فصلنامه جامعه شناسی کاربردی
سال سی و سوم شماره 3 (پیاپی 87، پاییز 1401)

“Tax system reform plan” is one of the basic parts of socio-economic development strategies in Iran. This reform is based on a comprehensive program for developing and deploying new Information Technology (IT) and improving the efficiency of the tax system. In this program, integrated tax software and databases are created and developed in order to tackle tax evasion and tax fraud. Despite the social agreement about the necessity of technological reform in tax system, changes are slow and no expected results have been achieved. Factors, such as delays in the implementation of this plan and ambiguity about its socio-economic effects, along with the conflicts of interest of the different groups involved in changes, have led to different perceptions among tax system actors and caused resistance to change. Understanding the actors’ perceptions, possible conflicts, and agreements facilitates the design and implementation of technological programs, as well as dealing with social resistances. This research focused on 3 groups of actors involved in technological changes of tax system: policy makers (top managers of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and tax administration) as the strategists of reform plans and tax officers and taxpayers, who were users of the new information system. In this article, the different actors’ perceptions about technological changes in the tax system were studied. In this regard, a sociological approach was deployed by using the concepts of structuration. In addition to Giddens’s dimensions of the duality of structure, “duality of technology” as the Structuration model of technology was considered by the authors. This conceptual framework allowed a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology, organizational structure, and actors. 

Matching the concepts of Structuration theory with the subject of this article, the actors’ discursive and practical awarenesses were considered as a manifestation of their perceptions. The actors’ discursive consciousness about the interactions between IS and the tax system structure was assumed as their explanation of the ideal state of this phenomenon. On the other hand, their practical consciousness was considered as their real experiences about it. According to Giddens, structure is the sum of “rules and resources organized as the properties of social systems”. In this article, the structures included rules, such as laws, policies, strategies, formal organizational structures, and internal and external organizational resources, including budget, technical equipment, human resources, and knowledge. In this study, a narrative research method was used to go beyond personal opinions and recognize collective views and mindsets. From among the narrative research types, “analysis of narrative” was chosen. The stories were collected as data and analyzed with paradigmatic processes. Paradigmatic analysis results in the descriptions of the themes that are held across the stories or in the taxonomies of types of stories, characters, or settings. Applying this method allowed the researchers to achieve a general model based on the common themes by combining individual experiences. In this study, two different tools were used to collect the actors’ stories. Due to the difficulty of accessing the policy makers and senior officials of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance and the tax system, their narratives were collected by referring to the texts of the interviews and the ministers’ official reports of economy and heads of the Tax Organization. Through judgmental sampling of the texts, 11 interviews and reports were selected and analyzed. The stories of the tax officers (18 persons were interviewed) and tax payers (24 persons were interviewed) were collected through in-depth interviews.

The narratives of each group of actors reflected their priorities and expectations of technological changes, as well as their experiences in this regard. The results revealed the actors' perceptions about the consequences of technological changes in the tax system, the rules and resources that affected it, and how technology interacted with those rules and resources. In addition, the conflicts and agreements related to the actors’ perceptions were identified. According to the analysis results of the narratives, the tax policy-makers believed that the reform plans had improved the rules and regulations of the tax system and enhanced its performance. They emphasized on the role of IS in facilitating the collection of taxpayers' financial information (as the most important factor in tax audits), implementing new risk-based tax audit methods, and deploying BI as a tool. In contrast, the tax officers and taxpayers believed that the reforms had not met the expectations due to the lack of training programs and cultural challenges. They believed that deploying IT had complicated work processes and increased conflicts between the tax officers and taxpayers.

As a source of government revenue for the provision of various social, welfare, and cultural services, taxes have a long history. With regard to their role in the economic and social developments of societies despite the lack of desirable and a voluntary tax payment behavior, it is necessary to identify the social contexts of tax payment so as to encourage trust and public participation in this process. Thus, this study aimed to explore the social contexts for tax payment behavior and identify the conditions and factors that play a role in increasing or decreasing public trust and participation in it.  

To meet the purpose of the research and achieve a deep understanding of the social context concerning this issue, an interpretive paradigm and qualitative approach was employed based on the grounded theory. The theoretical purposive sampling was used to select the participants. The financial managers of production companies in Yazd Province in Iran, who had lived experiences of the context and consented to participate in this research, were selected as the target community. 13 managers with different ages and work and management experiences participated in the study. The data obtained from the interviews were transcribed and analyzed as soon as they were collected so as to reveal the relevant ambiguous and sensitive points and obtain the final theory; thus, the researcher could pay more attention to them in the subsequent interviews. Sampling continued until the theoretical saturation was reached. At the open coding stage, the text was analyzed line by line (sometimes word by word) and the annotations and additional explanations were written as comments in the Microsoft Word file in the margins of the interview text and the attached concepts. In the next stage, the obtained concepts and subcategories were reduced to the main categories and the core category was constructed in relation to the main categories and subcategories obtained from the previous two stages based on a fixed comparison technique. Finally, to show the structure and process of the discovery and construction of the core category, a paradigm model was drawn up, which consisted of 5 sections: causal conditions, contextual conditions, intervening conditions, axial phenomenon, strategies, and consequences. Throughout the process, we adhered to the ethics and scientific principles by maintaining confidentiality of the information and using nicknames for the participants, besides observing other ethical considerations, such as participant’s consent and non-manipulation of data. 

The research findings indicated 29 main categories and one core category entitled "tax value inversion". Based on this paradigm model, the evidence from the participants' narratives and theoretical design of the research was presented. The research results demonstrated the formation of axial phenomenon called "tax evasion/compulsory taxation". In this way, the actors were faced by a situation that involved coercion and mutual distrust, especially institutional distrust. Accordingly, they were reluctant to pay taxes and even avoided paying them. They made various justifications and excuses to legitimize their tax evasion, resulting in the reduced amount of the paid taxes. However, once they failed in their tax evasion, they were forced by the tax officers to pay them. In general, it could be said that a number of micro and especially macro factors played a role in directing either a voluntary or evasive tax behavior. Both cultural factors, such as a weak tax culture, taxpayers' misconceptions of the tax system functions, and their intentions, and structural and macro factors, including political, economic, and social conditions, played roles in the voluntary or odd taxpayers' performance. For example, the results indicated that economic anomalies, self-interpretation of laws, lack of transparency of tax laws, and structural corruption played significant roles in the taxpayers' increased dissatisfaction and tendencies to evade taxes. Also, it could be said that one of the excuses and justifications made by the actors and taxpayers for tax evasion was a kind of covert protest against the structural conditions of the society, such as political distrust, social despair in improving the situation, expanded injustice, and lack of transparency in taxation and economy. In fact, taxation has lost its value and meaning and become as an anti-value in tandem with the improper structural conditions of the society, economy, and culture. All these have led to collective/national disorder, reproduction of anomic distrust, and very little development in tax systems.

Lived experience in the life-world is an interdisciplinary concept, according to which the sociological understanding of films is made possible by a phenomenological approach. In this research, we extended Husserl's life-world notion to the world of films and reached the concept of "the symbolic life world of films". Film is a social production and plays a role in the construction of the social world. Therefore, it can be said that the world of everyday life continues in the world of films as well. In this world, intersubjectivity takes on a symbolic aspect, that is, the characters’ lived experience is expressed in cinematic language. In the symbolic life-world of films and the intersubjective relationships of characters, the themes related to the embodiment and self-experience can be described phenomenologically. The main purpose of this research was to study embodiment and self-experience in the narration and actions of male and female characters in Iranian cinema from the 1980s to the 2010s. The main question was how embodiment and self-experience of the subjects are were constructed in the intersubjective relations.  

This research was done with the aim of understanding embodiment and self-experience in the symbolic life-world of films through the method of descriptive phenomenology and thematic analysis. To this goal, 6 Iranian films were selected from the 1980s to the 2010s by using intensity sampling, in which the embodiment and self-experience of the subjects were portrayed as philosophical and problematic ideas as follows: Maybe Another Time, Hamun, Passengers, Unruled Paper, Bright Nights, and Subdued. After selecting the samples, deep observation and coding, as well as other analytical steps, were performed. The key sequences and dialogues of each film were selected and compared after several observations. By replaying and watching the films in slow and fast motions, we were able to obtain the data that might have been overlooked in real observations. Due to the in-text nature of this study, we sought to extract meanings and concepts by coding the internal space of the images. In the theme analysis, we sought the general structure of meaning, not fragmented themes and categories. Therefore, the findings of this study included the themes that showed the general semantic structure and context of the subjects under study. 

The results revealed that in the studied films, the characters were in crisis in their interpersonal relationships and thus constructed in the form of self/other duality. This duality was the fundamental form of the subjects’ experiences, in which the self and the other were constructed in the intersubjective realm. The social context, in which the films had been produced over the 4 decades (the 1980s to the 2010s) constituted a specific gender structure.The embodiment of the subjects was constructed in the context of actions and role performances, whether in the form of a female or a male body. The embodiment and self-experience of the gendered subjects were based on a priori patterns in the collective intersubjective space that pitted them in opposition to each other, the most important form of which was confrontation of a man and a woman.The subject experienced himself in the self/other duality and the embodiment was a mediator for self-recovery or transformation in the other. In the 1980's, this duality had an individual form; the female body had no independent domain and was formed in another absurd (male) mental framework. The female body was an object that was extinguished under the gaze of another person and self was recovered by another one. In the 1990s, the self/other duality was drawn into the collective realm and the subjects were constituted in the form of duality of technique/collective intersubjectivity. The body and the self were recovered in the collective intersubjective frame and the nature of the technique was revealed in the forgery of the subjects. In the 2000s, the embodiment of the subjects was drawn into the realm of confrontation/transition; the embodied action of the woman passed through the absurd body of the man and left her in an abandoned world. In the 2010s, this contrast faded and the subjects were constituted in the form of co-embodiment. The collective bond merged with the fast-food physicality and sensitivity of the female body, while the subject experienced herself in the metamorphic form of the house. Contrary to the results of previous researches, which had a fixed and static understanding of the gendered body of the subjects and considered man as the dominant subject and woman as being subjugated to the patriarchal system, the findings of this study conducted through a phenomenological approach showed that the subjects were constructed in the form of a confrontation with each other.The dominant subject (male) in most films was in crisis himself and thus an absurd subject. The woman was also able to face, confront, and find transition from the man through her embodied actions.

More than 464,000 people are killed each year worldwide. Homicide as a violent crime occurs in all countries, regardless of political, religious, or economic background. It is considered as a major public health issue. In explaining homicide, some studies have examined this phenomenon at the macro level and tried to explain the relationship between economic indicators and homicide. As a result, 4 approaches have been developed.  The first view is that by improving economic indicators, homicide rates decrease. The mechanism of this negative relationship involves the effect of economic development on reducing or eliminating deprivation. Economic deprivation causes anger, frustration, and aggression. By lowering the tolerance threshold, it paves the way for murder in the society. The second view is that by improving economic indicators, homicide rates increase. The mechanism of this positive relationship is that the improvement of economic indicators would lead to urbanization, which weakens social cohesion and control by increasing heterogeneity and inequality and thus, the homicide rate rises in the society. The third view is that by declining economic indicators, homicide rates increase. The mechanism of this positive relationship originates from Durkheim's idea, which states that in the context of economic recession, one's status is impaired and individuals have difficulty in matching their expectations and abilities. The last view is that by declining economic recession, homicide rates decrease. The mechanism of this negative relationship originates from Henry and Short's idea of how people interpret this situation. If they attribute their misery and deprivation to macroeconomics and its performance, the homicide rate will decrease, but if they attribute their feelings to themselves, the homicide rate will raise. Although Iran is considered as one of the low-rate countries in terms of homicide, the homicide rate has been fluctuated during the past three decades. Since there is no longitudinal study of the relationship between economic indicators and homicide in Iran, the key question of the present study was whether there was a relationship between economic indicators and homicide rates in Iran or not.  

This time-series study examined the relationship between economic indicators, including GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment, women's participation in labor force, and the internet penetration, and homicide rate during 1995-2018. The research data were collected from the Iranian Statistical Center, the Central Bank of Iran, the Iranian police, and the World Bank. To investigate the short-run and long-run relationship between the variables, Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method was applied in Microfit 5 software. 

Based on the results, the long-run relationship of economic indices and homicide rate showed that GDP per capita and the internet penetration negatively affected homicide and women's participation in labor force had a positive impact on it. Moreover, there was no significant relationship of unemployment and inflation with homicide. The negative relationship between GDP per capita, the internet penetration, and homicide obviously confirmed the first theoretical approach (the more improving the economic indicators were, the less homicide rates appeared). On the other hand, the positive relationship between women's participation in labor force and homicide clearly affirmed the second theoretical perspective (the more improving the economic indicators were, the more homicide rates occurred). In the end, the following two key limitations had to be considered: 1) Iran's economy is mainly a state economy that is dependent on oil export and affected by foreign sanctions. Thus, a part of fluctuations in the economic indicators during the period of 1995-2018 was influenced by intensifying or improving the above mentioned factors, which could not be controllable by the author ; 2) There were other variables for measuring economic indicators, to which the author did not have access. It is clear that they must be also tested in order to obtain a more obvious perspective on the relationship between economic indices and homicide rates.

The spread of corona virus is an unprecedented challenge in the human world. Corona crisis, first of all, suspended the current and normal routines of life and stopped the interpersonal relations of human beings and social institutions. The lack of accurate knowledge of this virus and its consequences in the human world has led to a complex situation and the possibility of its continuation has given us the idea of an uncertain future. The epidemic has been so rapid that social, economic, educational, and political institutions have not been able to properly deal with the new phenomenon; it has been an issue that has caused confusion among them. Under such circumstances, suspension of the society in an epidemic, or more precisely a pandemic, has led to a situation that has shocked all aspects and infrastructures of social life. Thus, serious rethinking in all aspects of individual and social life is required. Undoubtedly, one of the large groups that have experienced very different conditions during this period has been the group of "housewives". "She is a woman, who does housework," says Anne Oakley in her definition of a housewife. The combination of "woman" and "home" in one phrase creates a connection between femininity, marriage, and family residence. Therefore, the role of a housewife is a family or rather a female role. She also has an internship role. A study of domestic work is necessarily a study of women’s status and roles. Such a multiple and at the same time personal role may seem to negate the conventional definitions of the word "role". In a woman's social image, her role as a wife and mother is inseparable from that of a housewife. Housekeeping is a manifestation of the division of labor by gender, according to which men and women are expected to engage only in a specific category of work that is predetermined and not discrete at the individual level. In this division, women are considered responsible for household chores and raising children, which involve a low-income job. As a result, they are financially dependent on men and do not have access to their own money. Accordingly, the present study sought to answer the following questions based on the data analysis of the dimensions of this process of change and transformation: 1) What challenges have housewives faced with the outbreak of coronavirus disease?; 2) What strategies have they taken in facing the challenges and what factors have influenced their strategies?; 3) What are the consequences of the strategies they have adopted? 

The research method was based on the Grounded Theory (GT) considering its qualitative nature. In this method, the concepts and categories are extracted from interviews and presented in a paradigm model during the 3 stages of open, central, and selective coding. In the present study, the open coding stage was followed until the discovery of the main classes after transcribing each interview into text. This research was conducted on the population of housewives aged over 20 years in Boroujerd City in 2022. 

In response to the question of what challenges the housewives had faced with the outbreak of coronavirus disease, the results showed that they had been forced to play several simultaneous roles at home and under the banner of role more frequently than before due to the causal conditions resulted from this outbreak. In other words, they had faced a challenge called "increasing role multiplicity", which revealed the subject under study as the central phenomenon during the process of coding and analysis. The causal conditions that had given rise to the phenomenon of "increasing role multiplicity" included the mechanisms of prevention (housewife), care (mother), assistance (spouse), education (teacher and student), treatment (nurse), and telecommuting (employee). 2) In response to the second question, the actors had adopted the action of "changing the role of housewife" as a result of the phenomenon of "increasing role multiplicity". This change was in the form of one of the three types of housekeeping as monitoring, a challenge, and a compromise. The concept of "housewife" means a strategy through a monitoring method. In this research, the housewives were found to have tried to fulfill all the plans with all-round management at the same time as multiplicity correctly and with the least conflict. The concept of "housewife" referred to the reaction of a group of housewives, who had not been able to cope well with the challenges posed by the outbreak of coronavirus and as a result, this challenging situation had caused many tensions and conflicts for the households. They had  a family of their own, but had not only been unable to manage the situation, but also had difficulty in performing their previous roles and thus felt a double burden. The concept of "housewife" also referred to the reaction of housewives, who had tried to overcome the problems caused by the outbreak of the mentioned disease with the cooperation and assistance of other family members. Although this group of women was not as empowered as the group of housewives, it was not helpless as the latter group, thus being involved in the middle situation. They had tried to manage the already changed affairs of home and family to some extent by asking for help from other family members. Two groups of conditions had influenced the types of strategies adopted by the actors: a) The underlying condition that was seemingly unrelated to the strategies but acted as a platform for their adoption based on the prevalence rate of coronavirus disease. This condition was influenced by the demographic characteristics of age, education, marital status, occupation, number, sex, children’s age and education, spouse’s occupation, and family income and expenses; and b) Interventional condition that acted as a mediator and facilitated or limited strategy adoption. This condition included the psychological characteristics of gender socialization, cyber skills, social support, and government support (empowerment).
3) In response to what consequences resulted from the strategies they had adopted, we should say that the actors had experienced different consequences depending on what kinds of strategies they had adopted. For example, those who had adopted the role of housewife as monitoring and adaptive strategies had seen a positive outcome called "gender empowerment," which included increased self-confidence in the individual dimension and group dynamics and prevalence control in the collective dimension. However, the actors who had adopted housekeeping as a challenge (house-to-house) strategy had experienced the negative consequences of "gender disability", which included psychological stress and depression in the individual dimension and family tension in the collective dimension.

School is a mechanism, by which students gradually experience social-political issues and learn social behaviors. Therefore, school in general and textbooks in particular play a crucial role in students’ socialization. Textbooks as something that shape the structure of emotion in the school setting are the special characteristics of a country. Identity and specialness of a country are its logic and actually its mental image. In fact, textbook content is a stimulus that can be effective in shaping students' national beliefs. This study investigated national identity and how it was presented in Iranian Junior highschool the social science textbooks, as well as how educational discourse answered the question of collective identity in these books. The importance of such studies was to remind authors of the textbooks and educational planners so as to pay attention to identity components when designing the contents of these books and establish a balance in the texts in this regard. This differed from other studies on national identity since dealing with the issue differently. Researches on national identity have sought to answer the questions of what roles have textbooks in strengthening national identity or how religious identity is superior to other aspects of identity in the books under study, while there is less to do with reconstruction of identity.  

This investigation was done based on Laclau and Muffe Theory. Data analysis was done based on conceptualization and discourse semiotics proposed by Soltani (2014). There are two semiotic systems, i.e., image and text in textbooks; therefore, using the above method, the texts and images in the textbooks of social studies for guidance school students of the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades published in 2017 were analyzed and interpreted to include 3 stages: first, textual analysis, by which each book was analyzed individually. In this stage, sampling and analyzing were done through the written texts and images. Second, intertextual analysis, by which all the mentioned textbooks were analyzed in relation to each other based on Laclau and Muffe Theory. In the third stage, contextual analysis was done, by which propounded discourses in the textbooks were analyzed with regard to macro social and cultural discourses based on Laclau and Muffe Theory. In his discourse based on semiotic method, Soltani (2014) tried to propose a model, based on which analysis of long texts could be facilitated. Combining his method with Laclau and Muffe Theory would result in a model that provided micro and macro explanations simultaneously. 

The findings indicated that giving priority to religious discourse and presenting Iranian identity based on Islamic ideology, making a critical picture of all governments before Islam development and Islamic Revolution, reinforcing Occidentalism, and dividing the world into Islamic/non-Islamic societies were the all things that students learnt from the textbooks of social science studies. Thus, it seemed that Iranian government was based on Islamic culture; in this sense, Iranian identity was a reconstructed culture to restore the former societies against the western culture. Therefore, in Iran, government was formed by defining a legitimated and Shia’-oriented culture and naturalizing it in a systematic way through such tools as education.Boosting traditional identification in educational textbooks was what was generally followed by authors of the textbooks in Iran. In  fact, there was a close connection of space, time, and culture in a given land that met identity needs. In this sense, human beings easily achieve the identity and the meaning they need within their small, stable, and united worlds. However, the reality is that the media, advertising system, and the globalization process in general have greatly reduced the possibility of traditional identification and continuation of this practice in textbooks could lead to a kind of identity crisis.

One of the most important characteristics of every family is the way of communication and interactions between family members. This desirable communication would guarantee family health and consequently health in the society. Individuals in a family use various methods to solve family problems, some of which lead to the creation or destruction of interactive conetxts. Dialogue is one of the most important elements of communication skills and a social action in families. Problem-solving methods in a family can be considered to be dialogue-oriented or anti-dialogue methods. Today, families have delegated many of its responsibilities to other social institutions. Their most important task is to establish desirable and constructive relationships and create a dialogue-based context among family members. Unfortunately, the average dialogue between couples in Iranian families is about 15 minutes according to the latest research in the country. This indicates a sharp decline in dialogue among Iranian families (Radiogoftogoo, 2018). Also, many damages the family context, including inequality, unbalanced distribution of power, domestic violence, emotional divorce, extramarital relationships, generation gap, etc. originate from incorrect and anti-dialogue methods in problem-solving, as well as the weakness of the culture of dialogue, which has been intensified by sexist discourse at various levels of the family and society. Therefore, scientific research in this field is necessary. This study aimed to explain the problem-solving process through dialogue among couples in Yazd City with a sociological approach.  

This interpretive research was based on a qualitative method. Among the various methods of qualitative research, it used the grounded theory strategy with Strauss and Corbin's objectivist approach. Samples were selected through purposive and theoretical sampling to achieve saturation. 31 couples were selected from among normal families in Yazd City. In-depth interviews were utilized for data collection. With the permission of the participants, the interviews were recorded. Each interview lasted between 70 and 180 minutes. Theoretical coding method was also applied to analyze the data and develop the grounded theory. Then, the recorded interviews containing all the details were converted into a text. The analysis process was performed simultaneously with data collection. Strauss and Corbin’s method was employed for data analysis. The data were analyzed line-by-line for open-coding. Also, along with the development of concepts and categories and construction of the basis of the grounded theory, axial and selective coding were utilized. Finally, a research paradigm model was presented. The validity of the findings was ensured via prolonged engagement, peer review, negative case analysis, member-checking and deep description. 

The present study aimed to explain the problem-solving process through dialogue among Yazdi couples. The collected data were categorized into open, axial, and selective coding, including 18 main categories and 67 sub-categories. These categories were presented in one core category of "dissonance in problem-solving Pendolic behaviors". Then, the paradigm model and theoretical scheme of the research were presented. The results generally showed the dissonance of couples in problem-solving in a family formed based on the lifeworld of gender, power structure, and family structure and function. In fact, the culture of gender that governed the society and the family structure of each couple had caused gender differences in individuals, some of which were related to biological differences between the two sexes and most of them were due to cultural and social structures of the society and cultural and educational contexts of families. The rotational and interaction effects of these factors, which had caused differences between couples, had affected the problem-solving process and methods in families. They had caused dissonance in the methods taken by each couple to solve their problems. In general, couples' strategies for solving their problems can be summarized into the two opposing strategies of compromise and violence/avoidance. Compromise includes constructive and desirable strategies that ultimately aims to reach an agreement and empathy to solve problems. It is based on dialogue and thinking together. The strategy of avoidance/violence is related to the people, who prefer to run away from family problems and issues, remain silent, or destroy the desired interaction contexts by aggression, which destroys the context of dialogue. Therefore, dissonance in strategies, which is due to heterogeneity in couples’ views and attitudes and is affected by social and cultural structures, culture of gender, and power structure in the family, leads to intensification of conflicts and family issues. It makes each couple use a different method for solving problems and consider his/her own method as the best method.