فصلنامه تحقیقات فرهنگی ایران
سال سیزدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 51، پاییز 1399)

The use of virtual networks, the globalization of mediated cultures, and the emergence of the cultural public sphere all have led to attention being focused on cultural citizenship theories in describing citizenship participation of cyberspace users.  In this paper, using the method of ethnographic content analysis, an attempt was made to evaluate the nature of citizenship practices of young Instagram users and the extent to which these engagement are consistent with their national citizenship. According to the findings, 69% of the content shared on the mainstream public pages, humor and entertainment pages encompassed "individualistic" themes, often in line with the users' individual interests and concerns and their tendency for happiness and fun. Moreover, these themes have complied with the cultures existing in the global public sphere rather than conforming to national citizenship. Yet, the more frequency of individualistic themes as compared to collectivist themes did not mean their complete disregard for national-scale actions, with 21% of the themes on these pages being formal and community-centered citizenship. Users have returned to their national-level belongings, responsibilities and issues through them. In the Concluding Section, the necessity of redefining the concept of citizenship based on the requirements of the cyberspace, the impossibility of adopting absolute positive or negative approaches to the consequences of virtual citizenship on national citizenship, the necessity of simultaneous attention to opportunities and threats this space poses, and the need to expand education pertinent to "cultural citizenship" were all emphasized.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate, explore and explain the characteristics, features and components attributed to the notion of wisdom in Iran. To this end, the explicit theory of wisdom, i.e. individuals’ perceptions of wisdom, was used. All above-20 years old Iranians comprised the population of the study. Following purposeful and convenience sampling procedures, 328 Iranians (134 males and 194 females) coming from different ethnic backgrounds (Persians, Azerbaijani Turks, Kurds, Arabs, the Turkmen, Lurs and the Baluch) were selected and required to answer a researcher-developed open-ended questionnaire followed by content analysis of data. Findings suggested/indicated that for %94.2 of the participants, exemplars of wise people are male with an average age of 62.9. Also, 27.9%, 20.1%, 19.15% and 12.6% of wisdom exemplars came from religious figures/leaders, people-around-me, experts/specialists and social-political figures respectively. Five main/major categories/themes of wisdom were ‘intellectuality’, ‘morality’, ‘civilization’, ‘performance’ and ‘virtue/spirituality’. Further analyses of components and categories revealed that of all characteristics/features attributed to wisdom, %37.05 were associated with intellectuality, %26.5 with performance, %18.6 with morality, %8.01 with civilization and %4.4 with spirituality. Findings are used to argue that ‘wisdom’ in Iranian society and for Iranians in general is a hybrid/combination of Western (rooted in cognition and intellectuality) and Eastern (based on socio-affective propositions and spirituality) doctrines of wisdom.

Studies in the field of religion and women consider the emancipation of women from the structure of patriarchy and the challenge of the beliefs and interpretations of traditional Islam to belong to the upper class and elite of society. In this study, this question arises whether traditional pious women of the lower classes also have the ability to re-interpret religion in their everyday lives? How do these women, without knowing the sources of religious intellectualism, re-interpret traditional religion and practically apply it in their lives? For this study, in-depth semi-structured interviews with traditional pious women in Ankara and Tehran were used. The results of this study show that women have not only used religion as a tool to expand their empowerment opportunities, but they have challenged traditional Islam and the interpretations that has tried to suppress them with the help of patriarchy for long years. They have inadvertently opened the space for the entry of religious intellectualism thoughts into their practical everyday life. Indirect opposition to the laws that have a jurisprudential basis has caused: firstly, women to go beyond the stage of resistance, and secondly, this opposition as intangible struggles has been able to change aspects of their lives, and eventually it shows a more concrete view of Islam's equality towards women.

Shame and guilt, as universal and self-conscious emotions, exist in every aspect of our every-day lives. These two feelings effectively enhance the process of human socialization; they normally occur as a response to a negative evaluation of the self, which is typically based on societal standards. The above-mentioned emotions are considered as universal phenomena, however, culture can affect both. The way we value the emotions is under the influence of culture. Given the culture-specific patterns of emotions, the present research made an investigation of “shame” and “guilt”, as concepts based on culture in the Persian context. This study aimed at studying the linguistic elements stating the emotions of shame (sharmsâri, rou siyâhi, khajelat, nang, biâberouei, khejâlat, khajoul, hayâ, âberou, kamrou, etc.) and guilt (taghsir, moghaser, gonâhkâr, etc.) in the Persian language. In order to achieve this purpose, 756 natural contexts in which the utterances related to shame and guilt have been used were recorded. The data collected was then analyzed based on Dell Hymes’ SPEAKING model (1967); the various social aspects which were related to these two emotions were, then, extracted. The research made use of a corpus-based approach, and the findings of the study pointed out the importance and dominance of shame in the Iranian culture compared to guilt. The reason has its roots in the dominance of the collectivist culture among Iranians.

This article tries to inspect the typology of the mourning communities in Yazd based on the content of monodies and their general orientation. This research is interpretive and the research method is based on grounded theory. Data collection was done by semi-structured interviews with 22 informed people. The sample have been selected from the group’s chief, the poet, the weeper, the panegyrist and the active group members. The researches have shown that the mourning communities in Yazd were have been put into type such as reflexivity, identity oriented and ideological (movement oriented) communities. The properties of the reflexivity community can be such example as: “time coverage glance at the Ashura history”, “critical vision to contemporary Islamic societies”, “putting an emphasis on human general concepts” and “critic of the discourse of the Islamic republic of Iran”. The property of identity oriented can be as the following “the static vision in the Ashura history”, “mournful and consolatory vision”, "emphasis on Shiite identity", “bound to the borders of the Shiite identity of the Islamic republic of Iran. The property of the ideological community is “the time coverage glance at the Ashura history”, “the school vision”, “putting an emphasis on the Shiite jihad” and “bound to the discourse borders of Islamic Republic of Iran”.

The customs and rituals of the people of Gilan province are part of their intangible identity and heritage, which are studied in this article in two areas of mourning and feasts. Textiles can always have different uses in these rituals, and the study of textiles in the rituals of the province determines their function. 1480 works have been nationally registered in the list of intangible cultural heritage, of which 55 works belong to Gilan province. Seven of the recorded rituals in which textiles are used have been studied as the statistical population of the study. Three of them are in the field of mourning rituals and four are in the field of feasting rituals. This article seeks to answer how textiles are used in mourning and feasting rituals registered in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Gilan province. To achieve this goal, first the type of textiles, color, function, purpose and method of using textiles as research variables are determined, then the variables in the statistical population are studied by library and field researches. The present article is descriptive-analytical. The results show that textiles are used in mourning rituals as means to grant wishes as well as cover. Textiles are also used in various forms in feasts as means for ritual begging, distinction, cover, reminder, offer, giving information, prevention of malice, reaching goals, gift, decoration, storage as well as reward.