فصلنامه مطالعات فرهنگی اجتماعی خراسان
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 6، پاییز و زمستان 1386)

The building block of the human society is the relationship between people which makes culture. The impact of mass media such as printing, telegraph,radio, and television on people's culture has been taken into account in this study. The strength and importance of information as well as informationmanagement in communications era have been highlighted. The role of internet as a new communicative tool in the present era has been studied with regard to providing a bilateral communication and creating open system societies.

Climate and culture and their relation with people's life in the past provide us with helpful information about their beliefs. Due to its environmental and geo¬graphical characteristics, south Khorasan is a dry area and this plays an impor¬tant role in the way people live. Wind, precipitation, drought, and flood are envi¬ronmental phenomena penetrating into people's culture and beliefs. People try to have some predictions on these natural phenomena and find ways to prevent them. People's beliefs with regard to climate have been studied based on field studies and referring to some sources.

There is a strong link between concepts such as training, culture, research, and education. Without studying culture and providing a constructive education, training and culture have no sense. Educational systems, therefore, play an important role in developing research and culture; and they should be modi¬fied. This modification requires reviewing goals, structure, content, organization methods, evaluation, learning methods, and other procedures leading to a better educational system and culture. This requires learner to be consciously involved in learning through a constant process and to increase his interest and commit¬ment to self-learning through increasing research motivation. While the present research believes in a link between the above-mentioned items, it focuses on the relation between training, teaching, and research to pave the way for study¬ing culture and dynamic cultural elements in educational systems. The study has introduced ten procedures at the end to increase research motivation.

In addition to constant development, concepts dealing with humandevelopment and expanding human capabilities are nowadays being empha¬sized. Development is an economic, social, and cultural process aiming at strengthening people through providing them with freedom and involving them in their own activities. A real development is undoubtedly impossible if excluding half of the population. Women's presence in all aspects of life including fam¬ily, economic, and social ones; and highlighting their talents to determine their stand in development process is very essential. Economic, social, and cultural structures are the main impediments preventing women to cooperate in devel¬opment process. This study aims at reviewing and criticizing different attitudes towards women's role in rural development process through emphasizing on cooperative approach and determining the main obstacles in this regard.

The meaning of Nowrooz, the eleven categories of the main uses of this word in single and compound forms, Nowrooz behavior before Nowrooz, at the time of Nowrooz, and in Sizdeh Bedar, some explanation on public and specific Nowrooz, and offering five samples from poets and a prose from south Kho¬rasan with regard to the most specific Nowrooz are the main points to cover in this study.

The present study tries to show the links between sport and culture, and the role sport plays in consolidating and preserving cultural heritage through offer¬ing some examples from Iran and other countries civilization history. The inter¬action can be shown through looking at traditional sports and local games.

Cultural development requires identifying cultural characteristics and their effects on members of the society. Identifying cultural development needs ac¬ademic effort and this can be achieved only through studying and investing knowledge. This study aims at measuring the rate of book reading, the existing obstacles, and the ways to spread this habit. The experimental group includes 600 citizens of Birjand. They will be given a questionnaire to answer and the results will be discussed.

Viewer is the main factor in theatre and theatre without viewers has no sense. In old days theatre was used to entertain families, to worship gods, to make people express their feelings, to transfer tradition and knowledge, to criticize abnormalities in the society, and to live a life. Since theatre turned into a profes¬sion, there should have been some spectators or government grants to help it survive. Theatre means performing a written text to inform people, to educate them, to increase their humanistic, religious, and national knowledge; and to lead the society toward peace and calmness. This study tries to introduce some ways to attract viewers to the hall theatres.

The modern style of story writing in Iran started in 1921 when Mohammad AliJamalzadeh published his short story collection entitled 'once upon a time' in Berlin. This was the beginning of Realism in Iran. Despite living abroad, Jamal¬zadeh was dominant over Iranian culture and traditions and used them in his writing. Women as protagonists, antagonists, or characters whose problems have been reflected in stories, are present in Persian stories. Women's thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes have been presented in Jamalzadeh's stories. These be¬liefs mostly turned into superstition during illness, giving birth to a child, wedding ceremonies, and travelling.