social structure

The social contract has been about rights and responsibilities in human societies. Facebook and its role in manufacturing and sustaining a global social contract, a new “we” is clearly one of the research areas that needs more attention. A new “we” is coming of age in the new age of connectivity and communication with a new outlook toward responsibility and rights at individual and collective levels. Facebook purports to build a new world based on connection and communication which is based on progress and prosperity. However, a fundamental factor and feature of Facebook that needs attention and more research is that people and users are becoming increasingly lonely, separated and independent from each other in this process while connecting and communicating with one another. This new social contract and “we” thus have the new features of the relationship between the human agency and his/her social structures. Cyberspace is the product of human agency and clearly creates and sustains a specific social structure. This research seeks to study the relationship between human agency, changing technical tools of communication and connection and emerging and evolving social structures and social contracts. Bandura’s “social cognitive theory” (2006) rejects a conflict and dichotomy between agency and social structure. As agency helps to build new social structures after destroying the old ones these new structures create and sustain a new social contract and “we” with a new sense of responsibility, obligations, and rights.

Post disaster reconstruction in the destructed zones entails the social aspects in addition to the physical and urban aspects, because of the presence of affected people in the very location. The presented research aims to assess the social aspects of the post disaster conditions in the course of reconstruction, which take into consideration the related social factors in the affected community. The research also looks for the various influential aspects of post disaster urban planning in order to achieve a different framework for the job. Since the subject might be considered as a new approach, and for the vast and numerous aforementioned aspects in the expertise reference, the research method is based on “Grounded Theory” in order to analyze and categorize the given approaches. The results of theoretical studies have been compiled with the academic expertise viewpoints and with the opinions of Iranian experienced experts who were involved in the course of post war and post natural disaster reconstruction, through the face to face interviews. In order to benefit a practical implication of the theory, the post disaster reconstruction process of Manjil-a mountain town in Gilan, north of Iran- after the earthquake in 1990 has been analyzed and reviewed. The fulfillment of the research necessitates; assessment of social questions, collective behavior, individual needs and requests of affected people, in the course of planning for post disaster reconstructions, and ultimately employment of social capacity, as well as the relations among communal network at the entire level of the affected society.