مجله جامعه شناسی نهادهای اجتماعی
پیاپی 1 (زمستان 1392)

Development has been one of the major concerns in transitional societies undergoing change. In order to understand different factors in their underdevelopment, there are different reasons that should properly studied. Language and folklore literature especially proverbs show the deep layers of people’s personalities and through studying these two we can estimate the attitudes of the local people towards such development. The study of developmental attitude of the Lors could give us a precise basis for such an investigation. The theoretical model is based on the ideas of developmental thinkers. The proverbs have been analyzed by qualitative content analysis and we focused on the frequencies of proverbs as well as the meaning of positive and negative orientations. Findings show that rationalism, work-related values, collectivism, conservatism and fatalism were the most frequently used themes among the proverbs. The proverbs were grouped under two headings: 1- positive attitude, including rationalism and collectivism 2- negative attitude, including conservatism, fatalism, ascribed position, universalism, need to achievement, gender belief and individualism. To sum it up, it was concluded that a majority of Lori proverbs were concerned with a lack of or improbability of development and improvement in people’s lives.

The formation of nation-states in modern days has increased the importance of governments which play vital role in many social phenomena. Institutional trust in general and trust in formal institutions in particular is the cornerstone of development and a requirement of modern world. Trust in formal institutions increases the impact of governments and their productivity. The present paper examined the factors affecting the formation of trust in formal institutions. The research method was a secondary analysis and in doing so, the data of World Values Survey (WVS), the Survey of Good Governance (WGI), and the data of Freedom House for 2000-2005 were used. Countries were classified in terms of their trust in formal institutions into six categories. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference between these six groups in terms of corruption control, rule of law, and government efficacy. However no significant differences were found between these six groups of countries in terms of election democracy, political rights, civil rights, and social participation. In multiple regression analysis, the composite index of good governance, social participation, and political rights were used. The variables explained 41 percent of variations in the dependent variable namely trust in formal institutions. In addition, it was found that good governance and political rights had more explanatory power to explain the trust in formal institutions.

This paper studies the culture of trust among ethnic groups and measures its effective social factors. To do so, after reviewing the theoretical perspectives and empirical sources, an appropriate framework was prepared in which the basic assumptions are discussed and tested. The research was conducted based on multiple research methods (survey and documentation methods) in which 400 students from four ethnic groups including, Azeri, Persian, Kurd and Lor were sampled and tested by using a questionnaire at the Tarbiat Moallem University. Results show the average level of culture of trust among ethnic Azeri, Persian and Lor students, is higher than the average. But the average of culture of trust between Kurds is less than the moderate level and the mean of trust in other three ethnic groups excepting the Azeries is lower than moderate level. Regression analysis showed that the subsequent multiple correlation co-efficient regarding the culture of trust among the ethnic groups is 0.55. Also, there are some factors influencing the inter-ethnic trust including: the variables stereotyping 36%, inter-ethnic confidence 27%, general confidence or trust 10%, political trust 10% and ethnicity is 14%. The result showed that such variables as the sense of ethnic identity, ethnocentrism, and perceived discrimination, ethnic and inter-ethnic interaction are not effective in reducing or increasing the trust between ethnic groups.

The current article studies the influence of mass media on religious identity of young people of Shiraz. The breadth and depth of the soft power of media has caused the prevalence of expressions such as global village and globalization of culture in the social, cultural and media literature in various societies. Belonging to identity elements is one of the most affected areas in the sphere of mass media activities. This article is the result of empirical research in this area and wants to investigate the effects of global mass media (satellite TV’s and internet) on belonging to the religious identity of the youth. In other words, the main question is whether the use of global mass media effects the youth with religious background. And if the answer is yes, what are the influential mechanisms? To answer these questions, after reviewing the literature, causal models include mechanism variables, was constructed. The population of this study comprised students in the third year of high school in Shiraz. The method used in this research was survey and validity of variables measured by formal validity and variables reliability measured by Cronbach's alpha. The statistical hypothesis testing used in this article included Pearsons correlation, ANOVA, multivariable regression and path analysis. Correlation analysis showed a negative significant relation between the amount of international mass media use and religious identity.

Our society has experienced dramatic changes in the cultural arenas and social morality issues during the past two decades. The Political conflicts and challenges between the political parties (the Reformists and the Hardliners) led to an ignorance of social morality in particular in the family institution. In fact, challenges in gaining more political power between the political parties and authorities led to a negligence of social morality in the whole society. This article tries to analyze the representation of social morality in Gold and Copper, a film by Homayun Asadian, through a narrative analysis. Gold and Copper is the third part of a famous trilogy (Marmulak and Under the Moonlight are the two others) about the religious life and the Iranian clergies. Gold and copper pays attention to the social morality and acting moral in the real social positions, and criticizes the formal ethical rules that one can find in religious and ethical books. The film penetrates into the life of a young clergyman and his relationships with his wife and other people to depict the real face of morality. He seeks to learn the ethical lessons from an old famous master teaching ethics in a religious school, but he soon finds that one cannot find the real morality in books. Morality rules are simple and one can only find them in everyday situations.

Participation of young people in such social networks as Facebook can deeply influence different aspects of their identity and lifestyle; this can particularly affect youth who are the largest active group of such an environment. This largely happens due to particular features, facilities and functions of this environment regarding the social, political and cultural situation of the youth in megacities. In fact, Iranian Facebook users are gradually influenced and affected by changes brought by various social networks. Therefore, the present research is to investigate the relationship between the presence and interaction of youth in Facebook social network and its impact on their social identity. The present study is a survey and was carried out applying multi-stage cluster sampling and a researcher-made questionnaire. The statistical population of the study includes 424 young users of Facebook in Tabriz which was determined using Lin Table. The findings of this research indicate that the presence and interaction with Facebook social network can have an important influence on the user's social identity and this social network will weaken some aspects of social identity such as family, religious and national identities of users. On the other hand, it will increase the consuming aspect of users as well.