نشریه علوم اجتماعی
سال هفتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 16، پاییز و زمستان 1389)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate leisure time as an element for identity formation of high school students in Shiraz, Iran. The participators of the present study include twenty male students from the third grade of high school. The participants were chosen randomly from different high schools located in the City of Shiraz. The analysis of the data, based on Grounded theory as a qualitative research methodology, was led into proposing seven categories and a core part. These categories include “ruling virtual environment”, “risky leisure time”, “choosing popular activities like national and foreign mass media” and “pop music taste”, “choosing appropriate place for their leisure time”, “gaining knowledge from new and modern sources of information”, and “sport which represents the importance” are seven categories and the core part covers reflectivity and post-traditional contexts. Generally, findings showed that post-traditional contexts and resources such as ICTs, media space, music market changes and global policies of sport, besides the contexts of friends’ community environment, socioeconomic status and the context of living have led into reflection on identity among the participants of the study.

The study aims at investigating the relationship between Social Capital and National Identity. Based on Giddens’ theory on identity and Woolcock and Narayan’s theory of social capital, the researchers, through a survey study, have investigated the relationship between social capital and national identity of 360 students of Shiraz University. Independent variables include Demographic variables, Socio-Economic variables, Social Trust, Participation, Social Interactions, Religious Orientation and Self-esteem. The Dependent variable of the study is National Identity. The findings show that the relationship between factors like birth location, resident location, social trust, participation, social interactions, religious orientation and national identity is significant. But there is not a significant relationship between age, sex, marital status, parent’s education, family income, social status, self-esteem and national identity. Also there is a significant relationship between social capital and national identity. The Analysis of multiple regression analysis showed that 4 variables (religious orientation, social capital, birth location and age) predict 32 percent of changes in dependent variable (national identity). Path analysis shows that religious orientation has more influence on national identity compared to other variables.

During the blooming and growing days of natural science, it was believed that human sciences should follow the same steps and patterns as natural science to solve their existing problems. Some philosophers, showing disagreement with this theory, tried to invent new theories for human science. These scholars believed that human science methodology should be compatible with current, under-discussion topics in this area. Wilhelm Dilthey was one of scholars who were against following and adapting natural science methodologies in the realm of human science. In Dilthey’s view, due to fundamental differences between human sciences and natural sciences, it was not possible to apply natural science theories to human science. Therefore, to solve the mentioned problem, Wilhelm Dilthey suggested Hermeneutics. Dilthey believed that the topics under discussion in human science are human phenomena which are meaningful and cover specific meaning. Therefore, its related and adopted methodologies should be a means through which meanings and concepts can be discovered and interpreted. What Dilthey meant was social agents’ intention, motivation, will, and expectation of what they do in the society. He suggested a descriptive psychology for conceptualizing and understanding human phenomenon. However, hermeneutics underwent some changes during its days of growth and development. These developments and evolutions went on till, Ricoeur, one of the recent hermeneuticians, started posing the idea that the main responsibility of hermeneutics is trying to disconnect human works from its own creator or author. He believed that discovering the meaning of the creation is the attributed meaning by its reader not the meaning lied in the mind of author. This theory would result in relativity of understanding, since there are also numerous interpreters and respectively numerous interpretations. The current study aims to compare two well-known philosophers, Ricoeur and Dilthey, in the field of hermeneutics besides comparing their theories and the differences among their ideas. The researcher has also added a very brief introduction to their methodologies along side with their historical changes.

The present study aims at investigating how the formation of civil society in Iran is affected by these characteristics of states: applying hegemony over private institutions, being dependent on tribal systems, adopting a particular political philosophy, and preventing the formation of a stable aristocratic institution in Iran. In this investigation, the relationship between the state and private sections is analyzed based on the theoretical model proposed by Jurgen Habermas. Besides the model presented by Jurgen Habermas, the current investigation considers the theory of oriental despotism for studying the past history of Iran and the theory of the bureaucratic despotism in its contemporary time. The findings of the study show that state institutions, compared to other social elements, keep their dominance through controlling the private ownership, controlling the relationship between state institution and the existing tribe, destabilizing the aristocracy, keeping strict supervision over the individuals in the society. The findings also show that state institutions controls institutions which creates an appropriate context for the formation and recognition of public sphere.

Life style has three dimensions: behavioral, attitudinal, and motivational. The current study aims to investigate life style of young in Mashhad from behavioral aspect based on eight factors including cultural consumption, body management, political behavior, derivative behavior, make up tendency, cloths consumption, food consumption, and religiosity. The sample of the current study includes 402 young people who were randomly selected from the city of Mashhad. The utilized instrument in the current investigation is questionnaire. The findings of the present study reveal that there is positive correlation between young people’s life style and their parents’ cultural and economic capital. The results also show that the most significant level of difference, from the stand point of cultural and economic capital, was between people from upper class and people from the lower class of the society.

This paper aims to investigate the role of relative deprivation in the formation of collective behavior among the young in Kermanshah based on Blumer’s interactionism theory. He is one of the outstanding figures concerning studies done about collective behavior in the field of sociology. He believed that collective behavior develops through five stages: social motivation, formation of connective behaviors, commitment to integrity, ideology, and operational tactics. The instrument used in the present study is a questionnaire. The population of the study includes people from 19 to 35 years old in Kermanshah. Through systematic random sampling, 400 people were chosen. The construct and face validity of the present questionnaire have been tested and the reliability is ensured through Cronbach’s Alpha. The statistical methods used in the study are Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Logistic Regression. The findings of the study show that relative deprivation is a key element in forming collective behavior among the young people. Other factors like value expectations are influential in creating relative limitation and consequentially in forming collective behavior. The results of the study show that elements like relative deprivation, value abilities, and value expectations could predict 51.74 percent of young people’s tendency for participating in collective behaviors.

Social responsibility has been recognized as one of the most important elements in the existence and survival of the organizations. Therefore, studying and investigating this fundamental element considering social identity leads not only into enhancing organizational commitment, but also increasing the sense of satisfaction among stakeholders outside the organization. The present research investigated the moderating role of “importance of social responsibility” in the relationship between four dimensions of social responsibility and organizational accountability. The population of the study includes Mashhad food industry companies and 105 cases were the sample under study utilizing questionnaire. Using hierarchical regression models results of the study show that importance of social responsibility as a moderating variable affects the relationship between four aspects of social responsibility including employees, customers, government and social and non-social stakeholders. This shows that focusing on importance of social responsibility can positively affect the performance of the organizations and respectively leads into improvement in organizational commitment by its members.

The current study aims at investigating women’s sense of social security and factors influencing it in Mashhad city in 2006. The population of the study includes women above 15 years old from 12 different districts in Mashhad. The sample size, based on cluster sampling technique, was 360 persons. Sense of security is having mental peace against those dangers and problems which threatens a person’s daily life. In this research, the mean score for women’s sense of social security based on a five-point likert item was 2.60 which is below middle point of the scale. The result of the multivariate regression analysis shows that following factors (independent variables), based on order of importance, predict dependent variable which is women’s sense of social security: “mass media users” with beta coefficient of 0.346, “attitude towards Hijab” with beta coefficient of 0.36, “urban design” with beta coefficient of 0.298 and “self concept” with beta coefficient of 0.181 have a positive correlation with the dependent variable of the study. However, other factors like “being a housewife” with beta coefficient of – 0.125 and “having social support” with beta coefficient of -0.123 have negative effect on the dependent variable. The independent variables of the study altogether explain 54 percent of the variance observed in the dependent variable.