Investigating Iranians’ ethos during the famine of World War I using a qualitative fuzzy method

The Iranians’ Ethos is one of the issues that have been taken into account by researchers in recent decades. This article takes up the issue using a fuzzy method and attempts to show that ethos like many other concepts is fuzzy. For that purpose, break points and sensitive historical events were selected that had a great impact on the mood of Iranians, including the famine during the First World War. The war in the early 20th century had also adversely impacted the economic, social and cultural life of Iranians, which in this study specifically examines as the Ethos of Iranians. The results show that the people during the famine demonstrated characteristics such as individualism, collectivism, anti-authoritarianism and lawlessness, each of which too prevailed to some extent among Iranians. Collectivism emerged in the form of two indicators of generosity and social participation, individualism as consideration to material and immaterial interests, with the material having a higher membership score (0.48). On the discussion of lawlessness, various crimes emerged and overcharging had the highest score with 0.52 points of fuzzy membership. Anti-authoritarianism was also manifested in the form of indicators such as interference in the government’s affairs and accountability, in which the latter received the highest score with 0.18 member score. The final analysis of the concepts also shows that overcharging was the main Ethos during the famine of the First World War. Finally, it can be said that Ethos is like many fuzzy concepts and using this method can provide more appropriate results.