نشریه علوم اجتماعی
سال دوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 6، تابستان، پاییز و زمستان 1384)

The concept of identity, or the attempt to find the answer to the question "Who am I?" has always preoccupied the human mind. On the one hand, identity as a motivational power controls and explains our behavior in the functions we assume, and, on the other hand, social factors have a role in the formation and reconstruction of our identity. Organizations intervene in the quality and content of our identity, trying to regulate it so that it fulfills the duties assigned by organizations. In this paper, the writer, taking a critical approach, discusses the relation between organizations and individuals to analyze the direct or indirect influence of organizations on the identity of human resources.

Social pathology, a new concept taken from biological science in the 19th century, is a science dealing with the study and analysis of social disorders. The objectives of this science are the identification of social injuries and their causes and methods of preventing them. Lack of place sense (place belonging) and community sense in the citizens who have migrated to large cities create many social and psychological problems for them. To lessen these problems, the following strategies could be effective: designing appropriate collective physical spaces such as small neighborhood squares, neighborhood parks, preventing automobiles from entering neighborhoods, strengthening the social capital and the roots of reciprocal trust, using this capital to remedy social maladies and injuries. The article mainly focuses on the role of physical environment and the city space and the use of spatial variables in increasing social capital and reducing social injuries.

The progress made in the field of Information Technology has increasingly encouraged social researchers to conduct social studies. Researchers employ Technology Acceptance Model (TAM, Davis, 1984, 1985.2000) to analyze the mechanism and the use IT and the social factors affecting it. The attitude towards the computer is one of the variables of TAM. The purpose of the present paper is to study the subscales of the attitudes towards the computer and the social effects of these attitudes. This study is based on the information obtained from 300 computer trainees studying in computer institutes of Isfahan. The research instrument used was Attitudes Toward Computer Scale (Loyal and Greesard, 1984, 1985). It is to be noted that the questionnaire has four subscales: Computer Confidence, Computer Linking, Computer Anxiety and Computer Usefulness. To analyze the data, we used SPSS.11. The types of analysis are the following: descriptive statistics (one variable, bivariable), inferential statistics (t-test, correction, factor analysis, multivariable regression analysis, path analysis). The results showed that the level of attitudes toward the computer was very high. There was not a significant difference between the attitude of the male and the female toward the computer, or between the attitude of the married and the unmarried. There was a significant correlation between the three variables (age, use of computer at home and computer experience) with attitudes toward the computer. Also, there was not a significant correlation between the two variables (job and education) with the attitude towards the computer. The analysis of the regression indicated that the factors such as age, sex, use of computer at home and computer experience are more predictive of the attitudes toward the computer. Most of the changes in the attitudes toward the computer are determined through these four variables.

The objective of the present paper is to study the male and the female in the family and Islamic criminal laws in terms of their legal rights. To this end, all the articles in the two collections of Family & Islamic Criminal Laws (including the most recent amendments) published in the year 2000 which are related to private and public law were chosen and they were subjected to content analysis. To select the variables of research, the theories of classic theorists such as Montesquieu, Max Weber, August Konte, Dorkim, Loy Berwel as well as the contemporary theorists were used and a combined theoretical framework was established. The variables extracted from this theoretical survey were explored in the aforementioned collections. These variables included: granting special rights to females and males, imposing special obligations on males and females, denying the rights of males and females, placing males and females in the power hierarchy, the stance of the law makers towards females and males, subject and object genders in relation to the other variables such as law, ambiguity of statutory article, nature, type and method of punishment. The findings of the analysis indicate that in both collections, in many cases, there is discrimination between males and females in such a way that granting rights, imposing obligations and denying the rights of females were more than those of males. Males were placed higher in the power hierarchy. The law maker gives priority to males compared to females. In both collections, male subjects are more than female subjects; on the other hand, female objects are more than male objects. Moreover, the articles which force women to do certain obligations were amended while similar articles for men were not.

Is religious commitment declining? Is the form of religiosity changing in the society of Mashhad? To find answers to these questions, we studied the various theories of secularization and determined its three levels. We defined individual secularization and its product; the secular attitude, and determined its dimensions and its indexes. Next we measured the secular attitude. We then studied the various factors that can be effective in the variance of the secular attitude. The most important methods used were multi-variable regression analysis, variance analysis, path analysis and trend analysis. The sample consisted of 240 young and middle-aged people from Mashhad from all walks of life. The research, conducted in summer 2005, shows considerable presence of secular attitude, emergence of modern forms of religiosity and lack of sufficient consistency among religious groups.

The purpose of this paper was to study the various aspects of "lack of prominence of collective cultural identity" and "prominence of religious, national, ethnic (inside and outside the province) identity" of the Arab-speaking people of Khuzestan province using a survey method. Using a computer simulation method and making a computer model of the real society, the effects of civil liberties, globalization, national connections, international connections, equal opportunities on the phenomena lack of prominence of collective cultural identity and prominence of various cultural identities have been predicted. The results indicate a significant effect of the independent variables on the future of cultural identities. The computer used and the theoretical framework of the study were developed based on the theories of social structuralism.

To study art, sociologists have so far related it either to the economic base of the artistic product or to the artist's ideology or world-view or the class structure of the audience and art consumers. The importance of none of these factors could be denied; however, what is more important is the relation between these factors, the complex network of political, economic and social relations that make up the world of art. The survival of art depends on the exchanges among these four elements (the world of art, the art product, the artist and the audience). In fact, art is a self-regulating system made up of the functional relations among these four structural elements. In this paper, the writer studies the art system based on Parson's social system (AGIL), and explores the functional relations among its structural elements.

The purpose of this paper was to measure the social capital of the medical students of Mashhad Medical Sciences University in the place they lived (their neighborhood), and the factors affecting it. The statistical universe was the university with a total of 5383 students. The sample was 244. The sampling was done using the systematic classification method, the classes being the faculty and sex of the students. Social capital is the quality and quantity of social relations of the individual in their place of living. It has three dimensions of social partnership, social trust and social coherence. Each of these three dimensions was measured with respect to four types of social relations including cultural relations, social relations, political relations and economic relations. Using a scale of 1 to 5, the social capital of the students in their permanent place of residence was measured to be 2.66. Also, the social capital of the students at university was measured to be 3. The study of the factors affecting the multi-variable analysis, the most important positive factors were the following in terms of importance: the amount of the individual's cultural capital, the degree of security in the neighborhood, the number of social networks in the neighborhood, the married status of the individual, the economic status of the other people living in the neighborhood. The self-image was negatively correlated with the individual's amount of social capital.