Iranian International Journal Of Social Sciences
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Spring 2011

Women and girls constitute the majority of the world’s poor. In the developing world, economic and social conditions of women had worsened (Falkingham& Baschiere 2004). Iran is an Asian country and about 10 percent of the population nationally lives below the poverty line according to statistics but in rural areas this ratio leaps to over 15 percent (World Health Organization 2008).Studies from various parts of the country suggest that, there are widespread and systematic inequalities within households. In this paper the main questions were: what are policy-practice impasses of the reduction of gender inequality and poverty of women, particularly household -headed women? How much have policies been succeeded? The aim of this paper was to examine the situation of poverty in Iran and the social policies for declining of women poverty in this country. For answering to these questions, research was based on analyses of documents, include: data of Statistical Center of Iran, yearly reports on developmental activities specifically oriented toward poverty reduction .According to the report of UNDP (2004) Iran’s rank in the reduction of gender inequality among 124 countries was 82 in 2004 while this rank was 118 among 124 country in 2007. The gender inequality in health and education is less than that of economy and the income. Women’s employment rate has been 15.4 percent in 2005 while this rate is 18.5 percent in 2008. The rate of unemployment women with academic education in comparison to men was 23.6 percent in 2005 and declined to 9.3 percent in 2008.

During the past hundred years Kurdish nationalism developed parallel with nationalist movements (and the process of establishment of nation-states) in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Under the influence of that nationalism drive, so far, we have seen several types of Kurdish movements aimed to achieve political autonomy and federal governments. This article describes one of the Kurdish movements in Iran during the years 1978-88. The process of Kurdish nationalism has been investigated from a critical viewpoint through a constitutive theory in this article.

The works on text-book creation were re-organized in the years of independence in Azerbaijan. “The text-book policy” of the government was sensed. The school children of the 1-11 forms were provided with textbooks free of charge in the years of 2003-2005. 250 original text-books were prepared in the years of 2000- 2007. It has been started to develop English, French and German text-books since 2002. At present the works on creation of English and French text-books for the 1-11 forms have been completed. The text-books for schools are being improved and renewed.

This paper seeks to examine the attitude of Tehranian travelers within the context of online travel Website functionality and content preferences as well as surfing behavior. The attitude of travelers to use electronic services of tourism is an important variant that is studied here. Our theoretical framework in this study is The Theory of Reasoned Action formulated by Ajzen and Fishbein. It suggests that a person's behavior is determined by his/her intention to perform a behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of his/her attitude toward the same behavior and his/her subjective norm. A test of this model, with data collected from a sample of 600 Tehranian consumers using a questionnaire constructed by the authors indicates that using online services of tourism is strongly influenced by attitude toward on-line services of tourism, normative beliefs, and respondents' trust to internet space..

Human kind always wants to learn the new methods of the production of knowledge and communicate with other people. Language and oral communication are considered as the first way for the exchange of ideas then writing helps to keep views and information. Therefore printing press as a new industry causes dissemination of information and beliefs, finally information and communication technology named forth revolution for printing and production of information and learning with no time and place limitations. Libraries and information centers play important role in learning and try to know changes and adapt themselves to the new conditions. So, nature, structure and function of libraries and information centers change to new terms like electronic skywriting in order to reproduce and get access to information because internet is considered as a powerful tool. This paper tries to explain the role of Libraries and information centers according to information technology (IT) and e-learning.

In recent years, social sciences have been ,formally, accused of being secular, western, with non-religious epistemological foundations, being indifferent to social issues and practical needs of the Iranian society and on the other hand, -there are formal attempts to establish an indigenous social science in contrast with universal social sciences. Such indigenization attempts in the realm of sociology have mainly resulted in two programs: The Islamic sociology program and the social and cultural engineering program. Although having the support of some of the academics as well, the bulk of advocates of the two approaches in indigenization program respectively are among specific religious institutions and figures and the governmental ones. This paper specifically aims to analyze the cognitive responses of the Iranian social scientists to these two approaches. Various tendencies have emerged among the Iranian intellectuals as a reaction to these official plans. In terms of the conceptual framework, this paper draws on the concepts of 'alternative discourses' of Syed Farid Alatas, Reawyn Connell’s 'Southern theory', and the four concepts of professional, critical, policy and public sociologies of Michael Burawoy and the questions raised by the paper can be considered in the light of these concepts: Do the Iranian postrevolutionary sociologists' thoughts show the characteristics of alternative discourses? Do these discourses attend to social sciences as a program of democratization of the ‘north’ ‘south’ relations? Do the social sciences discourses in Iran contemplate on the promotion of democracy on the national level? Do these discourses have the required theoretical characteristics to be acceptable within the discipline? Which of the four patterns of sociology mentioned above are reflected in these alternative discourses? The present paper firstly reviews the pre-revolutionary intellectual tradition of alternative social sciences by discussing Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969) and Ali Shariati’s (1933-1977) thoughts and then the post-revolutionary intellectual rupture and the emergence of phobia/taboo on the discussion of indigenization will be described. The main part of the paper will attend to the alternative social sciences among Iranian social scientists in three sections. In nowadays Iran there can be the talk of various global, indigenous, and alternative sociologies.The indigenous social sciences criticize the pre-suppositions in the ontological and epistemological foundations of the mainstream sociology in the universities. However, as long as this view has roots in official and unscientific institutions they can only be called ‘pseudo critical sociology’.The trend of thought which has its roots in governmental interferences rather than academic research programs can be called 'pseudo-policy sociology'. The reaction of these academics in terms of indigenization program of social sciences has been described as a phobia where they are scared of these debates and try to avoid it like a taboo subject. Against such conditions, most of the academics have sought shelter in the universal social sciences and defend it as neutral and objective science. This can be described as the passive consumption of social sciences which is obsessed with the concerns of methodology and has not yet shown much creativity. Several approaches are being developed in against both one-sided universalism and indigenous trends. The Iranian alternative discourses are trying to distance themselves from the paralysis brought about by the phobic situation. The advocates of "simple alternative discourses" while criticizing the official indigenization program, propose a discourse which functions as a substitute and yet defines itself in agreement with the global discourse of sociology. The "dual alternative discourses" avoid the dilemma of indigenous and universal science. They criticize the political and ideological dimensions of both discourses simultaneously and at the same time try not to ignore the democratic and humanist capabilities of attending to indigenous and universal dimensions. This trend of thought call for a formation of an interactive and dialogical world in social sciences and produce thoughts which can reconstruct social sciences as a democratic project both within various local groups and between Iran and the world powers. Perhaps the most creative intellectual trend in Iranian sociology can be traced in the advocates of such dual alternative discourses which have resulted in an expansion of critical and public kinds of sociology in addition to its professional impact. The last section of the paper summarizes these various perspectives and evaluates them against the conceptual framework of our study. The goal of the last section is to evaluate the ‘alternativity’ of these discourses, their functions in democratization of both local and global relations and their shares in promotion of the four mentioned sociologies to higher levels of theoretical capabilities, value legitimation and social influence.

The Association of Women Beekeepers included 53 rural women andwas formed in 2000 based on a developmental intervention named Land and Water project. They received an interest and collateral free loan plusa grant from an international program named Small Grants Program (SGP)to implement an environmental project. These women worked for 10 years and then decided to split up into five smaller groups. Inthe earlyyears they showed some very important features of empowered women who could work together easily and successfully. After splitting up, near the end of 2010, they did little collective action.The question is while they seemed so successful why were theynot empowered enough to continue their interaction with the society. Werethey empowered personally and not collectively? For answering these questions a mixed method was designed. The observation showed that the process of personal empowerment was more successful than the collective one. Based on the theoretical approaches the women’s empowerment process, especially based on the microcredit schema, usually keeps women in the informal sector which means they cannot connect with social and economic infra-structure.

Academic culture generation and socialization of academic and professional norms are important prerequisites of knowledge production. Considering that science production without normative, social and cultural structures can not be achieved, academic norms are regarded as a part of scientific knowledge. In this article, the issues and challenges faced in academic socialization of norms in scientific communities in Iran are studied. The findings of the current study are based on brain storming sessions along with deep interviews by domain experts (20 Experts) involved in issues in higher education systems and with the help of documentary studies of previous researches on the subject (15 Researches). Results and findings of 15 researches have shown that the challenges and issues of higher education of Iran can be discussed in four basic categories: a) Foundation of scientific communities, b) Efficiency of academic culture, c) Scientism and commitment to academic norms, d) Formation of effective processes of academic socialization. Strengthening the scientific community and the flow of socialization of scientific norms of higher education system can be effective to train homo academicus, university scientists, professors and future professionals to be able to expand the boundaries of knowledge in the form of national and global networks of scientific role in the successful development and growth of its academic fields.