فهرست مطالب محمدرضا طالبان

The present article has been written with the aim of investigating the causes of high rates of social inequality in some provinces of Iran. To achieve this goal, the present study used Boolean algebra technique to provide an answer to the question of what combinations of socio-economic development indicators have led to the formation of high rates of social inequality in some provinces of Iran. In this regard, by reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature in the fields of sociology and economics and considering the close relationship between social inequality and socio-economic development, five causal factors were finally selected: GDP, industrialization, urbanization, literacy and life expectancy. The final results of the Boolean analysis indicate that four different combinations in the provinces of Iran have been employed as sufficient conditions for high inequality: A) a combination of low GDP plus low industrialization and low urbanization; B) High GDP plus low literacy and high industrialization and high urbanization; C) High literacy plus high industrialization and high urbanization and high life expectancy; and D) High GDP plus high literacy and low industrialization and high urbanization.

In the sociological literature, religious congregations (such as mosques, hosseiniyehs, religious groups, home prayer meetings, etc.) are considered as one of the important sources of social capital. People with high religious capital who actively participate in religious congregations and collective rituals usually find new friends from neighbors and other co-religionists and often and most likely in They are subjected to continuous or occasional interaction with them and receive special support, which is truly considered a valuable capital for them. In the present research, first, the arguments related to the relationship between religious capital and social capital were somehow combined with each other to lead to the conclusion of a hypothesis that can be verified empirically. Then, with the analysis unit of "county" and using secondary data, the validity of the research hypothesis was experimentally tested in Iran with the within national comparative method. In the end, the findings related to the empirical test of the mentioned hypothesis showed that even when the effects of various development indicators are controlled and eliminated, religious capital can still encourage social capital in Iran.

Some theorists of the rational choice approach in the sociology of religion put forward the argument that just as an increase in knowledge and skills of an individual (= human capital) increases the quality of economic goods, an individual's religious knowledge and skills (i.e., religious capital) also increases the quality of religious activities and as a result the benefits that a person receives from religious participation. Therefore, the more religious capital a person has, the more satisfaction (that is, the increase in benefits) he will get from religious activities, and one of the main results will be the increase in his religious participation. In the present study, an attempt was made to test the validity of this hypothesis.This study used the "within-national comparative method". "Unit of analysis" and "level of analysis" in the present study are "county" and "Iran" respectively, and secondary data were used to verify theoretical claims and final analysis.The findings of the research indicated a confirmation for the hypothesis of a positive relationship between religious capital and religious participation in Iranian counties- even when the indicators of development were also controlled - although the intensity of this relationship was weak.The obtained results indicated that most of the changes or major differences in religious participation at the level of Iranian counties are related to factors other than religious capital. Therefore, it can be said that to explain the religious participation at the level of Iranian counties, the theory of religious capital lacks sufficient explanatory power and it should be considered complementary to other theories.

The relationship between development and inequality in contemporary Iran has always been one of the most important and challenging issues that has occupied the minds of many thinkers in Iranian society. In this regard, in the present study, an attempt has been made to experimentally examine the relationship between the set of variables that make up the socioeconomic development construct and the set of variables that make up the construct of social inequality in Iranian society by relying on canonical correlation analysis.

Considering the nature of the topic as well as the main question, the current research is an explanatory one that the in-country quantitative comparative method was used with the unit of analysis “Iran/year” for the period from 1368 to 1398.

The value of the canonical correlation coefficient for the first principal root was equal to 0.898, which indicated a strong relationship between the combination of two sets of variables indicating the constructs of socioeconomic development and social inequality. The square of this correlation was equal to 0.806, which showed that the set of variables that make up socioeconomic development have been able to predict and explain about 81% of the changes in the set of variables that make up social inequality. The value of the canonical correlation coefficient of the second function was also equal to 0.692, which was interpreted according to its significance level.

The first root canonical correlation results showed that there was a very strong relationship (with a correlation coefficient of 0.90) between a linear combination of two sets of variables that make up socio-economic development and social inequality in Iran, which was statistically significant. The final result is that the increase in socio-economic development indicators between 1368 and 1398 in Iran has greatly increased the possibility of social inequality.

This article deals with the critical review of the book "A Theory of Secularization: An Ijtihadi Experiential Approach" (Bostan 2016). In this review, two basic and central problems that go back to the whole of this book have been taken into consideration, which have been addressed in the present article. These two serious problems or inadequacies were explained in detail in two different sections under the headings of receive and inappropriate applying and confusion of explanatory model with the theory. In the first part, by presenting arguments regarding the thesis of secularization in sociological literature, we showed that the comparison of intra-religious debates about lack of faith, which is a general and trans-historical category, with sociological discussions related to the thesis of secularization, which is a non-general and historical matter, should be taken as an example of considered inappropriate applying. In the second part, several argumentative points were presented to show that the maximum work done by Bostan in their book was to transform a saturated explanatory model into a Parsimonious explanatory model, which should not be confused with theory.

Sociologists have long regarded "religion" as an important factor in providing and maintaining the social cohesion of societies, and had proposed arguments for rationalization of this relationship. In contrast, some recent theorists of secularization in the social sciences have argued that one of the most important consequences of modernization and development on the religious life of the societies today is that it has sharply weakened the link between religion and social cohesion to the extent that social cohesion is no longer dependent on the religion and religiosity of the community members. In the present study, the arguments of these two competing theoretical views in sociology were first translated into two conflicting hypotheses about how religion is related to social cohesion. Then, an attempt was made to experimentally test the validity of these hypotheses using an inter-country comparative method in Iran by analyzing the "province" and using the collective data of the second half of the 2021s. The results of this test, on the one hand, provided empirical support for the traditional hypothesis in sociology claiming that religion reinforces social cohesion. On the other hand, the research findings did not provide any empirical support for predicting the empirical secularization theories. Overall, the findings of the empirical test of the hypotheses of this study in Iran, using an inter-country comparative method and an inter-provincial analysis, showed that religion is an important factor in strengthening the social cohesion even when the effects of development are controlled and eliminated

Many studies in sociology have shown that religion and religiosity reduce suicide rates both cross and within nationally. However, in the theoretical and research literature on the relationship between religion and suicide, little attention has been paid to how religious homogeneity affects suicide rates. Therefore, the present study was organized to expand the research field related to religion and suicide and focusing on Iranian society around this key question or the main question: what is the relationship between religious homogeneity and suicide rates in Iran? Overall, the results of this study failed to provide empirical support for the claim that religious homogeneity has a decreasing effect on suicide rates. Conversely, the findings showed that religious homogeneity had a positive relationship or an increasing effect on suicide rates in Iranian provinces.

The statement that "women are more religious than men" is one of the few general statements that social scientists, especially sociologists of religion, have consensus on. Nevertheless, explaining why is considered a scientific puzzle, and several theories have been proposed to explain this gender gap in religiosity. This research paper was organized with the aim of examining the empirical validity of the theory of existential security in Iran, around the question of to what extent the indicators of existential security can explain the gender gap of religiosity in Iran? In this regard, the arguments of critical safety theory were first formulated in the form of research hypotheses. Then, by assign the unit of analysis to "province" and using the within country comparative method, the hypotheses were compared with the data of all provinces in Iran to assess the degree of conformity of the predictions of the theory with empirical evidence. Finally, the findings of the empirical test of the relationship between existential security and the gender gap of religiosity in Iran by within country comparative method and inter-provincial analysis showed that none of the hypotheses representing the theory of existential security are confirmed. In fact, the findings of this study failed to provide seriously and reliability support for the theory of existential security in explaining the gender gap of religiosity in the context of the Muslim population and the provinces of Iran.

The sociological and psychological texts of religion and the descriptive data from numerous surveys and researches in different societies, including Iran, all indicate that in a wide range of measures, women are more religious than men. Nevertheless, explaining why is still a scientific puzzle. In the present research paper, we first try at the theoretical level with an analytical review of the theoretical explanations related to the religious gender gap in the sociological literature, to extract and formulate the main arguments of the theories of structural location, deprivation, socialization, and risk preferences/risk aversion in the form of research hypotheses. Then, at the empirical level, for confront these hypotheses with the data obtained from the national population of Iranian Muslims, the degree of conformity and correspondence of these theoretical predictions with the data and empirical evidence was evaluated and judged. The results of the research provided empirical support for theories of deprivation, socialization, and risk preferences/risk aversion; while structural location theory could not be empirically supported.

The relationship between religion and suicide has long been studied by social scientists, especially sociologists. In the present article, by reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature in this field of study, at first, the mechanisms of relationship between the religion and suicide are explained and then the main hypothesis of the research was evaluated empirically with secondary data of Iran through an inter-country comparative analysis with the provincial analysis unit. The findings of this study showed that the main hypothesis in sociological theoretical views that "religion has a protective or reducing effect against suicide" in the context of the Muslim community in Iran is also fully confirmed empirically. More precisely, when the effects of three influential variables on suicide at the systemic level, namely socio-economic development; Family integration, and social disorder were controlled; the net effect of religion on suicide in the provinces of Iran was significantly reduced, indicating the fact that religion had a significant protective effect on suicide. This finding fully indicates the net and independent effect of religion on suicide in the provinces of Iran and is an empirical support for the thesis that religion can play the role of a shield or protector against suicide by promoting coping with the suffering of life and thus, reduce the risk of suicide.

The aim of this study was to investigate the causes of high suicide rate in some provinces of Iran. In fact, the present article, using the "province" analysis unit, has used Boolean algebra to answer the question: what combinations of causal factors have led to the high suicide rate in some provinces of Iran? To determine these causal factors, by reviewing the literature in sociology, four causal factors were selected to explain this issue: birth rate, industrialization rate, urbanization rate, and female labor force participation rate.The results of Boolean analysis showed that high birth rates and low tuition fees were necessary for the occurrence of high suicide rates in the provinces of Iran; That is, all provinces with high suicide rates had high birth rates and low tuition fees. The findings of Boolean analysis also showed that when these two explanatory factors of the necessary cause are combined with one of the two factors of low rate of industrialization or high rate of female labor force participation, they will be sufficient cause for high suicide rate in Iranian provinces. In other words, Boolean analysis showed that two different causal patterns have led to high suicide rates in the provinces of Iran. First, a combination of high birth rates with low rates of industrialization and urbanization. Second, a combination of high birth rates with low urbanization rates and high female labor force participation rates.

Despite the consensus of social scientists on the greater religiosity of women than men in all religions and sects, explaining why this empirically stable pattern is considered a scientific puzzle. To solve this puzzle, sociologists have also made various theoretical efforts, the most recent of which was introduced in the late twentieth century as the "theory of risk preference". The present study was conducted in continuation of this new field of study in the sociology of religion on the relationship between risk preference and religiosity in the light of a synthetic theoretical model. Therefore, at the theoretical level, an attempt was made to combine the theory of power-control and the theory of risk preference to develop a model for the sociological explanation of gender differences in religiosity. Then, at the experimental level, testing this theoretical model with the data obtained from the national population of Iranian Muslims. Overall, the results of this study indicated the empirical support of this theoretical model among Iranian Muslims so that the two constructs of "family structure" and "risk aversion" were able to significantly reduce the gender gap in all aspects of Iranian Muslims' religiosity.

Realization of socioeconomic justice has been among key goals and ideals of the leaders and Constitution of Iran and Cuba. This paper studies the three areas of income, education and health to evaluate socioeconomic justice during the period 1979-2018 for Iran and 1960-1999 for Cuba. Comparative-descriptive research method has been employed and the documentary research method has made use of data with the Statistical Center of Iran, Ministry of Health, Central Bank of Iran, World Health Organization, World Bank and findings of the previous research works. According to the findings of this paper, the student-teacher ratio in Iran in 2018 has been 28/52 and 11/48 in Cuba in 1999. The regression coefficient for 24 years of same data has been -.290 and -.608 respectively. Government spending on education as a percentage of GDP was 3.96% in Iran in 2018 and 6.76% in Cuba in 1999 and the regression coefficient for 11 years has been -.012 and .062 respectively. In health sector, out-of-pocket costs in Iran in 2014 stood at 47.80% and in Cuba in 1995 at 9.77% while five-year coefficients of the fourth decade stood at -2.840 and -.200 respectively. The density of physicians (per 1000 population) in Iran in 2018 was 1/58 and in Cuba in 1999 it was 5/84 while the 34-year regression coefficient stood at .038 and .136 respectively. Hospital beds (per 1000 population) in Iran in 2014 marked 1/50 and in Cuba in 1995 it was 6, while 25-year regression coefficients were respectively .005 and .073. Based on Gini cost-based coefficient, during the first three decades after the revolution, Iran was placed among the relatively unequal countries (0/50-0/35) while Gini income-based coefficient related to the three first decades put Cuba among the relatively equal countries (0/35-0/20). With the growth in inequality in the fourth decade after the revolution, Cuba was placed among the relatively unequal countries.

The present study is organized for the empirical test of religious market theory. In the main formulation of the religious market theory, the reduction of the Government Regulation of Religion in society fosters religious pluralism, religious pluralism creates competition, and competition between religious firms or institutions leads to the more and more efficient supply of religious products, and that as a result overall religiosity and religious vitality will increase in the whole society. This argument of the religious market theory was formulated as a hypothesis that the government regulation of religion is negatively related to religious commitment. To examine the empirical validity of this theory, the hypothesis was confronted with secondary data from 179 countries to assess the degree of conformity and correspondence of the religious market theory prediction with empirical evidence. Overall, the findings of this cross-national research could not provide significant and reliable support for the religious market theory in explaining the variance of religious commitment levels.

Speeches and actions are essential elements of human activity in their social life, and the ties between them have always been a major concern for social scientists, in particular sociologists. The issue of mismatching speech with behavior could be a methodological problem as the most common research methods and techniques used by sociologists (i.e. surveys and interviews) are focused on the unproven assumption that there would be a connection between individuals' answers to research questions about their actions and their actual actions in social life. This article examines the methodological implications of this argument from the viewpoint of some sociologists that what people say is often a poor prediction of what they do. As a result, researchers who base their claims on people's verbal statements should make it clear that they are not analyzing what people are doing, unless they show that people's statements about a particular action have the power to predict that action.

The present paper focuses on the role of individual religiosity in the potential for political protest. The long-standing knowledge reserve of the social sciences in many sociological perspectives suggests that as far as religion plays a role in justifying or supporting existing traditions and order, it reduces the potential for political protest. However, some social scientists in recent years have argued that religion and religiosity can influence political mobilization and protest behavior in a variety of ways and through a variety of channels. These various channels or mechanisms through which religion and religiosity can influence protest behavior are described in the present article and then, by separating religiosity into  two main dimensions of "religious beliefs" and "religious rituals", theoretical arguments are provided for rationalizing the two opposing hypotheses. First, religious beliefs reduce the potential for political protest; And second, participation in religious rituals increases the potential for political protest. Finally, these assumptions were evaluated with data from survey studies in Tehran to reveal the their emperical fitness. Overall, the results of the research showed that the potential for political protest respondents was independent of their religiosity, and neither of the two dimensions of religious beliefs and religious rituals had any real connection with the potential of political protest.

For more than two centuries, the social sciences have been subjected to the “irrational actor axiom" in the scientific study of religion. Religiosity and religious behavior were explained on the basis of primitive thought, neurotic impulses, and social conditioning; and the decline of religion and religiosity was also seen as the inevitable consequence of scientific enlightenment and technological advancement. From the late 20th century, and especially early 21th century, an increasing set of empirical data from social science research has shown that this traditional approach to the scientific study of religion is defective. Many of these data have seriously challenged the old but still popular social sciences scholarship on "incompatibility of science with religion”, "the gradual decline of religion" and "pathological roots of religious commitment." The research evidence presented in this paper also showed that most of the extensive literature on the relationship between university education and the reduction of students' religiosity, which was dominated by the secularization paradigm and the incompatibility of science with religion, does not have the necessary empirical support. Also, analyzing the data on the religiosity of Muslims in Iran showed that the difference in religiosity of the population was more affected by their religious background of their family rather than by studying at the university.

How Religious Pluralism relates to Religious Commitment has been one of the main axes of conflict between the two dominant paradigms on the sociology of religion in the last three decades. The knowledge storage primacy of the social sciences under the secularization paradigm suggested that religious pluralism undermines religious commitment. In contrast, the new paradigm of the religious economy or the market model of religion argued that religious pluralism leads to increased religious commitment. In the present paper, the mechanisms of the relationship between the two variables of religious pluralism and religious commitment are described from the perspective of the two paradigms secularization and the market of religion, and then, their conflicting hypothesis with secondary data of Iran are tested through an inter-country comparative analysis with the provincial analysis unit. The results showed that there was no relationship between religious pluralism and religious commitment in Iran. In fact, the findings of this research could not provide empirical support for two dominant paradigms on sociology of religion in the relationship between religious pluralism and religious commitment, rather, it should be seen as an empirical challenge for both the secularization and the religion market’s paradigms.

After forty years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, it was necessary to examine the effects of the post-revolutionary system on various aspects of Iranian life. One of the aspects which is becoming more and more important is the environmental status of Iran from one hand and the thoughts and behaviors of the residents of this system on the other hand. Since the dominant ideology of the Iranian revolution and the post-revolutionary system of government has undoubtedly been of a religious nature, policy making has been based on Islamic law and the time needed to institutionalize the values ​​endorsed by the government and religious and political socialization with at least one generation has passed, now is a good time to examine the proportion of sharia and what is assumed to be the result of sharia, including environmentalism in the sample populations. In the present study, with a review of the theoretical literature on how religion and environmentalism relate, three possible relationships between two variables of religiosity and environmental behavior (positive correlation, negative correlation, and non-correlation) were formulated in the form of three different hypotheses. To empirically test these competing hypotheses, a survey study was conducted with a sample of 400 students of Tehran University. The results of the research showed that only the hypothesis of a negative or inverse relationship between religiosity and environmental behavior received empirical support but the magnitude or intensity of this relationship was weak.

An overview of social science history implies numerous methodological controversies about the rationale of historical explanation or causal inference in a particular case with the design of "single case research". In this paper, three methodological criticisms of historical explanations of a particular case were first described. Then, the main answer was the methodologists who defended historical research or internal explanations, who argued that such criticisms were based on a particular logic of causal inference, which governed quantitative or statistical research tradition. the historical explanation and causal inference in a single case uses a different logic called Bayesianism.

The two dominant paradigm on sociology of religion since the late 20th century sparked a hot and heated controversy around the relationship between religious pluralism and religious participation. On the one hand, the secularization paradigm argued that the power and authority of a religion in society is in its monopoly; and religious pluralism causes the erosion of religious faith, and has a secular effect. On the other hand, the economic / market of religion’s paradigm argued that the diversity and free competition among different religions in a society not only does not lead to secularization, but rather contributes to increased religious participation and mobilization. These arguments, for empirical testing in social research, lead to two contradictory hypotheses: (1) Religious pluralism has a negative relationship with religious participation (the secularization paradigm); and (2) religious pluralism has a positive relationship with religious participation (the economic / market of religion’s paradigm). Nevertheless, a large set of sociological researches has yielded conflicting results; some empirical findings support the hypothesis of the secularization paradigm and imply rejection of the hypothesis of the paradigm of the economy / market of religion, while some others have supported the hypothesis of the paradigm of the economy / market of religion and implies rejecting the hypothesis of the paradigm of secularization. On this basis, a general problem was raised for the present article about the question of why the common pattern in the social sciences in general and sociology in particular is that multiple empirical studies on a single subject, produce contradictory results? To answer this question and to solve this problem, the arguments presented in the perspective of critical realism was used.

Social surveys have always been the most important research tools for sociologists to collect data from large populations. The main problem in social surveys is “getting the correct answer” from the respondents, who may be caught in a situation when they hide their true and correct answer and instead they give an answer which is normatively considered a justified acceptable answer. This kind of answer in social survey research is considered the most important mistake by respondents and is known as social desirability bias. This article is an attempt to study the results of social desirability bias in social surveys and explain the sources and mechanisms of its production. A theoretical framework has been applied to analyze this bias. In the next step, the sensitive subjects or questions in survey are discussed, which are one of the main sources of social desirability bias. In the pursuance of this goal, one of the significant techniques for elimination or reduction of social desirability bias, when we deal with sensitive issues, has been mentioned, i.e. formulating the questions in an indirect form and addressed to “general others”. The theoretical expectation in approach to social desirability bias is that the respondents, on average, evaluate themselves as more positive than general others.
The empirical study of the said theoretical expectation was undertaken by 12 items related to the “Observation of Ethical Values” scale in a national survey with 4620 respondents as sample. All findings were extraordinarily consonant with the said theoretical expectation.

The present research is an attempt to study the relationship between subjective social exclusion and political participation among the third generation youth of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Hence, three rival theoretical approaches were picked up, i.e. mobilization (social exclusion with positive correlation with political participation = increasing impact); withdrawal (social exclusion with negative correlation with political participation = decreasing impact) and the lack of impact. In a combination of these three theoretical approaches, a theoretical model was developed. This model was tested by relying on the data collected from a sample constituted of 400 students of Razi University. The sample was selected by employing multiple stratified method.
The findings show that the students with higher subjective social exclusion had higher political participation. Nevertheless, the revers of this relationship was not significant, i.e. the reduction of social exclusion would not reduce the political participation. Overall, the findings of the research provided some empirical evidence to sustain the hypothesis of the theoretical model of mobilization based on positive relations between social exclusion and political participation, while it had refutational connotation for the theoretical model of withdrawal. The regression results indicate that subjective social exclusion overall counts for twenty percent of the variations in political participation of the population.