مجله مطالعات اجتماعی ایران
سال هفتم شماره 1 (پیاپی 21، بهار 1392)

The present study aims at reaching a reconciliation of the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular, the divine and the mundane worlds, and also a critique of authentication of the prevalent dualism in this demesne. Serving as a sequel to the present author’s works and field studies, this study tries to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of the distinction as referred to earlier. In treating the instruments employed in mourning ceremonies, sections of the study exhibit that ritual absolutism and sanctification stand in contradiction to social realities. That is to say, the sacred is not totally separated from the profane. For instance, given their religious and spiritual manifestations, mourning ceremonies are diversely connected to the everyday life. Further, the immense cash flow behind such ceremonies helps to sustain the continuity of the ritual.

The study of religiosity is a sociological field in need of special attention. The determining role of religion in private and public aspects of the lives of the Iranians throughout the history in general, and the establishment of an Islamic State in 1979, in particular, point to the importance of the topic of transformations in the religious domain. This article, through the analysis of some religious representations, rituals and a few behaviors, which are supposed to be regulated essentially by religious values and norms, propose to study the religious attitude of young people in Shiraz. This research is conducted via open interview among the youth, aged 18 to 32, in different localities. A field observation of two ceremonies, in which the young take part actively, completes the study. The results show that the increasing phenomenon of individualization at three levels is engaged: belief, ritual and daily behaviors. Since the individuals live in a plural world, conveying its values, the religious subjectivity takes on an increasing fluidity and, as the process of individualization carried out in the context of social life, the individual tendencies become more apparent.

Studying various aspects of religion necessitate various approaches. These are the insider approach to studying the cognitive (subjective) aspect, and outsider approach to studying the external (objective) aspect of religion. The focus of attention, the purpose of recognition, and thus the methods of these two approaches are different. In this view, the two approaches are not at the same level. Then, they do not contradict each other, but rather are complementary and assist each other in extensive study of religion. One of the disciplines equipped with an outsider approach to the study of religion is sociology of religion which has a variety of methods, amongst which is the method of comparative-historical analysis. Scholars especially from early twenty first century started to use this method. In addition to having appropriate techniques for historical description and explanation, this method is methodologically compatible with topics, which have recently become important for religious studies.

The Shia Seminary, as an Iranian social and religious institution, has profoundly influenced and been influenced by changes in different aspects of society, culture, and politics. This paper is an attempt to investigate the dynamics of changes in the Seminary in the past three decades. Here the terms 'Seminary' and 'Howza' are used interchangeably.There have been traces of significant changes in the structure of Howza, one of the most important of which is the formation and development of a bureaucratization project in the educational infrastructure of Howza. Since the 1979 revolution, this project has been particularly pursued by the Islamic Republic government. This research investigates these changes in Howza, in its educational and administrative systems by utilizing the Weberian model of bureaucracy to illustrate how the dynamics of these changes are closely entangled with the major elements of bureaucratization. To achieve this goal, first of all, views and thoughts of the major defenders of the recent changes in Howza in their writings are closely analyzed. Moreover, this research attempts to identify the unintended consequences of bureaucratization project and reflects how the opponents who are mainly among traditionalist Marja’ (guides) have argued against the implementation of this project in Howza. This research employs the archival research method to analyze a series of archived interviews, speeches, as well as several books and official and unofficial statistics related to the bureaucratization project in Howza.

The ability of influencing others is based on two foundations: subjective and objective. We name the subjective aspect the 'spiritual power' and the objective one, the 'organizational power'. During the transition from the Qajar to the Pahlavi, both spiritual and organizational powers of the Shia clergy changed. During the change in its spiritual power, the clergy encountered a new rival that is 'nationalism'. The change on its organizational power was brought about through the decline of that same power. Consequently the organizational and spiritual powers of the Shia clergy were balanced during the Qajar era. Such stability became unbalanced during the Pahlavi period and therefore the struggle between the clergy and the state deteriorated.

This article presents a critique of the survey research on religion. The emphasis of the critique is placed on measurement of religiosity and not necessarily upon any survey research on religion. The departure point of the article is formed around discussing an unintended congruence and compatibility which is nonetheless damaging. This intellectual tendency exists among two distinct groups: the superficial or literalist religious thinking prevalent among the statesmen, politicians, and the managers of the society vis-à-vis the positivistic religious thinking which rules the minds of the academicians and the researchers. That literalism and this positivistic narrow-mindedness are quite compatible. Both tendencies consider religion standing as an outside objective phenomenon. Both are somehow quantitatively oriented. Both possess a mechanical view and both try to outrun the other in decomposing religion into its constituents. Upon stating the methodological principles of such research endeavors, the present author, stresses the critique of survey-method research on religion in the West as well as in Iran. He attempts to reach an opening through criticizing a Western model of religiosity measurement as well as an Iranian one. Such an opening, in the author's view, will shed light on fundamental difficulties surrounding survey-research on religion. Based on such attempts, the author considers the religiosity measurement as impossible. There are two reasons: the first is that religiosity is both an objective and a subjective matter. Religiosity has no determinant external manifestation. Therefore, none of the individual's states can be taken as stable criteria for measurement. This is so because it is not the states that a human being is into that is worth considering but rather what matters is the meaning behind this or that state. The second reason is that it is not at all possible to determine and then attribute significance to each component of religiosity within its overall configuration where it occurs. Since there are different kinds of religiosity whose component's relative weights differ, the act of comparing them is out of question. In other words, the instances of religiosity are heterogeneous and belong to different kinds. Therefore, it is not possible to compare things of different kinds (on the nominal scale). Instead of measuring religiosity, one can attempt to rank (rate) the kinds of religiosity (reaching the order scale). This is so because one can only measure instances of religiosity of persons whose religiosity is of the same kind. The proper method for this is that of qualitative. Thus religiosity measurement is substituted by qualitative ranking of kinds of religiosity.

The present paper is an attempt to critically study the contention and reasons for the proof of the contention of Mohaddesi regarding impossibility of measurement of religiosity. Regarding the contention of impossibility, it is argued that Mohaddesi has aggrandized a difficult issue (religiosity measurement) to the extent that it has been transformed into an impossible issue. Moreover, the necessity of measurement and construction of a measure for religiosity stems from the necessity to provide answer to questions and to assess the theoretical contentions regarding religiosity, that which is among the main tasks of researchers in the social sciences and psychology. In order to prove the contention, it has been demonstrated that the reasons provided by Mohaddesi do not exclusively belong to religiosity and these reasons are either a paradigmatic critique in rejection of measurement of all human phenomena or include all compound variables in social sciences, which require index construction. In the end, the solution of Mohaddesi has been restudied and it has been shown that if we juxtapose the critique of Mohaddesi with his solution, not much will remain of his critique. Meanwhile, all critiques of Mohaddesi regarding impossibility of measurement of religiosity can be applied to his solution as well.