مجله جامعه شناسی ایران
سال شانزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 49، تابستان 1394)

The main goal of university systems is knowledge transfer to their students. Therefore, the most important indicator for assessing the efficiency and quality of the an education system is the level of graduate's abilities. This article regards the indicators like “scientific ability and motivation of students” and the “quality of theses and dissertations” as criteria for judging the performance of sociology education in Iran, and tries to provide a report on how the system works from the perspective of the people involved. For measuring each of the indices, quantitative and qualitative methods such as documentary research, questionnaires and interviews have been used. Quantitative data has been obtained by sending a questionnaire to those members of the Iranian Sociological Association whose e-mail addresses had been accessible. Also, interviews with thirty seven lecturers, students and sociology researchers are added to the quantitative data. The results show that the output of this educational system is not in good condition in terms of quality from the perspective of the actors involved. It seems to be necessary to identify internal and external factors affecting the system’s inappropriate response that is a topic for another article.

Right to the city is one of the controversial concepts introduced in the 1970s by the French philosopher, Henri Lefebvre. In recent decades, this concept has gained the attention of many city theoreticians and has formed various social movements in practice and helped issue some legal charters. Lefebvre considered the city as a social structure and believed that all the citizens have a right to the city. The goal of the current article is to recognize and analyze the concept of right to the city using the theoretical framework presented by Henri Lefebvre and reading the concrete instances of this concept within various urban movements and issued charters. Our study is descriptive research and to gather the data, we used a qualitative method and techniques such as document selection, expert opinion and thematic analysis of documents. Results indicate that the concept of right to the city includes ownership of the city by citizens and their participation in urban affairs. Therefore, major issues confronting this concept in creating high quality urban space are: urban governance, social inclusion, cultural diversity in the city, social freedoms and access to urban services for all residents.

The Asiatic mode of production was devised by Karl Marx in the mid-nineteen century. Since then, the socio-political changes of Asiatic societies have become the main concern of the orientalists. Marx believed that the only way of changing the relations in such countries is the importation of the elements of capitalism from the other countries. The change due to the external forces has become a focal point of the critics of the Asiatic mode of production and oriental despotism. Social movements which are one the main ways of socio-political changes have been studied by some thinkers like Wittfogel, Ahmad Ashraf, Homayoun Katouzian and John Foran. Generally speaking, there are two theories about this issue: the theory of oriental despotism by Wittfogel in which he rejects the role of social movements in changing the relationships, and the theory of fragile resistance by John Foran in which he argues that the movements are fragile due to their coalition characteristics. The major question of this study is: why have not the social movements led to a change in social structure in Iran?
Using a historical method, the paper is to give evidence for and against both theories in Iranian society. The results demonstrate that many social movements can be observed at the time of the weakness of the despotic powers. However, the fragility of those movements prevents any socio-political changes. This mechanism states why the history of orient, in general, and the history of Iran in particular are static. Based on the findings, it could be said that each theory explains just a part of the fact. Therefore, with the use of the Herbert Bloomer's movement stages, I present a mixed theory to examine the changes of sociopolitical structures in Iranian society.

There is an interaction between the society and language in which the sociocultural characteristics of different groups are reflected. Therefore, the language could be a tool for understanding these subcultural and social characteristics. This article aims at exploring the relations between colloquial language (slang) of youth and dominant discourse of the society and social institutions and examining the role and function of this informal language as well. Our theoretical framework is a combination of Bakhtin's carnival theory and the relations between language and power in Ferklauf's discourse. The gathered data is analyzed by using discourse analysis and Ferklauf's analytical pattern. The research population was the personal blogs (live blogs) of youths aged 15-29 from 2006 to 2009. Besides, we selected 30 blog texts as a sample by the use of a purposive sampling method. Finally, we came to the conclusion that the colloquial language is not used similarly and homogenously in youth subculture; conversely, based on the social space of its usage, this language is used differently. This informal language as a carnival language challenges the dominant order and social institutions and resists the dominant ideological norms and values in secret. This carnivalian resistance shows itself variously in different cultural and ideological spaces in the city.

This article is based on the presumption that space and power are intertwined. So, we attempt to study the power relations in unisex parks, especially in Behesht Madaran Park. Generally, one can find two main approaches to these projects: elimination of the gender inequality and, on the contrary, the reproduction of the gendered domination. Drawing on the range of theoretical approaches, including the approaches of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Henry Lefebvre, we try to end this duality. This helps us to better understand and describe the complexities of the case of study. Furthermore, in this research, we have 35 semi-structured interviews with officials and people who use this park as well. All the interview's project focus on the socio-political consequences of space. Based on their perceptions, interviewees are divided into 4 types and each type is divided into two different groups. Then, taking the theoretical concepts into consideration, we explain how different groups confront and understand the space of the park. The findings demonstrate that the above mentioned duality is incapable of analyzing this phenomenon. In conclusion, we maintain that the issue of domination over women or protecting them or any other discussion about identity is inadequate to grasp the power relations in such spaces. Instead, one must trace the meaning of such power relations somewhere else. In other words, the control, and normalization of bodies are accomplished by segregating people based on their predetermined characteristics.

Many studies have shown that the decrease in the compatibility of couples is a serious threat to the survival of families. The main goal of this study is to investigate the effects of compatibility factors on the family cohesion amongst Hamedani ethnic groups. In order to collect the data, I did a survey and selected 147 people from the three different ethnic groups in Hamedan city, namely Persian, Turkic and Lori groups, by the use of the multi-stage simple random sampling. Then to interview the respondents, I modified Filisinger and Spanier questionnaire. It is also important to add that the analysis unit was the individual. The findings show that the compatibility factors do not have the same effect on the family cohesion. Furthermore, the results of stepwise multiple regression revealed that “unity of thought” in Turkic families, “marital satisfaction” within Persian families and “consensus” within Lori families are more important than the other factors. These differences arise from their various histories and subcultures.