فصلنامه علوم اجتماعی
سال بیست و پنجم شماره 4 (پیاپی 83، زمستان 1397)

This article seeks to examine the process of stigmatization of the Nukan neighborhood within Kermanshah. The theoretical framework is based on Rob Shields' concepts of "social spatialisation”. Shields considers the process of constructing meaning of a space to be a result of the objective procedures of everyday life that construct suppositions about meaning and form space-myths through various ways. The research method is ethnography and the data collection technique includes participatory observation and intensive interviews. The findings of the survey indicate that Nukan has topographically isolated geography and that some social borders have intensified this dissociation. Different procedures have a role in labeling Nukan as such. By announcing the image space to be "rural, " the municipality avoids providing any service to the area. By labeling the area as "violent" as well as a "crime hotspot, " the police force avoids interference in quarrels. The Department of Education declares students of schools within Nukan to be "chaotic" and "abnormal." Also, by not providing the essential substructures, they transfer students of certain grades to other regions, which results in even more labeling when students get into quarrels in those regions. On another hand, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, tenants and women gathering in alleys to talk and pass time propagate and sustain such suppositions. In conclusion, in the process of Nukan's stigmatization, not only coarse language and impressions, but also people's behaviors in everyday life play a decisive role.

This study explores the action, conditions governing the action, practical factors, and strategic approaches of the builders in the housing market. It is an exploratory, qualitative, applied, and cross-sectional research. Accordingly, a systematic analysis of the in-depth interview with 25 people in the housing market in Mashhad was conducted using the Strauss and Corbin's ground theory method. As a result, 256 sub-categories were obtained, and after several coding steps, finally, based on selective coding, the central phenomenon was called "technocratic builders in the struggle for interest and credit". The obtained paradigmatic model included a set of conditions. For example, ground conditions have been formulated as "the economic situation of the metropolitan of Mashhad" and "socio-cultural changes in the pattern of urban housing". Interventional conditions include "decline expertise of housing construction", and "the evolution of the share of land value in housing prices". Causal conditions include "the ability to manage multiple activities", "having the necessary capital or the possibility to absorb it" and "awareness of market conditions". Taking strategies such as "participatory construction", "continuous construction" and "change in construction pattern" lead to the consequences like the "periodic ups and downs at the level of builder performance", "involving with the challenge of balancing profit and loss".

This study was conducted to investigate the reception of rural women of Eastern Miankouh of Pol-e-Dokhtar in Iran from the TV series Gozar Az Ranjha (Passing through Sufferings), which was broadcasted from channel one of the Iranian National TV (IRIB TV1) during the winter of 2014. A sample of 21 women were selected purposively, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the data. The criterion for determining the sample size was theoretical saturation. To analyze the data, thematic analysis was used. The findings indicate that the women, in various social situations, actively received the dominant discourse of the film series. In fact, the type of decryption was in a spectrum that we categorized as oppositional, hegemonic and negotiated positions. The results showed that the rural women made modifications based on their own discourse access in the values and ideals of the text, discussed by them based on their own social and cultural milieu. They modified the meanings of the dominant discourse, including dual contrasts, ideal type of womanhood and psychological orientation based on their position, and they expanded and developed new meanings, such as “the decisive role of men” and “escape from sufferings”. The series attracted the rural audience for entertainment, earning pleasure, participating in group discussions, identification with the roles, etc.  Overall, the findings support the theory of ‘active audience’ even for the case of the studied rural women.

The present study is essentially a research in the field of social psychology and studies the status of youth value orientations in Sanandaj (18-29), which reflects the transcendental and desirable goals and their priorities and beliefs in relation to identity styles. The research method is descriptive-analytic, correlative, applied, survey and cross-sectional (second half 2018). The sample size was 345 and sampling was done by multi-stage cluster sampling. The empirical findings indicated a significant and positive relationship between the style of information identification with the dimensions of oppenness to change and the index of success in the self-enhancing dimension of cultural values; a normative style with a conservative dimension and finally, the style of diffused identification with cultural values ​​in relation to emphasis on individual interests such as values ​​related to self-improvement. Theoretically, it can be pointed out that, despite the focus on distinct aspects, there is a kind of theoretical and content integrity and overlapping hypotheses, especially in relation to human motivations in these two typologies (identity styles and cultural values) and theoretical discussion in direction of the self, identity and culture. Such a situation can most often be construed as Weberian debate as "selective relationship" (Saboori, 2009) between identity styles and cultural values.

Emotion in the field of sociology has been considered as a social structure, therefore, it can be concluded that social factors play a pivotal role in its development and interpretation. The present study intends to draw attention to the issue of unhappiness as an important emotion from the sociological point of view and to examine its social backgrounds among university students. On the basis of theories in the realm of sociology of emotions (Symbolic Interaction, Ritual Interaction, Human Social Exchange, Dramaturgical Theory, Power and Social Base), this survey has been conducted as quantitative research  on the sample of 381 students from Allameh Tabataba’i University who were selected through the stratified sampling method. The results showed a significant relationship between unhappiness and the variables of their place of residence and place of education. Therefore, the students who lived in dormitories felt more unhappiness than dwellers whose families were in the city where they studied and the self-supporting students of independent campuses. Furthermore, the relationship between the main independent variables (inability to manage emotions, social rejection, distrust, social unconformity, and feeling powerless) and unhappiness was meaningful. Feeling powerless, inability to manage emotions and social unconformity explained the most variance of unhappiness respectively.

From the seventies onwards, Iran saw the emergence of New Sprituality and the increase in the tendency towards it, primarily confined to fringe groups which later on spread rapidly among different classes. The present study examines the causes and contexts of this tendency among different groups of citizens in Tehran by using the factors mentioned in various theoretical approaches. To achieve this goal, 23 semi-structured interviews were first conducted with New Spiritualists. Then, according to the results of the interviews, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among 600 citizens of Tehran. Sampling was done purposefully in the qualitative section and randomly from the blocks of Tehran in the quantitative section. The interviews were analyzed by the thematic analysis method, and the quantitative data were processed through the SPSS software and various tests such as Pearson correlation and linear regression. The results indicated a significant relationship between five factors and the tendency towards new spirituality. The ethical stress, emotionalism, access to new spirituality, and experiencing suffering had respectively the strongest to the weakest direct relationships and deprivation had a reverse relationship.

At the present time, technology has become an integral part of the social existence of humans and is the most important factor in the social transformation of societies. However, different societies, given their cultural capabilities, have been various responses to technology. Some societies with the proper understanding of the nature of modern technology have used it as an unimaginable opportunity for their progress. Others have contributed to the importation of technology as a contingency, and now they are struggling with many cultural implications. The main question of the article is, what is our encountering with technology, and what analyzes and solutions have been provided by our thinkers in this regard? To answer this question, at first, various views on technology were put forward and strengths and weaknesses of each of them were elaborated in detail. Then, from the historical, philosophical, social, cultural and political point of view, we tried to analyze how our society encounters with modern technology. The results showed that in addition to the paradoxical approach to the technology in our society, systematic efforts to understand the problematic of technology have not been made.