فصلنامه جامعه شناسی کاربردی
سال سی و یکم شماره 3 (پیاپی 79، پاییز 1399)

 One of the fundamental questions of demographers and sociologists is why the fertility rate has decreased during the recent ages. Social scientists consider different factors to explain fertility behavior changes in the 20th and 21st centuries. Here, the main question is what changes have been occurred in the awareness of the modern individual and how she sees childbearing. Iran is also one of the countries which have seen a remarkable decline in fertility rate over the last 50 years. This research investigates the awareness of married women about childbearing.

The research has been performed by the phenomenological method. Childbearing experiences and awareness of 11 married women have been studied in this research. In effect, every Phenomenological study includes in-depth explanations and accurate analysis of lived experience. The current study has been performed by Mostakas method. In the first stage, the problem of research is developed and then the philosophical and phenomenological assumptions are collected. Also, purposive and also accessible samplings have been applied in this study. The researcher has studied the experience and consciousness of 11 married women aged 15-40.  In the third stage, the investigator collected the research information using the deep interview method. In the last stage, the researcher has analyzed the data and extracted meaningful and important propositions or semantic units, clusters, and themes from the phrases.
 

According to the current research findings, childbearing social phenomenon includes central themes such as childbearing meaning, children's ideal number, children's rational number, children's sexual preference, childbearing reasons, childbearing barriers, excessive rational childbearing barriers, concerns for childbearing, concerns for not having children, the experience of having children, pregnancy experience, pregnancy imagination, following mother's childbearing pattern, the reasons for the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of children's number in source family, and finally, how the mother encourages them to have children. It is worth noting that this social phenomenon is resulted from participants' inter-subjectivity on childbearing. To the research participants, the meaning of childbearing includes sacrificing, developing marital life, meeting emotional needs, and fulfilling the desire of childbearing. The average of children's ideal number for each studied woman is 2.7. The average of children's rational number, which means the number of children that every woman can have by considering her situations, is 1.4. Participants prefer to have the girl rather than the boy. The childbearing reasons include religious beliefs, developing marital relationship, the desire of being a mother, the negation of having only one child, and the functions which are accompanied with childbearing for the parents. According to the participants, these functions are emotional. Childbearing barriers cover economic, social, and psychological barriers, disorder in marital relationship, the desire of development, the ideals of raising a child, and cognitive reasons. Childbearing barriers which are excessive rational contain economic barriers, social barriers, lack of source family support, negative lived experience, the fear of being pregnant and also the fear of giving birth, the desire of development, the importance of child quality, child problems, and individual limitations. The concern about childbearing covers economic circumstances, employment, education, and the difficulty of raising a child. The major concern of not having a child is the fear of loneliness. The experience of having children contains its difficulties and pleasures. The pregnancy experience includes the feeling of concern, maternal feelings, difficult or simple pregnancy, and having an abortion. Moreover, the majority of women who have no children felt anxious by the imagination of being pregnant. Most of the participants prefer not to follow the childbearing pattern of their mother (which was almost 4 children). Also, most of the mother participants encourage them for childbearing. Finally, it can be said that cultural changes on childbearing should be considered in Iran's demographic policies. In fact, childbearing is changing in Iran and becomes multidimensional which includes not only the economic factors, but also socio-cultural ones.

Death-related indicators are the basis for determining the health status of a community and performing health planning. Death occurs over time, so the best way to collect data about it is the registration system. However, there are inaccurate results from the death registration system in most developing countries, and there is no confidence in their death registration coverage. Incomplete death registration coverage means that not all deaths are recorded and therefore underestimated mortality rates calculated for the population. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of death registration coverage in the civil registration system in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The basic assumption in this study is that the information in the cemeteries is the most complete data regarding death, so the research method is based on comparing the statistics in the cemetery with those recorded in the registry system. The death registration cover for Yazd province is estimated to be similar to the national level in previous studies, so it has been used in this study as a baseline study. In the initial evaluation of death data, three counties were selected from the province: Mehriz, Ashkzar, and Yazd. All cemeteries in towns and villages in the selected cities were visited and information was collected from the graves of the dead, including the name, surname and father's name. This information was then tracked in the registry system and their death registration status was checked. The study was conducted on deaths occurring in 2016 (1395 AH).

Keeping track of death data in the registry system indicates that most of them (over than 95%) have been registered. But there is a more important issue and it is the accuracy of the registered data. Death registration for adults is mainly affected by displacement error of residence and place of death, and child death registration, in addition to displacement error, is affected by error in recording postnatal death including abortion. The deaths of each county were calculated based on the total number of deaths recorded at the county location and most of the dead were buried in the central cemetery of the province and then transferred to their place of residence, but their registration was carried out at the cemetery site and was therefore calculated as the death of the central county of the province. A clear example of this is that, 80% of the dead women in the city of Ashkzar were not registered at their place of residence and were counted as the deaths of Yazd.Regarding mortality index, it is necessary to compare the number of deaths to the exposed population and thereby to calculate the mortality rate as an indicator of health status. Population information was collected by the statistics center and was precisely based on the location of the individuals.Therefore, death data must also be precise by location to estimate the rate index correctly. The issue was more complicated with children, deaths recorded for children were far below expectations. On the one hand, for many of the children in the cemetery, no information was found in the registration system and in fact no birth registration has been made for them. On the other hand, abortion and stillbirth cases were very high. From these cases, it can be concluded that many postnatal deaths were considered as stillbirths. In addition, there was also displacement error of residence and place of death in the case of child death. Many of infant deaths occurred in central city hospitals were transferred to central cemetery and counted as central county deaths. Infant mortality rates were one of the main determinants of community health status and accuracy of these indicators was very important. So, there are two basic suggestions derived from the results of this study, 1) registering the deaths by place of residence rather than the place of death or the place of burial, and 2) accurate recording of birth and death information for postnatal death.

Video games as new types of media, have created a new form of interaction between the media and the audience through a distinct and distinctive look. Video games are the creators of social worlds that cannot be considered unreal, but they must be regarded as supernatural. This new type of media interaction incorporates functions, cultures, social feedback, and most importantly, social implications, which have made it a new social issue that differs greatly from its predecessors.

Inspired by Espen Aarseth, approaches to computer games are categorized in two categories: Narrative Approaches and Ludological Approaches. Narrative Approaches emphasize a humanist and subject-oriented stance that places computer games at the root of narrative structures that represent meaning for gamers. In contrast, the Ludological Approach believes that computer games create their own independent identity space, and that the gamer redefines itself within this context alongside other components of the game.

After briefly reviewing theoretical approaches, this article provided evidences for the strengthening of the Ludologic Approach by exploring the detailed gameplay of four prominent games, namely the Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), The Elder’s Scrolls: Skyrim, and Call of Duty (COD). In these analyses, we especially relied on theoretical perspectives of Johan Huizinga, Ludwig Joseph John Wittgenstein, Roger Caillois, Simon Gottschalk, Jesper Juul, Edward Castronova, Espen Aarseth, and Gordon Calleja.In this research, based on Jean Baudrillard's framework, we used character and structural relationships in the context of games to analyze the characters, the game world, and their relationship to the game, and looked at their characters' responses to their semiotic needs. The identity creation aspect of video games often arises in response to a common identity problem among the target audience of these games; a problem that is either socially expressed or socially constrained. That is why video games are increasingly seeking to represent the reality through simulation, and are trying to link themselves to reality in their synthetic world. So, Huizinga's view of the magic circle is being questioned, because in these video games we are not confronted with anything other than the real world and do not seek to create a boundary between the game world and the real world when doing them. They are real worlds with the aim of looking to implement the same things in these virtual worlds. What is changing here is the identity that is associated with these two different worlds, and this process of changing the identity is done in a way that can represent something presented in a playful identity that does not exist in the subject itself. Understanding the game world as a new reality, also gives rise to other aspects of a game (in the general sense). Caillois refers to it as the believable aspect of playing action; this kind of believability is due to the graphical and technical interfaces of video games in which the imagination transforms into the object that occurs in its most perfect form. That is why the aesthetic aspects of the game have their intended effect. As we move forward in the history of video games, the gameplay elements, graphics and physics of game-changing animations can play a stronger role as a real-world simulator and improve immersion as cyber text progresses. But, let's not forget that we always face a representation in video games. This does not mean that the reality is distorted, but that these representations are independent reality. They have the ‘absence and meaninglessness of that reality’ if they have real-world implications.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the discourse of cultural policy in Iran. Confronting modernity and the process of governmentalizing of the state in contemporary Iran was companioned by many transformations, events, and changes. Iran's military confrontation with modernity and the recognition of political, economic, and cultural backwardness in comparison with Europe has led to a variety of discourses in response to this question: “why are we lagging behind?” In order to change in governmental rationality and transition from the pastoral model to the modern political order, some attempts were begun. Ideal of these discourses that each of them sought to the stabilization of new meaning and transition from the old pattern was Nation-State Building. The rule of culture in the re-engineering of the spirit of the society and nation-building was very important. Mashrooteh, Pahlavi, and Islamic Republic of Iran, as three leftover states (in the Foucauldian sense) from the state-nation-building legacy in contemporary Iran, employed common cultural-rational and different cultural-technological policies to reflect on national identity. The cultural policy discourse of state, which was emerged as the unrivaled discourse and supported by economic and political structures, endeavored to impose cultural regularity in order to accelerate and facilitate the reflexive process of national identity. This discourse form the cultural component of Iranian identity. In this study, Jim McGuigan's classification of cultural policy, which is based on three stating, market, and civil-communicational policies, has been used. Here, the stating cultural policy discourse is applied as research direction.  

 In this article, we have attempted to analyze this discursive order through the method of Laclau and Moffa's Discourse Analysis. Therefore, through the laws and state statutes since the establishment of the Legislative Assembly (1285) to the present, we have analyzed the abovementioned discourse. 

The results of the paper indicated that in all three periods, the government has been the central and the defining part of cultural policy. The discourse of the state and cultural policy in Iran was articulated in the Mashrooteh, re-established with emphasis on exhibitive and cultural policies in the Pahlavi government, and the same trend continued with the emphasis on cultural engineering in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The stating cultural policy discourse in the Mashrooteh was articulated with the signifiers of "compulsory education", "public schools", "legal press", "cultural freedom", "history of Iran" and "Persian language" around the central signifier of "culture development". Therefore, this period have been called as the emergence of cultural political discourse. This discourse was rearticulated in the Pahlavi government with emphasis on exhibitive cultural policy. In this period the central signifier of "unified national culture" determined signifiers such as "nationalism", "anti-Arabism", "archaism", "linguistic assimilation", "westernization and modernity" and "uniform costume". Therefore, we have called this period as a discourse of stating cultural policy with emphasis on exhibitive cultural policy. The same procedure has continued with emphasis on cultural engineering in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the latter, the discourse of exhibitive cultural policy has continued by articulating the signifiers of "revolutionary spirit", "multicultural identity", "scientific and cultural development", "Persian language", "promotion of virtue and prevention of vice", "spirituality," and "family" around the central signifier of Islamic-Iranian culture. What is important in this articulation and re-articulation process is that the culture has been the unifying signifier for all the negative and positive programs of the stating cultural policy discourse. For this reason, the culture has not only considered as an instrument, but also it has intrinsic and immanent relation to the practices of the government. Thus, the emergence of cultural policy discourse was a rational product of confrontation with modernity in Iran.

The impact of higher education on the development is undeniable. However, some evidence suggests that an unplanned increase in the number of higher education institutions and graduate students has not led to the growth. The expansion of higher education can only lead to the economic development and the reduction of poverty and inequality that is accompanied by a quality orientation and the spread of quality culture in all pillars of the higher education system. In examining the importance of education in the process of economic development, the three approaches of human capital, human development, and the return to investment in the education are of particular importance. These approaches can be used as a theoretical framework to examine the interdependence of the education and development or to analyze the growing importance of education in the development process. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the expansion (quantitative and qualitative) of higher education with the economic development among 78 countries of the world. 

Methodologically, the present study was a comparative cross-national research in which the analysis unit was the nation state, and the research hypotheses have been tested using the secondary analysis of the data. Due to the different levels of the measurement of variables, all variables were standardized and converted to new variables (range of 0 to 100). The statistical sample of the present study included all the countries for which the data were available in the preferred period. Accordingly, 78 countries were selected as statistical samples for the hypothesis test. 

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the higher education and the economic development among 78 selected countries in the world. The results showed that the quantitative expansion of higher education had a reverse effect on the economic development. In other words, the unbridled entry of students into the higher education system, especially in developing countries without long-standing academic traditions, can reduce the quality of the previous elitist educational system and create a challenge in its internal functions. Also, it will not affect the external environment and solving social problems. On the other hand, the mismatch between the supply and demand of human resources and the lack of an organic connection between the higher education and local contexts and industries in these countries will lead to the growing wave of unemployment of university graduates, increasing the distrust of the university system and finally reducing its status. Instead of solving economic and social problems, the university will become a severe obstacle to the development and progress of the society. The results showed that the (internal) efficiency in higher education had a positive relationship with the economic development. Of course, in general, the efficiency does not necessarily turn into the economic growth, but other necessities are also required. In some countries, for example, the scientific production has increased exponentially; however, it does not necessarily mean an improvement in the environment, economic development, reduction in poverty and inequality, and the improvement of living conditions. In the post-massification area, special attention should be paid to the equality, relevance, and the quality of higher education altogether. In this regard, a high-quality education along with a high access to the higher education should be considered as two sides of the same coin, because a high access to a low-quality higher education is useless, and a high-quality education with low access is also meaningless. In addition, the results indicated that the expansion of higher education is one of the necessary conditions to achieve the development, but it is not a sufficient condition. Also, expanding the access to higher education in a balanced combination of the efficiency and the equality can pave the way for the economic development. In addition to the quantitative and qualitative expansion of the university system, to achieve a balanced and comprehensive development, other factors such as the infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and education population, market size, open market, political stability and democracy, efficiency productive goods, labor and financial markets, technological readiness, political conditions, economic and social stability, non-corruption, efficient bureaucracy, etc. should exist. In other words, in a stable political, social, and economic environment, the possibility of growth and effectiveness of scientific institutions is high.

The population of women and gender equity play a crucial role in the society’s growth and development process. This is a long-standing fact throughout human history that has been experienced in many societies across the world. It is also vitally important to mention that while gender bias and gender stereotypes exist more or less in all societies throughout the world, the existence and the extent of gender unfairness and stereotypes are still critical benchmarks for socio-economic development across the world: on the one hand, the existence and dominance of gender unfairness and stereotypes are overwhelmingly more visible in the developing countries so that women’s lives are substantially affected by gender unfairness and stereotypes; on the other hand, the opposite applies to the developed countries where gender fairness and a significantly lower level of gender stereotypes are the predominant patterns of gender dynamics of the societies in the developed world.

Methodologically, the context of this analysis is Iran which has witnessed one of the most spectacular demographic swings throughout the world in human history (McDonald, 2005) and has experienced fundamental socio-cultural changes and challenges which are also significantly associated with gender dynamics and women’s status in Iran. More specifically, the empirical research findings of this analysis are based on a recently-conducted and nationally-representative survey to explain the dimensions and differentials of gender stereotypes in Iran. The survey includes a sample of 3667 males and females aged 15 years old and over. It covers both urban and rural areas in varying parts of the country including Ahvaz, Babolsar, Bojnord, Esfarayen, Gonbade-kavos, Hamadan, Khoram-abad, and Mahmoud-abad. The present analysis employs the combined model developed by Macionis (2001) and Taylor (2003) in order to measure gender stereotypes. Using these methodological bases, the present study examines the major patterns and determinants associated with attitudes towards gender stereotypes in Iran from a socio-demographic perspective.

Generally speaking, the results of this analysis show that about one-third of the respondents have positive attitudes towards gender stereotypes. However, this general pattern is substantially affected by three major groups of determinants: demographic variables, religiosity, and gender attitudes. This suggests that gender stereotypes tend to be significantly more visible and dominant amongst the older people than the younger individuals, males than females, married people than unmarried individuals, rural residents than urban residents, illiterates and low-educated people than individuals with higher tertiary education.Additionally, the results of this analysis have revealed that people’s attitude towards gender stereotypes is significantly associated with their religiosity. This means that the higher the level of religiosity is, the stronger the attitude towards gender stereotypes will be. However, when the level of religiosity decreases, the attitude towards gender stereotypes also witnesses a decreasing trend. For instance, half of those with the highest level of religiosity hold a positive attitude towards gender stereotypes, whereas this proportion falls substantially down to one-third amongst those with the lowest level of religiosity. Another example relates to the fact that positive attitudes towards gender stereotypes are significantly stronger among the believers of full hijab, as compared with those who believe in modest types of dress codes for women.Furthermore, the results of this study indicate the key fact that attitudes towards gender roles have substantially key effects on gender stereotypes: the more conservative the former, the stronger the latter. For example, according to the research findings of this analysis, the stronger attitudes towards gender stereotypes exist overwhelmingly amongst those who believe in the male-breadwinner traditional model and disagree with women’s employment outside the home. In sum, the main patterns observed in this analysis and discussed in this paper can be explained by theories of modernization and changing values, suggesting that modern and liberal approaches tend to play a fundamental role in individuals’ attitudes towards gender stereotypes in Iran.

Today, water scarcity and pollution have endangered the lives of millions of earth's inhabitants, especially in poor countries. According to statistics, 80% of the world's population have access to only 20% of safe and healthy water supplies. Water-borne illnesses are also the cause of many deaths in poor countries. Thus, with over-harvesting and contamination of water resources, the global water crisis will escalate and political and social tensions will increase in the global arena, especially in arid and semiarid countries (Maleki et al., 2014). Increasing demand for water has put pressure on water supply systems and this has created environmental problems such as overuse of water resources and disrupting the ecological balance (Rafizadeh, 2015). The country uses about 150 billion cubic meters of surface and ground water resources annually, which now accounts for more than 60 percent of water capacity for various uses. According to global indices of a country that consumes more than 40% of its water resources, it has entered a phase of water stress, so Iran has entered this phase, an event that will likely lead to serious crises if the current trend of consumption and non-implementation of compensatory policies continues (Sabet Raftar, 2002: 3).

The research method of this research was survey. The research tool was a questionnaire and 300 people were selected to determine the sample size based on Cochran formula. The sampling method was multi-stage cluster random sampling. Face and structural validities were used to determine the validity of the research questionnaire. Cronbach's alpha method was used to determine the validity and reliability of the research. SPSS software was used for data analysis. The data analysis was descriptive-analytical performed in two levels of descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results showed that the subjective participation of the respondents with an average of 3.80 indicated a high level of participation, with 63.7% of the respondents saying that they were mentally high and 2.7% were very low. The research data showed that the objective participation of women was moderate (mean 3.16). The frequency distribution of the respondents showed that 39.7% of the respondents stated that they were objectively average. The data showed that overall female participation was moderate (Mean= 3.21).The results of regression analysis showed that the research variables explain 22.2% of changes in the participation of rural women. The highest impact on the dependent variable was for the organizational support variable, followed by traditional values ​​and norms, and the income variable was the third most influential factor on women's participation.The results showed that the respondents were relatively mentally prepared to participate in water use management, but had a low level of objective and practical participation. On the other hand, some organizations such as Water and Wastewater, Agricultural Jihad, councils and other relevant bodies offer programs and measures to encourage women to increase the participation of rural women in water consumption management. It can be in the form of lectures, numerous meetings with women, distributing brochures and encouraging actions to manage water consumption.The findings also showed that traditional values ​​and norms are a major obstacle to women's active participation in water consumption management. Traditional norms and beliefs limit the role and presence of women in the society and women are not allowed to attend meetings, lectures, and conferences. Due to patriarchal culture, men are the main decision makers in many areas and women do not play much role in the decision-making process, and women are threatened and punished if they do not follow the norms and traditions. Therefore, one of the serious challenges of active women's participation is the power of rural beliefs and traditions that do not allow women to participate actively in decision-making in the field of water and face limitations, and this prevents them from actively participating.