Youth and the Car Culture: Analysis of Meanings, Motivations and Functions of Personal Cars Among Tehran's Youth

Technology, whichwas first made to meet the needs of human beings, gradually found novel functions in combination with other social and cultural needs.As a part of technological discourse seen in all societies nowadays, car developed new patterns of use once it was imported to Iran and now is in great demand as a highly favored aspect of popular culture among youngsters. By using an exploratory and analytic description of inherent and reconstructed meanings of car, this research aims at discovering the denotations, functions, and malfunctions of using personal cars among the youth in Tehran. Due to the nature of this subject which lacks any theory, and in order to discover the deeper mental layers, the grounded theory is chosen among qualitative methods of research in this paper. After examining the theories related to car culture, “various motivations, meanings, and functions of using car” along with causal, basic, and mediator conditions, action strategies and consequences affecting it are identified. Though car is considered as a neutral form of technology, the data of this research indicate that it has a socio-cultural connotation.