction, and the type of communicative tool used and user's competence in employing them determines the patterns and level of interaction within the cyber space.This paper is an attempt to study the impact and role of the Internet interactional patterns in the development of patterns of access, interaction, and expression of Iranian cyber users in Persian blogs, i.e. Weblogestan-e Farsi and social networks. In line with the nature of the questions, the survey method was employed, and electronic questionnaires facilitated the process of information-gathering. Active users in four major Persian blog-writing service-providers and four social networks of Iranian cyber space constituted the statistic community. Findings of the study revealed that a positive relation exists between the patterns of interaction, expression, and access and communication mechanisms in man-man interaction system in the Internet. They, however, indicated that this relation is of little extension.

This article examines Education policy in Iran. Education policy as a dimension of social policy is affected by political approach of state. There is no precise understanding on political approaches of states and its impact on education policy. So, research question is “how education policy is influenced by the political approach in Iran?” To answer this question, using quantitative and qualitative data, examined both legal input and social spending of education during the years 1981 to 2009. Based on the legal input and social spending evidences, the political approach has no impact on education policy in this period. It means that apart of small differences in some legal input, same education policies are repeated and have continued by Iranian states from 1981 to 2009. In the period studied, although the social spending of the education has had little variation, but it seems this variation has not been affected by the state’s political approach. It means there is no relation between social spending and political approach of Iranian states.

Dependency theory is one of the influential approaches which exerted a dramatic impact on social and political thoughts as well as developmental and sociological theories of the mid-twentieth century for two decades. It had a huge impact on both theoreticians and politicians of developing countries who saw their ties with capitalist world as the main cause of backwardness and underdevelopment and concluded that the only remedy is to sever the ties. This article is an attempt to show that dependency theory has had a historical nature; it rose to prominence in a special historical context and had the ability to explain the developments of the time. However, historical and universal developments undermined its foundations, and its Marxist and non-Marxist followers abandoned the once-prominent theory and formulated new concepts to explain the new conditions of the world. In other words, overt and covert changes in its founding-father's thinking framework marked the end of dependency theory era.

The main purpose of the present research is to investigate the approach of student journals to national and ethnic identities through the analysis of subjects and pictures appearing in student journals of Kurdistan University. The statistical sample of this research covered 145 journals published between 1998 and 2010 in Kurdistan University, and the main method used was content analysis. TSPSS software and X2 Test were also employed to study the manner in which the national and ethnic identities were represented. The findings of the study demonstrated that all the categories except the category of ethnic-agitation reflected a meaningful difference. The most common genre used was article which comprised 43.4 percent, the prevalent tone critical which reverberated in 39.9 percent and the major text type informative which accounted for 45.5 percent of the sample. Out of 2507 journal items, only 1046 defined collective identity according to national and ethnic identities, and the ethnic identity was reflected almost 2.5 times more than national identity. Kurdish-speaking student journals were finally found to have acted poorly in enhancing public participation, moderating localism and replacing local interests with national ones.

The main purpose of this research is to study the role of conformity between Tehrani pedestrians in traffic-light violation. The method used in this research was field research. Observation, interviews and confederates also facilitated the research. The sample size included 287 individuals who were all pedestrians waiting for green light beside the confederates. Chi-square and t-tests were employed to analyze the data inferential statistics and obtain the mean difference of individual's ages in both confirmative and non-confirmative categories, respectively.The results of this research indicated that there was a relationship between conformity and traffic-light violation by pedestrians. Moreover, a relationship appeared to exist between the presence of confederates and traffic-light violation conformity. This study also indicated that a meaningful relation existed between conformity and the answer to the research question. There was no relationship between conformity and the individual's age, education, gender or place of residence. This research indicated that the conformity is one of the major factors of pedestrian light-violation in Tehran.