Investigating the Effect of the Feeling of Relative Deprivation on the Political Ethnicity of the Talesh Ethnic Group

The main concern of this study is evaluating the extent of political ethnicity of Talesh ethnic group and it aims at explaining the relationship between the feeling of relative deprivation and the political ethnicity of this ethnic group. Political ethnicity is one of the types of ethnicism according to which an ethnic group in addition to striving to maintain its differences with other ethnic groups seeks to participate in political power on the basis of the ethnic components. Theoretical framework of the study is Robertger's theory which considers the feeling of relative deprivation as the cause of the political violence. In this article, ethnic violence, particularly political ethnocentrism, is considered as one of the manifestations and examples of the political violence. The method adopted in this study is survey and the data collection tool is a questionnaire. The statistical population was all the over fifteen-year-old citizens (inclusively) of Talesh residing cities in Guilan province and through Cochran's formula, 480 people were determined as the sample size. The validity of the research tool was confirmed by means of the face validity method and its reliability was confirmed through Cronbach's alpha. The results of the research, in the descriptive part, show that the respondents have a high level of political ethnocentrism and a moderate sense of relative deprivation in all dimensions. Examination of the hypotheses also shows that all the three variables of relative political, cultural, and socio-economic deprivation are somehow related to the political ethnicity, but the feeling of relative cultural deprivation has the greatest impact on the political ethnicity. Finally, some suggestions for reducing the political ethnicity and the strengthening the national solidarity among the people of Talesh have been proposed.