فصلنامه مطالعات میان رشته ای در علوم انسانی
سال دهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 37، زمستان 1396)

Here we present an overview of the theoretical evolution of the field of Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP) research and its implications on the progressive evolution from a single discipline of Neo-classical economics to an interdisciplinary research field with critical and reflective capacity. Research field can be more empowering to offer relevant policy if the integration among the involved disciplines is higher. This overview will help in determining if different paradigmatic turns this field has gone through, during the last 60 years, has prepared the field to offer more salient policy advice to the policymakers for the complex problems. The research unit is "research program" that each theoretical paradigm developed around the notion of "Failure" which justifies the public intervention in STIP space. Drawing on Klein–Welsh classification, the conceptual model was constructed on Fritsch technological instrumentalism-McCarthy's technological essentialism. The findings of this study are: First, this research field has gone through two significant paradigmatic shifts; from instrumentalism to technological essentialism of evolutionary economics and now to interactionism of multi-level perspective approach. Second, these two turns have increased the complexity of the level of analysis, the integrated disciplines and the level of integration within the field. Based on the conceptual framework, the study concludes that the field of STIP is emerging more integrated at the level of its foundations and by being more reflective and critical. It has increased its power to provide more relevant policy prescriptions for wicked problems.

The empowerment construct, which means “to empower” and “to enable”, has been discussed as an interdisciplinary construct at multiple times and in different fields. At the beginning of transformation, in the fields of religion and sociology the construct referred to power sharing. During the following years, when the empowerment construct was discussed in the fields of education, psychology, and social work, the promotion of human welfare was identified as its ultimate goal. The main connection between productivity and empowerment has been considered in the field of management. This article aims to analyze the evolution of the empowerment construct in natural science, social sciences, and humanities in Iran. Thus, the required data was collected from 250 articles published in Iranian journals based on the qualitative content analysis method. The data was then analyzed according to the cluster analysis method using SPSS 23 and the Kruskal-Wallis statistical methods. The results indicate that the construct focused more on improving human resource productivity in the field of management while in other disciplines, the construct is focused on power sharing and promoting human welfare. Moreover, Iran has tried to model the subject of human excellence on an Iranian-Islamic approach. The authors recommend adopting an interdisciplinary perspective along with a psychological, structural, or combined approach for a proper understanding of the empowerment construct and designing a comprehensive model. This empowers researchers to design a comprehensive understanding of construct with multiple approaches. More extensive studies need to be conducted for the localization of these structures.

Islamic architecture is considered as an important and significant historical tradition. For Iranians, this tradition is more than historical and is mentioned as a part of the identity of architecture in Islamic Iran. Many theories have tried to explain Islamic architecture but could only determine a part of its coordination possibly due to their adopted methods. These theories have lost their capability of effective application because they have neglected the practical and concrete aspects (which all can be named under the title of “lifestyle”). The goal of this article is to include the concept of lifestyle in the definition of Islamic architecture, after presenting and criticizing theories mentioned in the research literature. This article emphasizes that lifestyle is the missing element of theories on Islamic architecture and that Islamic architecture can be applicable in the social life of the Iranians by including lifestyle in its definition.

One of the most important topics have been studied in Cultural geography field, is investigating the relationship between environment conditions and its effects on culture and how their mutual influence on each other. In this regard, some cultural elements are raised by natural geography condition and is related by natural dimensions and characteristics of geographic space. These ecological characteristics lead formation of the unique cultural landscape of space. In other word, the reasons for the emergence of this symbol culture were related to natural features. For example, many part of the religion function include provide solutions for problems that there are in the place. This trend is terminated to the formation of religious thoughts that particularly is led by natural space. Obviously, Religion in Iran is certainly not the exception in this category, and there is some part of fundamental causes of characteristics Religions in Iran were affected by natural foundations of Iran’s plateau. In this regard, in this paper this question has been proposed, how had been affected natural geographical indexes on religious thoughts before Islam rise and after it? In this research for responding to this question, have been struggled with explanting and analytical approaches, was checked natural fundamental causes of religious thoughts in Iran. Finding research reveals that, natural conditions of Iran plateau or even in the Middle East such as climatologic characteristics or geomorphologic conditions, hydro issues, have been very effective roles on religious thoughts before entering of Islam to Iran and after it.

Considering widespread implication of development projects, it seems that development is the only solution for elimination of problems such as poverty, starvation, insecurity and eventually justice. Developmental state and good governance theory are two major development theories which formulate the attainment of the mentioned goals. Developmental state theorists argue that development achievement requires a powerful state while supporters of the good governance idea, believe that development depends on elevating the governances quality and creation of trust between state and citizens. These two theories have many theoretical tensions. In this article we investigate such tensions and have come to the conclusion that developmental state and good governance theory have no discrepancies. Actually implementation and dissemination of good governance needs developmental state, in the other words, it is prerequisite for good governance.

The purpose of this article is to study the Turner's works in the field of sociology of body and its relationship with human rights. Although the study of citizenship has been an important development in contemporary sociology, the nature of rights has been largely ignored. Only in the 1990s the works of Bryan Turner led to the development of a new sociology of human rights. This article defends the claim that human rights is a legitimate subject of inquiry for sociologists. Method of recent article is documentary. Turner sociological studies in the field of medical, body, human rights and religion can be an example of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies in humanities. Turner, in his works has tried to take advantage of concepts and findings of sociology of body, politics and philosophical anthropology, as well as embodiment and vulnerability and find materialist basis for defending human rights universal claims. He knows sociology of body as a basis for the defense of human rights universal concepts and alternative discourse to the natural law tradition. According to him, human rights as an institution beyond citizenship, is a substitute for citizenship and its challenges. In summary, The article argues that a sociology of human rights is very important, because, there are obvious limitations to the idea of citizenship which is based on membership of a nation state. Therefore, human rights as a sociological concept is an important supplement to the existing idea of citizenship.

In recent years, the social and environmental responsibility of businesses and the influencing variables were considered by environmental activists and different groups using financial reports of the businesses. Social responsibility of companies is of “business ethics”, which deals with the role of companies in social domain. Business social responsibility is a set of tasks and commitments, which the firm should fulfill them in order to maintain, take care, and help the community operating in which. In addition, the impact of macroeconomic aspects, such as Gross Domestic Products (GDP), inflation, and rate of return without risk, on social and environmental responsibility of companies is of great concern to environmental activists. The current study aimed at evaluating the association between macroeconomics indices and changes in the level of social and environmental disclosure noted in financial reports and notes. The current quasi-experimental interdisciplinary study, covering accounting and economics, was conducted on 79 companies from 2001 to 2014. The multivariate regression and table data analysis were used for theory testing using the fixed effect method. To assess the social and environmental responsibility, the KLD index was employed. Results of data analysis and theory testing showed no significant association between macroeconomics indices- such as inflation and GDP- and changes in the level of social and environmental responsibility of the firms.