The Effect of Social Class on Attitude towards Modernism in the City of Isfahan

Modernism and social class both are categories rose up from the west capitalism system and create some challenges for the society. The aim of this discussion is explaining the conflict between tradition and modernism based on one of the main conflict roots which is called class conflict. In the other words, in this article authors tried to indicate that one the creator or accelerating factors of conflict between traditional system in the society and modern values is conflict among the attitudes, insights and value system of various social class individuals and therefore, it is possible to reduce conflict between the attitudes towards traditionalism and modernism enjoying reduce class intervals.The subject is analyzable in two macro sociological areas: 1) Conflict theory in which modern society characteristics is inescapable consequence of industrial society, capitalism system and economic relations in the society. 2) Sociology of knowledge that is pursuing explanation of social conditions of modern awareness. Using a survey research modernism was operationalized into nine indicators consist of rationality, consumption, criticalism, individualism, liberalism, democratic attitude, secularism and scientism and measured by a Likert scale. The total score for every case was computed by adding up the scores of nine sub-scales. There were 382 cases selected using a quota sampling design across ten regions of the city of Isfahan. Social class of the studied cases was measured based on income, education, job, location of living, and some properties including home and car. Finally, after analyzing the relationship between social class and modernism some results were achieved as follow:There was a significant correlation between social class and rationality whereas no relation was observed between social class and utilitarianism. All other aspects of modernism were significantly correlated with social class. Comparing means among various social classes using Tuki post-test showed that there was the most difference between upper and lower classes on the basis of modernism total score. Middle class attitude toward modernism was near upper class on the scale. Generally speaking, it can be noted that the social class is higher, the attitude is more positive. Moreover, as class interval would be lower, modern society is more possible to be observed.