Iran

Globalization and democracy have become the most debated issues throughout the world, which, no doubt also influence Iran. This paper highlights these phenomena with respect to Iran but takes up the issue through various description and features presented by the con-temporary socio- political thinkers and economists. Considering globalization, although the subject matter is very recent but Iran has been experiencing this phenomenon with the emergence of modern communication networks and economic growth. The democratic proc-ess had started early in 19th century but was thoroughly suppressed by the despotic regime. However, the globalization trends in 1990s have affected most of the countries and Iran too has experienced the changing mood of the people. Present study focuses on the various as-pects of globalization and its influences over democracy during post- revolutionary period.

This study tries to investigate relationship between rainfall parameters and USLE R factor. To gain R-factor, at first, shower kinetic energy was calculated and then its erosivity computed by using maximum 30 minutes rainfall intensity. Therefore 3 meteorological stations in Khuzestan province and one station per Kohgiloyeh & BoyerAhmad and Boushehr provinces were selected and their recorded hyetographs of 13 years were analyzed. For any hyetographs, rainfall erosivity was computed in any one month, season, or year and corresponding rainfall parameters were extracted too. Temporal and spatial variation of rainfall erosivity was studied and relationships between R factor and rainfall characteristics were investigated by using regression analysis. It was resulted that February to March and winter season has the most erosivity risk. Spatial analysis of rainfall erosivity in selected area showed that Dezful and Ramhormuz have the maximum erosivity factor. Mean annual erosivity factor of Khuzestan province was computed 28.07 ton.m/ha.h. Regression analysis showed strong relationships between rainfall amount (mm) and maximum 30 minutes rainfall intensity (cm/h) with R factor. A model that computes R-factor by means of rainfall amount was suggested.

The present paper aims to highlight the origin of the youth movements in Iran during the intervening years of 1971 and 2002. During these three decades, youth movement was one of the important social movements in the political arena of the country. While explaining the origin of the movement, two changes i.e. 'generation gap' and 'democracy' have been studied and it was found that the origin of the youth movements in Iran was due to the contradictions between authoritarianism and democracy. Apart from various official statistics and figures, some results of some opinion surveys have also been utilized to analyze this paper.

Disasters provide physical, social, political and environmental development windows of opportunities that can be used not only to reconstruct the impacted areas, but also to improve the socio-economic and physical conditions of the impacted population in the long run. It is argued, however, that there is a limited time frame of approximately four years for such opportunities to be utilized efficiently. Bam earthquake in December 2003 that killed more than 27000 and devastated the historical part of the city opened several unique opportunities for mitigation, socio-economic and physical development. This paper examines the roles that various stakeholders played in the Bam reconstruction and their contribution to the success and failure of utilizing disaster development opportunities. The results show that stakeholders’ collaboration and participation, knowledge and experience, long-term and holistic visions, division of labour and use of resources have had significant influence on the success and failure of using post-disaster opportunities.

Although the Iranian plateau has witnessed Paleolithic researches since the early twenty century, still little is known about the Paleolithic of Iran. There are several reasons for this situation and lack of scholarly enthusiasm on the part of Iranian archaeologists seems to be the most imperative one. Concerning the history of Paleolithic surveys and excavations conducted in Iran, three distinct phases are recognizable. First, from the beginning of the twenty century to the 1980 when numerous field missions were executed in this region all by western institutes, second phase observes a twenty years gap in the Paleolithic studies hence; only few surveys could be performed in this period, and the third phase starts with the reopening of the Iranian fields to the non-Iranian researchers, which led to the survey and excavation of handful of new Paleolithic sites. This article reviews Paleolithic researches conducted in Iran since the beginning of twenty century to the present time.

The core concept of this article i.e. social capital consists of three main components: scope of social relations , level of social trust, and rate of reciprocity. The research is accomplished through 600 cases of Indian and Iranian female secondary school students and their parents, in two cities of Chandigarh in India and Tehran in Iran. Findings of the research show that the scope of social relations in India is higher than Iran, while the true level which was measured in the social network in Iran was far higher than India. Even the third aspect i.e. the reciprocity is also higher in Iran than India. Therefore, the social capital measured among the Iranian cases is higher than the Indian students and their families. Likewise, the level of trust estimated among Indian people is higher than the true level of trust present in the social network whereas; an exact opposite situation could be seen in Iran. In other words, the different aspects of social capital do not necessarily have a high co-variation among themselves.

Importance of security and sense of peace is a one of the most important factors of urban environment. Therefore, the necessity of security in urban spaces has caused the emergence of authentic theories like Defensible Spaces and Crime Prevention through Environment Design (CPTED)*. In this paper, various literatures related to defensible space theories have been reviewed and the related keywords have been defined. Then, the role of defensible urban spaces as a social capital in the reduction of urban crimes is examined. Further, condition of defensible spaces in traditional Iranian cities has been studied with reference to the city of Isfahan. The research method is based on data and documents collected through field survey.The conclusion justifies the precedent of defensible space, in design and planning, as well as shaping historical cities. Safe and secure spaces which support social capital concept, under public surveillance and collective responsibility, works as an important aspect in reducing crimes hence; bringing about a state of stable urban security.

The Douzlakh salt mine at Chehr Abad, Zanjan Province, Iran has provided a rare organic preservation of human remains, and associated cloth and clothing. This textile evidence offers a window into a poorly known but pivotal era of textile history. Moreover, the context is of accidental burial of miners at work, rather than deliberate burial of elites. At least six bodies have been recovered, one of which was very well preserved, being fully clothed and carrying items of personal equipment. This paper is a summary of preliminary findings on the textile assemblage.

Auditors play a critical role in any company. The managers of such departments should manage subordinates so well in order to obtain good results. For this condition to happen, at first the managers’ motivations should be recognized and be satisfied, otherwise neither managers, nor subordinates practice auditing in prefect condition. The results of this study show some high rating areas of internal audit department managers’ motivation that have a strong effect on the clients. Furthermore, the results of this study reveal some motivational weakness in internal audit departments in Iran. The authors believe that from any aspect, internal audit departments should satisfy different motivation

The Mesopotamian mythology represents a variation of monsters and hybrids. Among them, the fantastic creatures in the composition of the animal and the man are very important; it is about the "man-animal". What attracts our interest; it is the composite creature, the "man-bull", because of its diverse aspect, as well as its symbolic characteristic. On the other hand, we notice one of the very practical figures and very renowned, "Master of animals", it is appreciated as much as all the Mesopotamian regions represented it in their arts. Problematic: what types of the "man-bull" had most importance in Mesopotamia? Which is the relationship enters the "man-bull" and "Master of animals"? What physical evolution arose during the transformation of the "man-bull" to "Master of animals"? Hypothesis: there is doubtless a narrow relation enters the "man-bull" and "Master of animals ", as regards the symbolizing character to be able to it and their appearances in vertical position. Mesopotamia represents a particular character of the real or fantastic animals, which spread towards the other parts of the country; it is about the representation of animals in vertical shape.

Today, there is a plethora of literature on the process of accelerating growth of science and technology in Iran. Assuming technology as a social construct of modern society, and in the light of Ricoeurian hermeneutic approach, this paper aims, first, to show the resemblance of the current discursive relationship between the Iranian society and technology to a "discourse of faith" and, second to explain how this discourse has roots in the preceding one which can be considered as a "discourse of suspicion". To do so, the paper first, builds a conceptual model based on the Ricoeurian theory of interpretation, where, by analogy, modern technology is compared to the text and the user of the technology as its reader. Then, it introduces two episodes of relationship between technology and its Iranian users in the public policy of the post-revolutionary era: distanciation and appropriation. It concludes that the current growth of scientific endeavors serves as the material base for an Iranian discourse of techno-nationalism; a new self-identification which motivates the elites to develop new bases for national self-esteem.

An upward trend in the divorce rate in Iran in recent years has attracted officials, researchers and sociologists towards investigating causes and factors contributing such a social menace. Based on the statistics published by the Statistics Center of Iran (SCI), the divorce rate has gone up from 1.5 in 1000 cases in 1996 to 2.3 in 1999 and 3.1 in 2006. Results of previous studies show that factors such as age and educational differences between husband and wife, women’s employment, addiction and lack of moral principles have been the most important causes of the divorce. This study, however, focusing on the socio-economic status of the divorcee in Iran, picks up a different view from that of other studies conducted in this field. This article also tries to identify the relationships between the rules applicable to personal and employment variables among divorced people using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) techniques. The sample data used in this study include 6400 divorcee from the total divorced population (of 392075) in the county according to the 2006 census; those who have declared themselves without marriage partner due to divorce. The sample includes both male and female. Results show that the main characteristics of divorced women were their employment and level of education which were statistically significant in metropolitan regions where there is a rise in the employment and education level of women. On the contrary, low education, unemployment, and place of work have been significant factors among divorced men.

In this paper, factors that effect on ICT adoption by SMEs in Tehran (Iran) are investigated. To do so, after reviewing the literature, we identified the factors affecting ICT adoption by SMEs in Tehran and, based on this review, we proposed our hypotheses. Factors include internal factors, external factors and ICT specifications that influence on IT adoption by SMEs. All hypotheses are confirmed except the one that articulates the relationship between perceived ease of use and ICT adoption by SMEs. Weak managerial support, lack of available skills, weak strategic vision regarding the ICT, weak innovative environment and insufficient financial resources are among the internal barriers. External barriers include weak governmental supports, legal environment, low cultural acceptance and weak pressures from customers, suppliers and competitors. Finally, low perceived usefulness and compatibility are among the ICT specifications that limit ICT adoption by SMEs.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between epic poetry and national self-consciousness and in particular study how Shahnameh may be analyzed from this angle. What is the relationship between the Shahnameh and the Iranian national self-consciousness? What can one say about the Iranian national self-consciousness on the basis of this text? What does the text reveal about the Iranian identity? A related question should also be answered, is the Shahnameh an epic? This is not a pedantic question concerned merely with definitions and labels. As will become clear, an epic reveals a great deal about the national consciousness of the people to whom it belongs (or who belong to it); to identify a poem as an epic, is to be making an important statement about the national consciousness of a people. The question of whether the Shahnameh is an epic or not is hence far from a pedantic one. It takes us right into the heart of Iranian national consciousness

This paper investigates the short- run and long-run effects of government size and exports on the economic growth of Iran as a developing oil export based economy for the period of 1974 - 2008 using an autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) framework. A modified form of Feder (1982) and subsequently Ram’s (1986) model has been applied to include both government size and exports in growth equation. The findings show that in long run and short run the Armey curve (1995) is valid, indicating that both a very big size and a too small size of government are harmful for growth and government should adjust its size. The results also show that total exports, the amount of oil exports in terms of barrels and oil prices affect economic growth positively and significantly both in short-run and long-run. However, non-oil exports do not have a significant effect on growth in the long run

Recent statistics showed that larger number of Iranian girls are being pushed to the state of absolute celibacy. This is in clear contrast with social, cultural and religious values in the country; therefore, it has made serious concerns for both policy makers and the public. The present study aimed to a) explore why do girls prefer to stay unmarried and what their perception and feeling is in regard to marriage and b) investigate the social adjustment of these girls as a significant facet of mental and social health . An open-ended questionnaire was used for the first aim and Bell Adjustment Inventory (Bell, 1962) was applied on 40 girls with absolute celibacy and 40 married . The two groups were matched in demographic features and the findings , which are all discussed in Iranina society along with its existed values, showed that remaining celibacy is an undesirable status occurred mainly due to not finding and the right person. The other contributing reasons leading to girls’ celibacy are their imaginary and sort of perfectionistic attitude about their future partner, family’s arrangements and interferences, financial limitations and physical attractions. The statistical results indicated that girls with absolute celibacy scored less in total adjustment score and two of the subscales of adjustment at home and social adjustment.

Environmental security is one of the most important aspects of human security, which puts emphasis on sustainability of the developmental policies and that they should adjust with the environment as well as rights of future generations. Since threats to the human security mainly occur within environmental issues, this research- highlighting the relationship between human security and environmental security and pointing out the threatening causes and factors to the human security - has replied to the question that how has the environmental degradation endangered human security in Iran? This study shows adoption of policies like 1- Expansion of urbanization, 2- Population growth, 3- Consumerism and stressing the production increase, disregarding its consequences, and 4- Development of environmentally incompatible technologies have led to further utilization of fossil fuels as well as uncontrollable use of various environmental resources, increased pollution, and extensively damaged the environment which consequently endangered human security due to the severe dependence of human being to the environment.

To launch an evidence source for successive judgment and decision making, program evaluation of any educational institute is an indispensable process, and language institutes are not the exceptions. In an attempt to propose a solution for a fundamental problem as the lack of a standard evaluation program for English language institutes, this study used a new method to be implemented in the context of ‘English language institutes (ELIs)’ of Iran. In this country, evaluation of nongovernmental centers, including ELIs, is carried out by the Ministry of Education (ME) using a performance evaluation framework which mainly collects the required data through a survey form (locally known as ‘Form 322’). We adopted and applied the survey form 322 into developing a specific questionnaire. Ninety ELIs administrators of Mazandaran were surveyed through an instrument that was piloted and validated through the obtained data. The extracted results from the questionnaire were sorted into the categories of “validation”, “improvement”, “redesigning”, and “researchers’ opinion”. The results showed that the original form, long used in the country, needs to be redesigned. To cross-validate the obtained data and the emerging results, fifteen volunteers from the participating institutes were interviewed for their ideas through Skype and direct interview. Consistent with the results, not only for Iran are an online platform and a standard evaluation and monitoring process recommended, but also an international integrated performance evaluation standard is strongly suggested for English language institutes.

During the struggle against the Qajar tyranny, struggling leaders went to the Shah Abdul Azim Shrine to hold a sit-in against the Shah Mosque Case and foot whipping of Tehran sugar merchants. The demonstrators in Paragraph 4 of their demands, as mentioned by Nazem al-Islam Kermani, the initial demands of refugees , called for the establishment of a justice system. According to this report, and many other evidences, justice, always has been a lasting and permanent matter for the Iranian society. Recent surveys show that justice should still be considered as one of the main demands of the Iranian society. The debate about justice and social movements is constantly changing, and thinkers in this area are constantly revising their ideas. The aim of this study is to elaborate these changes and to discuss the place of justice in new social movements that refers to a range of collective actions with purpose of changing in one or all of the institutions. The emergence of new social movements brought about new ways of expressing demands and protests, and a wide range of collective behavior forms, which, in terms of goals, nature and method of struggle, had a fundamental difference with earlier movements. In fact, with the advent of modernity, the calculations of traditional society were collapsed and, with the advent of postmodernity, new demands were created largely due to development of higher education and autonomy of individuals. Accordingly, new social movements emerged in a broader context of discourses, subcultures, ideological straggle, and identity diversity, and were spread in the form of new discourses.

One of the challenges of the Islamic Republic of Iran during her forty years since the 1979 revolution is the bewilderment for the realization of social justice. Although it is argued that the lack of social justice during the Pahlavi regime finally resulted in the Islamic Revolution, failure in the improvement of social justice indices after the revolution, especially after the end of the war between Iran and Iraq in 1988, has resulted in governance policies that are contrary to social justice. Given that social justice in Iran is not desirable and the current situation in Iran, forty years after the revolution, does not resemble much the ideals of the revolutionary leaders for establishing social justice, the present article, by referring to reliable data and using analytical-descriptive method, attempts to show that the governance practices in Iran have not been able to realize social justice which entails taking into consideration the successful international experiences and implementation of the good governance practices.