فصلنامه مطالعات و تحقیقات اجتماعی در ایران
سال یازدهم شماره 4 (زمستان 1401)

Due to social changes related to modernization, such as advances in health care technology, economic development, and advances in education, the position of the elderly in modern society has changed, and these changes have created problems and challenges for the elderly, the most important of which is marginalization and feelings of loneliness. Many seniors describe aging as a time of loneliness and fear it as an unpleasant experience. Although this feeling can be exacerbated by issues such as retirement, declining social relationships, increasing illness, and the death of a loved one, it is consistently overlooked. The purpose of this study is to analyze older people’s lived experience of loneliness from a sociological perspective and to examine how they cope with and adapt to loneliness.

This article examines the lived experiences of older people whose children have left home. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 elderly men and women in Tehran and the collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The research area was some parks in Tehran because the interviewees could be easily reached there. The criterion for ending the interviews was data saturation.

The results of this study obtained by content analysis indicate 3 main themes (perception of loneliness, causes of loneliness, and compensation of loneliness) and 11 subthemes (fateful perception, satisfactory perception, conflicting perception, conflicting perception, marriage of children and death of spouse, distance one place, parenting styles, restoration of social relations, communication with God, and participation in some social and exchange-based activities.

The results of this study show that most study participants, whether they have fewer or more children, have experienced feelings of loneliness, but their perceptions and experiences of loneliness vary by social and cultural characteristics. For example, older people who are in a good financial position use bartering or some type of bargaining. That is, they provide services from their parents and receive support from their children. Older people who have a good education spend their time participating in certain activities, such as volunteering in NGOs. Also, the relationship with God in order to eliminate loneliness has proved that although it seems to be different from the solutions of modern sciences, it can definitely be the best and most desirable solution in the context of religious and Islamic culture. The results also show that both parents (men and women) face the problem of loneliness and with the death of their spouse, the marriage of their children may increase this feeling in them, but not all of them are passive and take active measures to overcome their loneliness. Finally, the results of this study indicate that the loneliness of the elderly and its elimination requires the adoption of supportive strategies by family members, health care providers, and policymakers.

The conditions of political action are one of the most discussed problems in political and social sciences today. Generally, there are two well-known approaches to this problem: grand theories of politics and micropolitics. Structuralism is a grand theory of politics that presumes some given structures that dominate all aspects of everyday life, thus degrades the agency of social actors. Likewise, Orthodox Marxism, from a grand perspective, reduces the different actions to an economic base, and by lessening the political agency to a unique class, it disregards the concrete antagonisms of everyday life. On the other hand, though the post-structural approach criticized these wholistic grand approaches, reduces all politics to micro-domain of differences and consequently ignores the possibilities of collective political action. Thus, to overcome this dilemma, we should look for a new way to consider this problem. This study inquires about the conditions of political action in current precarious societies through a critical approach. To this purpose, we have studied Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, who have attempted to specify these conditions through a poststructural direction. The data from their works were analyzed using the immanent critique method. This method exposes the inner incosistencies of poststructural approaches and shows how some of their fundamental assumptions would contradict their own goals. The immanent critique of Foucault’s genealogy of power shows that his nominal approach results in a polemical image of society in which all political actors are involved in a never-ending war. Also, the anti-foundational image of society presented by Deleuze shows these actors as fundamentally different forces that are constantly decoding sedimented discourses. Together, these approaches form a schema of antagonisms that is, at best, indifferent to the collective actions of political actors. In this schema, we are dealing with divergent and different forces that fight and flee from each other. Hence the process of these forces joining in a strategy of becoming-major is ignored, and collective political action against the hegemonic state becomes impossible. Marchart’s post-foundational thinking on antagonism offer a new understanding of social conflict. He rejects the polemical view of antagonism and asserts that there is no war at the base of society. He believes that antagonism is not mere decodification of the hegemonic discourse, but also includes the process of codification that constitutes the anti-hegemonic discourses. In ordr to overcome the micro/macro dichotomy, Marchart proposes “minimal politics” as a new way of thinking about the conditions of political action. This new way supprots the concrete differences and conflicts of everyday life. At the same time, it will not fall back into micro-politics and preserves the possibility of becoming-major and collectivity in the chains of equivalence.

COVID 19 Infodemic was the title of a communication phenomenon launched by the Director-General of the World Health Organization to accompany the CORONA virus spreading worldwide. Misinformation circulates quickly on social media, and the fight against fake news will likely continue until the virus outbreak. As a result, the World Health Organization is currently working with social media to disseminate accurate information about COVID 19. This crisis is characterized by the simultaneous spread of the virus and the information itself. In other words, not only the virus itself spread very quickly, but also the misinformation about the spread of the disease, which caused the panic in the population to grow rapidly. In other words, the fear fueled by social media grew even faster than the spread of COVID 19 in the population. So, the main theme of COVID 19 Infodemic is to combat the spread of inaccurate or unnecessary information or so-called “intelligence” at the global, national, and regional levels. The word infodemic is an abbreviation of the two words (info) or the same information and (demi), which has Greek roots and refers to population and people. Infodemics consists of the words information (demi) and demi (Greek root that goes back to people). In addition, demi has its own root in medical debates. “Epi” has Greek roots meaning above and below. Yet, pandemics have Greek origins and “pan” means all, everywhere, or overcoming, which is more effective than an epidemic. An infodemic can be thought of as a large amount of information published in a harmful way in the media. This article aims to discuss the issue of Covid 19 infodemic in the context of health communication and theorize the components, production areas, and ways of dealing with it in Iranian social media. The approach used in this article is qualitative and the research method is grounded theory. Therefore, instead of using existing theories as a theoretical framework, the researchers attempted to develop their own grounded theory from the data obtained. For this purpose, the theoretical sampling method and expert interviews were used to collect the necessary data from various sources. After this step, all data were coded using open, axial, and selective coding instructions. Eventually, 74 concepts and 28 categories were extracted from the data and COVID 19 Infodemic in social media was identified as a central phenomenon. Using a paradigmatic model, the grounded theory derived from the data is presented in the form of a narrative and visual model. Key findings of this study include the public’s diminishing trust in official institutions and the media, the politicization of health, and elite infodemics, all of which have contributed in some way to the emergence and spread of infodemics. The lack of an epidemiological perspective and the duality of care-cue and quantitative-qualitative approaches were also identified as the most prominent factors. Telos and inductive factors, inefficiency of management, weakness of civil institutions, censorship and filtering, and celebrity intervention are the main confounding factors in this phenomenon. The interactive action strategies to cope with the infodemic include: using health communication components, strengthening social media, verification, speed and transparency, audiences’ communicative empowerment, strengthening convergence, and inter-institutional partnership. At the end, the consequences of the COVID 19 infodemic were discussed and classified into three categories: Communication Consequences; Social, Cultural, and economic consequences, and Health Consequences.

Recently, people try to represent their identity and differentiate themselves from others by using strategies to beautify their body and appearance by visiting beauty centers and managing themselves. Managing appearance and achieving beauty is expressed in actions and deeds, such as body makeup, sports, dieting, having a beautiful and young body, etc. In this way, beauty can also be introduced and managed by people as an individual identity. Fashion and makeup are signs through which people declare what is their identity and what is not. In addition, people flaunt their appearance in such a way that they are different from others. However, nowadays, the body is considered as a project to build personal identity. The current study was conducted using a qualitative approach and the method of thematic analysis. The participants of this research were 24 women and 25 men. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The citizens studied were men and women from Yazd who visited beauty salons, clubs, medical centers, beauty clinics, etc. and were selected for the interviews. The participants in this study are a combination of men and women with different demographic characteristics, and the maximum variation purposive sampling method was used. In the data analysis, the data are recorded on paper and coded at three levels. The results show that self-management factors led women and men to tend to visit beauty centers. Women visited many beauty centers and manipulated their bodies due to self-care, defense mechanisms, deconstruction of femininity and inhibiting forms and men, career change, abolition of masculinity schema, symbolic annihilation, and social deprivation. The above factors indicate that men and women want to change and manage their identity through beauty so that they can present their new selves to everyone. For this reason, forming a new identity has consequences for them. Women have experienced consequences such as generative action, self-reflection, self-efficacy, conflict flooding, and finally subversion of identity, while men have faced identity stabilization. Men want to manage their identity with the continuation of masculinity agency, stigma reduction, sexual seduction, and self-expression. Therefore, according to the research, the men and women studied achieved their ultimate goal of self-management through the strategy of body presentation. Although both groups consider that self-presentation is a sign of silence, women try to undermine and rebuild their identity and want to achieve a new identity, while beauty in men means the continuation of masculinity in a new way for them. In line with the changes achieved, men have changed and smooth their lives, men tend to manage their identity through beauty in who they are. However, through the process of beautification, men try to gain independence and more opportunities, including advancement in their social life

More-than-human approaches that emphasize the relationship between matter, technology, humans, nature, and all human and non-human things in a relational manner and as Assembled Phenomena, have found a special place in sociology. The place of things, materials, and objects in understanding society and the relationship between humans and non-humans in understanding humans and society have been expressed in a variety of ways. From Tarde’s diverse and marginalized perspective to the connective and rhizomic sociology of Deleuz and Guattari (1988) and from the New Materialists to many science and technology scholars such as Latour (2005), Latour and Woolgar (1979), Haraway (1997), Law (2004), Barad (1996) have all acknowledged that society cannot be made up of humans alone and that agency can transcend humans in many social actions, and false dualities such as subject/object, human/nature, and structure/agency are sharply criticized. Considering the more-than-human approaches, where the basic structure of the position of the human, the researcher, the research field, and all other materials and factors are changing and evolving, it is certainly not easy to use classical methods and methodology, and appropriate methods for this research should be reconciled with this changing attitude and approach.

When a researcher chooses a research field as their main research area, all dimensions of this field as a unified phenomenon or as a network with its human and non-human factors and actors can no longer be evaluated using the previous methodological approaches, which are mainly focused on humans. The Internet and the social network space are also of great interest as a field of research in more-than-human approaches in line with these theoretical changes and developments. This approach itself has led to methodological creativity (e.g., Logosi, 2018; Lupton, 2020; Nimimaa, 2014; Macleod, 2019) and some creative methods have been proposed.

In this study, in examining the foundations and theoretical dimensions of the more-than-human instagraphy and the representation of the more-than-human attitudes and approaches, Barad & Latour are highlighted and their conceptual dimensions are given more attention and considered as the fundamental theoretical basis for our method. Then, in the second part, in the context of the Internet and ethnography, we collected some of the proposed methods and methodologies and used some of them as methodological basis in our method. Finally, we included and centrally introduced them in the college design off or method called More-than-human Instagraphy.

In view of the great desire of these approaches to the method(s) and methodology(s) of ethnography, the basics of ethnography and the Internet field and the proposed methods in this field were presented. Methodological recommendations such as: Kozinets’ Netnography, Ethnography and Internet Model by Sade-Beck, Lugosi and Quinton’s More-than-human Netnography, Sociomaterial Ethnography by Niemimaa, and Lupton’s More-than-human Digital Data were used. Finally, an attempt was made to present a methodological collage entitled “More-than-human Instagraphy”.

The situation in societies where inequality is prevalent manifests itself in ways in which inequality is assumed to be natural and related to the socioeconomic status of individuals and social groups, the space that establishes relationships, produces and reproduces inequality. This causes many changes at the community level that go beyond the individual and family dimensions and also shape social, economic and cultural structures and relationships. One of the most important areas is education, which has always been studied theoretically and empirically and has been subject to changes and developments. One of these changes, which has become an instrument for important and constructive change through the educational institution and its philosophy, is the “commodification” of education. Generally, this term is used to describe how a consumer culture is created in daily life through a series of clever and hidden processes that encompass all aspects of the existence of social life. In other words, education has come under the control of the economic sphere and, as a link in the chain, has influenced the system of inequality. Therefore, taking into account the approaches of Marx, Lukacs and Polani to the commodification and domination of market relations, we try to formulate this concept. Using these descriptions, we can ask: “Under what conditions has commodification occurred in education in suburban Sanandaj, and in what social context does it create inequality? And how do education administrators and teachers in these neighborhoods interpret the status quo?”

The method used in this study, which is objectively grounded, is critical ethnography derived from Karaspiken’s five-step methodology, which aims to critique and change the status quo. The study area was the suburb of Sanandaj and data collection was done through semi-structured interviews with 35 teachers and directors of education in the city of Sanandaj.

Findings indicate that the monolog-based data (initial and general assumptions of the researchers) are consistent with and confirm the data obtained from the interviews (dialog-based). Interpretation of the data concepts suggests four secondary categories: Differentiation through education, tendency toward private education in upscale urban areas, limited access to educational facilities and opportunities in marginalized areas, and extreme poverty of marginalized families. Analysis of these secondary categories shows that education has become an important tool to differentiate upper class families from other families in other areas, including marginalized areas. The tendency of the upper and affluent classes to “special schools,” “remedial classes,” “nonprofit schools,” and “private teacher employment,” as well as the “purchase of educational and cultural products,” etc., show the distinction that students make. Marginal areas have less or no share in these facilities. This occurs in a situation where, due to the commodification of education and the privatization of education, the inclination of upper class families to private and non-government schools has increased. This is less common in marginalized areas. Due to the economic and cultural poverty of families, public schools with low facilities for students and their families are prevalent in these areas. This is related to the neglect and institutional rejection of education manifested in inadequate resources and facilities in marginalized areas.

The explanation of these categories indicates that not everyone has access to education and the resulting inequality is exacerbated, especially in marginalized areas. Therefore, if we are to adopt a solution and proposal to address urban inequality, we must first address educational inequality to provide access to education for all while improving facilities and opportunities in the suburbs.

COVID-19 disease is one of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century, which was first reported in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China. Due to the wide spread of this disease throughout the world, including Iran, and its impact on various dimensions of human life, some studies focused on human behavioral effects on the environment in different populations. Identifying the behavioral factors influencing preventive behaviors for COVID-19 are crucial in devising public health policies to promote essential strategies to combat the pandemic in an efficient manner. The present study investigated the influence of COVID-19 disease on the environmental behavior of Tehran citizens with applying protection motivation theory (PMT). In this research, a survey was conducted. The statistical population of this research was all citizens of Tehran city with a number of 8,693,706 people, out of which 400 people were selected as the sample population using the available sampling method. A questionnaire was prepared by the researchers' team to collect data. The validity of the questioned was accredited by a group of experts as face validity and its reliability were confirmed by using Alpha Cronbach. Mean age of the participations was 35.33±8.32 years. 55.8 percent of the participants were women and 44.2 percent were men. Regression model showed perceived threat (ß =0.257), perceived costs (ß=0.225), perceived self-efficacy (ß =0.351), and perceived fear (ß=0.79.88) as the significant predictors of COVID-19 preventive behaviors. This model accounted for 19% of the variance in these behaviors. The results of the study based on regression model showed that protection motivation has a direct and significant effect on environmental behavior (Beta=0.193 and Sig=0.000). This means PMT explained 19% of variance of the dependent variable (environmental behavior). The results of this study confirm that MPT explained how COVID-19 disease has affected on people environmental behavior in Tehran, Iran. In more details, the results of this study showed the role of the constructs of protective motivation (perceived threat, perceived sensitivity, and responsiveness) and fear on environmental behavior. These results challenge much health communication during the COVID-19 pandemic that has been designed to persuade people more than to inform them. These results can be used in COVID-19 information and persuasion policies and in health education.  Both persuading people and informing them are reasonable goals for health communication

The main objective of this research is to understand the importance of betting for people and the reasons that lead them to bet. To this end, we analyzed people’s motivation, actions, and persistence in online betting from the perspective of those who participated in betting activities and are addicted to betting, as well as from the perspective of experts and social workers. In the theoretical part, in order to better analyze people’s meaning and understanding of betting and to organize the data obtained from the field research, we used Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical perspective on field and habit and the meta-theoretical model. We used behavioral change to analyze how people become addicted to gambling. In the method section, the research focused on in-depth interviews. In this research, we interviewed 35 people: 20 interviews with people who had experience with online betting and related addiction, 10 interviews with counselors and psychotherapists who have clients among bettors, and finally 5 interviews with social science experts. Each interview lasted between 45 and 70 minutes. Subsequently, all interviews were analyzed and categorized based on the theoretical model. The results show large differences in motivation to gamble between the upper and lower classes. Members of the upper social classes consider gambling as a way of entertainment and thrill. People from the lower class, on the other hand, consider gambling as a way to earn money. These people want to change their poor economic situation as soon as possible, so the risk of gambling is much higher among people from the lower classes. This risk becomes even greater when a person is addicted to gambling and has no money to bet with, so they are forced to call on their family, which leads to a terrible psychological burden for them. The analysis of the conducted interviews showed that the importance of betting for people varies depending on the area and social class. The motivation of people from upper and lower class to do it is different. The results of the research show that the motivation for betting in the upper social classes is mainly entertainment and pleasure. In the lower classes, the excitement caused by betting and the exploitation of the economic aspects are emphasized and become important, leading them to participate in online betting.

One of the distinguishing aspects of different societies is the difference in the values, attitudes and behaviors of their people in relation to politics and the political system, which is manifested in the form of political culture and in components such as consciousness, beliefs, values, norms and political symbols. These components are formed in the context of history and social life and change as societies develop. One of the dimensions of development that includes almost all other dimensions of development and influences the political culture of societies as one of the basic indicators of political development is social development. A look at the index of social progress in 2020 and its adjustment to the index of democracy in different countries shows that social development influences the political culture of different societies. Accordingly, this article intends to provide a theoretical approach to the analysis of political culture by highlighting the role of social development in political culture and reviewing the theoretical and experimental literature with reference to the valid indicators of social development and political culture of countries while answering the question: How does social development change political culture? 

The present article uses a comparative method with a descriptive-analytical approach. The study unit is different countries in 2020, which have been selected by purposive sampling method. Data collection tools include library and documentary studies, including reports from recognized international organizations, books, and professional articles.

The comparison of the situation of different countries in terms of the two indicators of social progress and democracy in 2020 shows that all countries with high social development are considered fully democratic societies and their political culture has a high value. Even in the countries ranked second and third in social development, their political culture has declined in proportion to the decline in social development, and their political system tends to be imperfect democracy. In addition, the countries in the fourth and fifth rank of social development with relatively low social progress scores have relatively low political culture scores, and they have subsequent political culture relative to the relatively low level of social development and belong to the hybrid regimes based on the democracy index in 2020. Finally, the countries in the sixth rank of social development all have undemocratic political culture and authoritarian political regimes.

Findings show that in the process of social development of a society, the indicators of social development influence the dimensions and components of political culture of citizens. The study of the theories of thinkers such as Almond and Verba, Inglehart, Wellsel and Putnam confirms this assertion. In addition, the study of the state of countries in terms of social development and democracy confirms the relationship between social development and political culture. The correspondence between countries’ political culture and their state of social development based on indicators of social progress and democracy clearly shows this. It can be concluded that in the relationship between the different dimensions of development, the social dimension comes first and plays a fundamental and decisive role. Thus, social development takes precedence over political culture. This approach is a theoretical approach called the “social approach” in the analysis of political culture. Unlike previous and common approaches that emphasize the role of cultural, political, and economic factors in analyzing political culture, it considers the role of social dimensions of development to be crucial in analyzing and explaining political culture.

Economic corruption is a phenomenon that has various social, economic and political roots, and emphasizing one cause obscures the truth of corruption. The economy of any country is considered as a series of nerves and vital arteries, and the presence of complications in the economy leads to problems for the entire vital arteries and related subsystems. On the other hand, it is obvious that all societies are made up of different subsystems and these subsystems in conjunction with each other objectify the process of survival and continuity of governments. Each of the different subsystems in the process of development and change, can suffer from all kinds of complications and injuries that prevent them from performing their main functions over time. Economic corruption is one of these complications, which not only disrupts the functioning of the economic subsystem, but also challenges the functioning of the rest of the subsystem.According to the report of Transparency International Organization (2021), Iran is ranked 150th among 180 countries and its corruption index is 2.5 out of 10, which is a deterioration compared to the previous year. Surveys and research confirm the existence of economic corruption in the country. It can be said that corruption has been and continues to be the work of governments and that any effort to improve the situation in society and make it free of corruption must be based on planning at all economic, social and political levels. Meanwhile, referring to and citing opinions of professors and thinkers can play an important role in understanding what corruption is, how it occurs and how to control it. The importance of this topic was clear to the researchers before they began this study, as were the gaps in this area. Therefore, they considered conducting this research as a reference point to use the opinions of university professors as leaders of science and thought and undertook to clarify the ambiguous path of economic corruption. To achieve this goal, professors were selected who were experts in the field or had related expertise in areas such as political science, sociology, and economics. This research was also based on the premise that by referring to the opinions of academic elites and expert professors, it is possible to better understand the nature and causes of the prevalence of corruption in society so that the practical results can be used at various levels of policy making.

Method: 

The method of this research is qualitative. Data were collected through interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. In this research, after conducting the interviews, all the concepts related to the concept of economic corruption were noted down on several sheets of paper and compiled in a table. Then, all related concepts were entered into the table and analyzed row by row.

From the point of view of the participants of this research, the components that constitute economic corruption, such as the low cost of corruption, the ambiguity and conflict in the laws, the political structure, the lack of transparency, the state economy, the normalization of corruption, and the weakness of the judicial system, which mostly indicate weak governance in the country and thus the institutionalization of corruption in the country, leading to the stability of economic corruption.

The result of this research was the professors’ special view of the causes and relationships of the emergence of economic corruption—a situation where poor governance has contributed to the institutionalization and spread of corruption. In order to curb corruption, it is necessary to pay attention to the formation of good governance in the country and to fight corruption in addition to dealing with the corrupt. To fight it, one should take into account all the historical, cultural, social and political factors involved.