Social Movements in Iran; Backgrounds and Challenges

Because of the structural transformations in social relations and cultural beliefs (notably in large cities), the Iranian society has entered the condition of modernity thus making it necessary to study the situation of new social movements in our country. Indeed social movements represent one of the manifestations of the modern world and the scholars regard their appearance and influence as a result of the interaction between structural changes and identities. It means that widespread cultural and social changes at the structural level as the independent variable can reproduce social movements as the dependent variable. On this basis, the author seeks to examine the formation of identity conflicts and informal networks around those conflicts with presenting a statistical overview of the cultural and structural changes in contemporary Iran based on the Mariodiani theory. These grounds may be observed in the challenges and issues such as women’s questions, student movements, ethnic problems, seeking democracy, new life styles and generation gap.