مجله پژوهش های راهبردی مسائل اجتماعی ایران
سال یازدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 39، زمستان 1401)

Introduction Social distance is a term coined by Bogardus (1941) to describe the feelings and attitudes of people of one group towards another one. Social distance occurs when there is little understanding and familiarity between groups of people. Social distancing can be experienced and institutionalized at societal, group, and individual levels. When social distance is high, it is often accompanied by feelings of mistrust, fear, and apprehension. More than four decades have passed since the arrival of Afghan immigrants in Iran. The second-generation Afghan immigrants have a higher economic and social status than the first-generation immigrants. Reducing social distance is the prerequisite for the integration of immigrants in the host society. The present study aimed to analyze social distance among Afghan immigrants in Iran with a qualitative approach in order to answer the following questions: What understanding and interpretation do immigrants have of social distance and its processes in interaction with the host society? What are the mechanisms and processes in the formation of social distance between immigrants and the host society?  Material and MethodsThis qualitative study used a constructivist grounded theory approach to investigate, explain, and understand the phenomenon or meanings that people create around their views, values, attitudes, experiences, life histories, and ways of being in the world. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 first- and second-generation immigrants in Tehran and Yazd cities. The participants were selected using purposive snowball sampling through contacts with trusted people among the immigrants and introductions by them. An effort was made to include a variety of people in the sample from the ages of 18 to 65 years with different residence statuses (having an Amayesh card, passport, and Iranian birth certificate due to marriage, as well as those without a residence card). In addition, such characteristics as gender, ethnicity, and generational status were taken into consideration. Lincoln and Guba’s criteria were used to evaluate and validate the categories. First, the member control technique was applied by taking the constructivist data analysis strategy. Based on this method, the research focused all its attention on the interpretation of the data. Instead of using the linear method, it used the circular method (continuous back and forth between data collection and analysis) to discover the common or contradictory themes. Discussion and Conclusion The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed by using theoretical identification at the three levels of initial, centralized, and theoretical coding, including Institutional distance, media distance, emotional distance, limited maximal level of aspirations, problematic sense of belonging, preferred intra-network interaction, marriage as a threat or opportunity, and individual context of distance. Finally, the core category of "two-way demarcation" was discovered, which covered all the 17 categories extracted from the analysis. The findings showed that the immigrants faced legal restrictions at the socio-economic and civil-political levels, which limited their access to citizenship rights. Alba and Nye (2003) state that through limited access to citizenship, systems of stratification, in which ethnic demarcations shape access to certain positions, can be perpetuated. The immigrants stated that they felt helpless against the law and a sense of distance from Iranian citizens and society. In other words, they experienced an emotional distance from the host society. Bogardus (1941) considers sympathy and mutual affection as the determinant elements of social-emotional distance. When they are manifested, there is closeness between two groups. Simmel (1971) states that immigrants can become emotionally detached from the host society when they enter it. This feeling of "strangeness" may be caused, at least in part, by the host society's attitude toward and treatment of strangers. This strange process depends on a distinct combination of the two opposing factors of closeness and distance, which Bogardus refers to as social distance. Social distance or social closeness is created through certain degrees of understanding, interaction, and intimacy in intergroup or interpersonal social relationships. The findings of this research showed the mechanism of social distancing. The distance created for Afghan immigrants in Iran could be observed through legal barriers, in the form of formal employment discrimination and a status limited to the lowest level of the job ladder, as well as educational restrictions and confined social services.

IntroductionEmergence of social networks has significantly changed not only personal communication, but also the perspective of commercial and political communication around the world. From a political point of view, social networks have a significant impact on the field of political marketing. Thus, leaders, political parties, and politicians increasingly use social networks to inform citizens, communicate with them, and invite them to participate in politics (Vesnic-Alujevic, 2012). The concept of political marketing refers to the use of marketing principles and tools in political campaigns by political parties and leaders that can attract voters’ attention in order to win votes (Newman, 2012). Social networks play a huge role in various forms of political participation, including electoral arenas (Vergeer, 2013). They refer to various online tools that facilitate initiation of conversations and the dissemination of information between users (Kushin & Yamamoto, 2010). They allow users to develop online relationships where people with common interests can interact, and share opinions and knowledge (Steenkamp & Hyde-Clarke, 2014). According to political marketing, social networks can be mentioned as one of the important and influential factors for citizens' political participation in elections (Malherbe, 2015). Citizens have a direct influence on the elections and determination of the country's destiny with their political participation, but no study has yet been conducted on election coverage through social networks, which can have a tremendous impact on the electoral arena. The problem of which networks can be used in the election process depends on the legal, political, and cultural conditions of the country on the one hand and the users who follow different motives, needs, and specific behaviors on the one hand. Therefore, according to what was said and since the purpose of this research was investigating the effect of political marketing through social networks on the participants’ loyalty to elections from the perspective of the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the researchers also looked for an answer to the question of how social networks can affect the election participants’ loyalty through political marketing under the shadow of legal and regulatory institutions.  Materials & MethodsThis study was a "descriptive survey of correlation type" in terms of purpose and an "applied" research in terms of data collection method. The unlimited statistical population included the 384 citizens of Kermanshah Province, who were selected via the simple random method (Table 1). From among the questionnaires related to social networks, the questionnaire of Auter and Palmgreen (2000) consisting of 21 questions and that of Tsiotsou (2015) consisting of 4 questions were applied. The questions were localized by the researchers according to the conditions and laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The measurement scale was based on the 5-choice Likert spectrum questions. To confirm the research validity, 3 types of validity (content, convergent, and divergent validities) were used and 3 criteria (factor loading, Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and composite reliability coefficient) were used to confirm its reliability. Discussion of Results & ConclusionsAs it was said, the purpose of this research was to analyze the effect of political marketing on the participants’ loyalty to the elections through social networks and from the perspective of the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The results of the research hypothesis, which was the possible effect of political marketing on the participants’ loyalty in the elections through social networks, showed that social networks had an effect on the participants’ loyalty in the elections from the perspective of the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This finding was consistent with the results obtained by Asplund et al. (2014), Nisar & Whitehead (2016), Dabula (2017), Mahesar et al. (2021), and Hamid et al. (2022). In most studies, social networks was believed to offer great opportunities for leaders and political parties and thus, the power of these networks could be used in the electoral field. This was the reason for the findings of this research to be in line with those of the previous studies. The difference between this study and the previous researches was that none of the studies conducted in this field had any references to the laws of the countries governing the mentioned networks and only measured the relationships between the variables, while the researchers in this research expressed the legal conditions and these social platforms could operate within the framework of the law of the Islamic Republic of Iran besides examining the relationships between the variables.

Introduction Prostitution means any sexual activities for money. Prostitutes may be male, female, or bisexual. The boundaries of sex work are vague. Sex work can be considered to range from erotic shows without a relationship with a client to unprotected and risky sex activities with many clients. Prostitutes all over the world are classified and categorized in different ways based on their different characteristics. This classification helps to better understand the status of prostitutes in societies. The classified description and knowledge provides the basis for explaining the phenomenon and then predicting its future developments and controlling. This research sought to answer the question of what the patterns of prostitution in Mashhad City were.  Materials & Methods                  This research was carried out with the aim of discovering, identifying, and accurately describing the patterns of prostitution in Mashhad. It was done with a qualitative method through Weber's ideal sample approach to typology and typification of prostitution. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with prostitutes to analyze their lives. Through the similarities and differences of some components, we tried to show the different types of prostitution. The studied population included all the prostitutes of Mashhad City. Based on the principles governing the sampling method in a qualitative research, a number of them were selected and interviewed in a purposeful way with the greatest difference. The interview process continued until theoretical saturation was reached and finally 27 people were interviewed. The interviews were conducted in the welfare quarantine centers and health centers during 2020-2021. The interviews were conducted in a separate room without the presence of any officials or cameras and away from the crowd. Each interview took 2 to 4 hours. The interviews started with the participants’ narratives of their childhoods and families and continued until reaching the stage of becoming a prostitute. Several key questions were asked to identify the different types to satisfy the purpose of the study. The  participants’ ages were between 14 and 49 years. Most of them had a diploma or were at lower educational levels and only two of them had bachelor's and master's degrees. Almost half of them were addicted to drugs. Most of the participants were divorced, but nearly a quarter of them were single. Discussion of results & conclusionIn this research, in-depth interviews were conducted with 27 female prostitutes. During the interview process, attention was paid to some aspects of prostitution, such as the existence of financial and personal securities, stability of relationships with clients, number of clients, having a sense of pleasure during sex, having an emotional relationship, using contraceptives, performing tests regularly, having a sense of job satisfaction, having the right to choose clients, beauty practices, and ability to choose the desired type of sex.Previous investigations performed in various studies have referred to prostitution as a general concept and no attention has been paid to the various models that exist in this profession. According to the knowledge gained in this field, identification of the typology of prostitutes can better clarify the phenomenon due to the existence of different influential factors ways of continuation in each pattern of prostitution. Finally, based on these variables, there were 9 models of displaced, hangout, street, concubine, aunt-dependent, independent, single, network, and sugar prostitutions. Hangout, street independent, and aunt-dependent prostitutions have been the common models previously identified in previous studies. However, today, we can see newer models of prostitution called homeless, concubine, single, and sugar prostitutions, which are not mentioned in domestic research.

Considering the dynamics of the environment and globalization, one of the emerging variables in today's research is social responsibility of organizations, which is necessary for supporting employee’s attraction, retention, motivation, commitment, and creativity. Paying attention to this concept is necessary and important, mainly to strengthen the sense of harmony and unity between members of organizations and the society. Social responsibility provides a set of obligations and duties that an organization performs in order to maintain, care, and help the society, in which it operates (Fleming, 2012). Therefore, recent researches in the literature of organizational behavior have investigated employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and performances in response to the social responsibility of organizations. Their results have shown that employees’ perceptions about social responsibilites of their organizations reflect their attitudes and behaviors like socially responsible behavior (compassionate behavior). According to the theory of emotional events, employee’s perception of social responsibility in organizations affects his/her cognitive-emotional states, i.e., organizational justice, organizational self-esteem, and emotional commitment. Subsequently, it affects his/her behavioral reactions, such as compassion at workplace. Therefore, the main question of the current research was whether the employees' understanding of the social responsibility of Fars Industry, Mining, and Commerce Institute had a significant effect on compassion at workplace considering the mediating role of their procedural justice, organizational self-esteem, and emotional commitment.
 
 

The current research was an applied one with a descriptive-correlation method in terms of purpose and of a survey type in terms of implementation. The statistical population of the present study included all the employees working in Fars industry, mining, and commerce institute (271 people). 159 people were selected as the statistical sample size by using the simple random sampling method. The data collection tool consisted of the standard questionnaire of social responsibility used by Su & Swanson (2019) with 5 items, the standard questionnaire of procedural justice applied by Kim et al. (2021) with 4 items, the standard questionnaire of organizational self-esteem employed by Kim et al. (2021) with 4 items, the standard questionnaire of compassion at workplace employed by Hur et al. (2016) with 3 items, and the standard questionnaire of emotional commitment utilized by Meyer and Allen (1997) with 8 items. Their reliabilitied were confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability. The divergent and convergent validities of the measurement tools were also confirmed. To test the hypotheses, the structural equation modeling technique was used.
 
Discussion of Results and

The research findings showed that the employees’ perceptions of organizational social responsibility had a positive and significant effect on procedural justice, organizational self-esteem, emotional commitment, and compassion at workplace. Also, their perceptions of procedural justice increased their organizational self-esteem and emotional commitment in Fars industry, mining, and commerce institute, but procedural justice did not lead to their compassionate behaviors. The results further showed that their self-esteem alone did not lead to their emotional commitments Also, their emotional commitments led to compassion in Fars industry, mining, and commerce institute. Finally, the research findings revealed that procedural justice had a mediating role in the effects of perceived social responsibility of organization on organizational self-esteem and on emotional commitment. However, their serial mediating roles were not confirmed in this research. Therefore, in the current research, it was found that the employees' perceptions of the organization's social responsibility was an important aspect of their perceptions of the organization's justice towards themselves, organizational self-esteem, and their emotional commitments, which ultimately led to changing their attitudes and behaviors towards compassion at workplace.

Sexual needs are regulated and routined as one of the most important biological-instinctive needs in the fabric of social-cultural networks. In Iran, one of the most customary and legitimate channels to satisfy such biological needs is family formation via marriage. New industrial developments and long-term geographical-demographic motilities resulting from them have provided the basis for a group of women, who are left behind due to their husbands’ migration for a long time. Thus, they are forced to live away from their husbands in their hometowns for a long period of time (a period of 6 months or more than a year). Although these women’s qualities of life can be explored in several dimensions, their sexuality concerns and experiences are of the most important and relatively unknown issues. Explicating their experiences of extra-marital sexual relations in the Iranian society where the bond of marriage is considered sacred and customary based on Sharia and the governing legal system has double importance since these experiences can lead to severe individual, social, and legal consequences. Sexual desire is defined as the sum of forces that move us towards a sexual behavior or away from it. The present research aimed to analyze sexual desire perception of a group of women, who were left behind due to their husbands’ migration, in the city of Lar. Lar City is located in the south of Fras Province and Lari men migrate to the Persian Gulf countries in order to find a job. With their international migration, their wives, who are left for a time, encounter many problems and challenges, including sexual issues. Due to sensitivity to this subject, researching on which is a taboo in Iran, a qualitative research, particularly a phenomenological study, was recognized to be suitable for exploring these women’s perceptions and lived experiences of sexuality. Based on the research logic, the main questions formulated were as follows: How do the Lari women left behind due to their husbands’ migration understand their sexual needs? How do their sexual needs are regulated and managed, while their husbands are present or absent?  What are their most important concerns regarding their sexual needs and affairs? What are their self- perceptions and self-experiences of others’ sexual practices? 
 
 
Materials & Due to the importance and extreme sensitivity of the issue, the lived experiences of sexuality of 14 women, who had been left behind because of their husbands’ migration in Lar City, were studied phenomenologically in this essay. The participants were chosen based on a non-probable and targeted sampling method. In addition, to understand the experiences and perceptions of the women with different characteristics, the criterion of maximum diversity was considered in the selection of samples. The diverse criteria included age, duration of husband's presence and absence, participant’s level of education, number of children, etc. The interviewees and data were linked via a kind of zigzagging and non-linear analysis. Before conducting the interviews, the rationale and purpose of the research were explained to the participants. Their informal consents to participate in the interviews were considered. The mean duration of the unstructured and semi-structured interviews in some cases was 75-90 minutes. The participants’ voices were recorded with their permissions. The interviews were conducted in person and by phone during December of 2021 to September of 2022. The procedure was taken as follows: After each interview, the recorded conversations were first implemented verbatim on paper and then analyzed as soon as possible. Afterwards, some other people were selected and interviewed based on the logic of maximum diversity or snowball sampling. The interviews were continued until their topics were felt to be almost repetitive and no new points were expressed by the participants. The data analysis was done by implementing 7 methodological steps according to Collaizi’s thematic analysis method.
 
Discussion of Results & The studied women's experiences of sexuality could be explored and described under 3 central themes: 1) conscious management of high mental-sexual obsession; 2) concerned curiosity about husband's sexual relationship; and 3) sexualization of social relations. These themes were explicated under more minor sub-themes and clusters. As the broadest theme, conscious management of high mental-sexual obsession reflected this perception that these women used alternative strategies, such as repressing and sublimating themselves through more legitimate socially-culturally channels, such as reading, praying, hanging out with children, etc. Regarding their worries about their husbands’ sexual relationships, they tried to justify themselves in any ways by thinking that they trusted their husbands completely, their husbands were not involved in these activities, or they are too busy to think about such things. Sexualization of social relations represented the experience that these women were known as lonely women, who themselves had to constantly monitor their relationships with strange and non-familiar men, in their living places in order to keep themselves from being known as sexualized women and thus not being stigmatized or famed as promiscuous women. In general, the left-behind women's qualities of sexual life had some ups and downs, while they had to manage their lives in this small society and adapt themselves to this social context.

IntroductionProstitution is widely recognized as a form of social deviance and sexual exploitation. It inflicts a lasting harm upon societies, families, and individuals. This phenomenon exhibits diverse dimensions across different cultures and societies; yet, there exists a common thread: its global nature and transformation of bodies into commodities facilitate a lucrative and opportunistic industry. Essentially, the dynamics of supply and demand, as well as involvement of intermediaries like pimps, plays a pivotal role in this relationship. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies surrounding these aspects is crucial for comprehending the underlying conditions that contribute to the persistence of this issue and devising effective solutions to put an end to this destructive cycle.  Materials and MethodsThis study aimed to identify the factors that influenced the formation and continuity of prostitution and exiting from it. To achieve this goal, a qualitative approach was employed by utilizing the phenomenological strategy. The decision to use this method was based on the nature of the required information and the limited access to the target population for using quantitative methods. The study adopted an exploratory and non-confirmatory approach to collecting the data and gathering the necessary information. Through discussions and interviews, the factors and conditions experienced by the individuals involved in prostitution were unveiled. The data were collected through narrative and semi-structured interviews and a thematic analysis was applied to analyze the interviews and extract the prevalent themes related to the investigated issue. In this study, after conducting and implementing the interviews, their analysis was initiated following the steps outlined by Braun and Clarke. To achieve this purpose, the conducted interviews were thoroughly examined several times to effectively comprehend the data. Subsequently, the primary concepts were extracted from the written semantic expressions and the primary codes were generated.A purposive sampling method was employed. The interviews were conducted with 15 women residing in the rehabilitation centers in Mashhad to achieve the data saturation, which was determined via repetition of the received information. The analysis units in this research were the women, who were approached during the interviews, and their ages ranged from 14 to 40 years considering distribution of the population. Discussion and The phenomenon of prostitution is complex and multifaceted. It is influenced by a multitude of factors that come together at various stages. While the narratives provided by the interviewees might have some differences, it was possible to identify a general framework that outlined the key elements involved.The findings of this study emphasized the pivotal role of family dysfunction in the development of prostitution. Factors, such as parental addiction, divorce, economic and cultural poverty within the family, lack of social support and affection, physical and psychological violence, parental prejudice and restrictions, along with the presence of deviant individuals among relatives and their influence, all contributed to the emergence of various deviations, including prostitution. Additionally, this investigation revealed several influential categories of conditions in the formation and perpetuation of prostitution.These conditions encompassed familial background circumstances (parental addiction and divorce, economic and cultural poverty within the family, lack of social support and affection, physical and psychological violence, and parental prejudice and restrictions), individual issues (addiction, early-age marriage, mental and psychological disorders, and depression), precipitating circumstances (financial needs, fleeing from home, and lack of temporary accommodation), and exacerbating conditions (the role of intermediaries enticing individuals into prostitution, forced prostitution by parents, and modeling and adoption of deviant behaviors from relatives). Moreover, consolidating conditions, such as earning a substantial income from prostitution, job convenience, covering addiction expenses, and unmet sexual and emotional needs, significantly contributed to the continuity of this phenomenon. Lastly, inhibiting conditions like marrying a desired partner, severing ties with intermediaries, and overcoming addiction played a role in exiting from prostitution.