Journal of Iranian Social Studies

Abstract This paper aims at understanding reasons for indifference and passivity of the most of Iranians, toward environmental problems, through the eyes of the academics. To find the answer the paper tries to identify and analyze causal, contextual, and intervening conditions that work as obstacles to meaningful participation in environmental policies in the country. Furthermore, the article introduces strategies for tackling the problem. As far as research method is concerned the data have been gathered by in-depth interviews with 24 noble academics, and analyzed by Straus and Corbin approach for developing a grounded theory. Findings include lack of public awareness, lack of promotion of responsibility culture, defects in policymaking, shortage of law enforcement, and inefficient interaction between the government and civil society. Contextual factors include institutionalized distrust, rapid social and economic transformations, lack of environmental knowledge development, and socioeconomic disparities. Intervening factors include variables like international interventions regarding the environment, media role in shaping attitudes related to the environment, and technological shift in practices of environmental concern, which through their interaction greatly affect the citizen's apathy. Findings also reveal that dividing citizens` strategies into acceptance/resistance, their indifference toward environmental issues may have three types of impacts on sustainable development: negative, mixed, and positive.
 

Abstract Traditional-Islamic medicine and modern biomedicine represent two distinct paradigms for understanding health and disease. These differences became particularly salient—and antagonistic—during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory and employing a multi-sited ethnographic method, this study explores the roots, points of divergence, and tensions between these two medical systems. The findings indicate that knowledge production within the discourse of Traditional-Islamic medicine is grounded in transmitted traditional sources. Illness is explained through a holistic framework known as the theory of temperaments (mizāj), and healing aims at restoring the body’s internal balance. In contrast, modern medicine is founded upon empiricism and cumulative scientific knowledge. Accordingly, Traditional-Islamic practitioners interpreted COVID-19 as a disease with a “cold and moist” temperament, recommending herbal remedies and therapeutic interventions to adjust the body’s temperament toward a “warm and dry” state. Modern medicine, on the other hand, conceptualized the disease as caused by a viral agent, grounding its treatment and control measures in infectious disease medicine and epidemiology. Traditional-Islamic medicine can be understood as an identity-oriented discourse—an expression of cultural resistance and the defense of “tradition and heritage” against the hegemony of modern scientific knowledge, as well as an embodiment of distrust toward formal medical institutions. Conversely, modern medicine challenges the efficacy and legitimacy of local healing practices under pandemic conditions. Each of these discourses seeks to articulate the nodal points of “health” and “disease” within a broader field of meaning, resulting in an ongoing discursive antagonism in the struggle for hegemony. Given the political implications embedded in these therapeutic discourses, this antagonism mirrors the broader discursive struggle within Iran’s political discourse, characterized by the coexistence and tension between “traditional, nativist, and identity-seeking” elements on one side and “modernist and progress-oriented” tendencies on the other.
 

Abstract Music plays a significant role in human life, especially during adolescence, and teenagers devote a considerable amount of time to listening to it. This qualitative study, conducted through semi-structured interviews with 25 adolescent girls, explores their reasons for listening to music as well as their preferred genres and favorite singers. Data analysis was carried out using thematic analysis, resulting in four main categories: musical taste, patterns of consumption, motivations, and generational differences. The findings indicate that listening to music is one of the main leisure activities for adolescents. Most participants were interested in Western pop music, K-pop, and old-generation Iranian pop music, while the lyrics and content of songs were of great importance to them. Persian rap was less popular among the respondents. The findings of this study demonstrate the significant role of music in the lives of the adolescent girls who participated in the research.

Abstract The aim of this study is to examine the transformation of the meaning of childbearing within the context of changing family values. In this regard, the study also investigates the gap between the ideal number of children and couples’ actual childbearing behavior. Although having few children is not considered desirable in Iranian society, the decline in fertility rates below the replacement level indicates a growing tendency toward having only one child or remaining childless among Iranian families.
This research adopts a qualitative approach using descriptive phenomenology. The participants were selected through purposive sampling, and data were collected via semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 14 married men and women residing in the city of Karaj.
The findings reveal that participants lived experiences demonstrate a transformation in the semantic patterns associated with childbearing compared to the traditional cultural and familial background of Iranian society. From their perspective, decisions regarding childbearing are increasingly shaped by factors such as the expansion of virtual spaces and changes in relationship and parenting patterns; rethinking the meaning of childbearing; perfectionism; environmental concerns; social instability; individualism; anxiety over marital instability and the responsibilities of parenthood; bodily and health-related issues; lack of family and societal support for childbearing; changes in parenting styles; the gap between economic realities and expectations; and the stigmatization of large families.
Based on the results, the childbearing experience among families may be labeld as “conscious childbearing”, the outcome of which often manifests as one-child families or childlessness. The participants consider not only the role of personal and familial conditions in their decision-making but also the demands of modern life and the surrounding environmental context.

Abstract Social  responsibility  shows  that humans,  as  social beings,  cannot be  indifferent  to  the  lives of their fellows. In the relationship altruistic actions and social thought, it should be said that  these  actions  have  always  been  a  suitable  subject  for  thinking  throughout  the  history  of social  thought. Sociologist Durkheim, moral philosopher Singer, and political philosopher Žižek are among the thinkers who have theorized about the social responsibility of altruism. The present study aims to analyze the social responsibility of altruism in the intellectual system of these three thinkers with a comparative approach.
This research was conducted with a comparative approach, following the qualitative tradition, and was case-based, with a small number of cases, or small N (focusing on three thinkers).
After examining the works of these three thinkers, 10 components (the problematic of the thinker, the importance and necessity of social justice, the thinker's association and empathy with charity and philanthropy, the negative aspects of charity and philanthropy, etc.) were identified and analyzed in a comparative manner.
Drawing the intellectual system of the three selected thinkers on a continuum shows that Singer (with a positive, affirmative, optimistic, and hopeful approach) is placed on the right, Žižek (with a refusal, aggressive, negativity, and pessimistic approach) is placed on the left, and Durkheim (with a conditional, critical, and moral approach) is placed in the middle.

Abstract Disclosure of gender identity by trans men in cultural-religious contexts such as Mashhad is not merely a personal or psychological matter, but rather a social and risky action that is shaped in opposition to the dominant gender order, institutional power, and patriarchal discourses. This study aims to identify the challenges and strategies of trans men in the process of disclosing and establishing their gender identity, focusing on their lived experience in Mashhad, using a qualitative method and content analysis. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 14 trans men (22 to 30 years old) and samples were selected using purposive and snowball sampling. Data analysis was conducted at three individual, meso, and macro levels, using the theories of Goffman, Butler, Giddens, Archer, and West and Zimmerman. Findings indicate that participants face challenges such as anxiety, identity instability, family rejection, domestic violence, discriminatory bureaucracy, and social stigma. In response to challenges, trans individuals utilize strategies such as selective concealment, body management, social capital, leaving nonconforming environments, and redefinition of masculinity. Masculine identity in trans men is a process of ongoing formation and redefinition that develops within the context of social surveillance and based on interaction with the social environment. This analysis shows that gender, body, and agency in the experience of being trans are fluid and contextual concepts. One of the most important limitations of the research was the difficulty in accessing participants due to the sensitivity of the topic and security considerations in the socio-cultural context of Mashhad.

Abstract The conceptual framework in this article is designed to overcome the epistemic impasse. This impasse is determination the type of Iran's economic system and our liberating praxis is to go beyond this impasse and addresses the issue of how Iran's economic system is reproduced. The existing structure in Iran is caught in an ironic and contradictory situation because the capitalist rules in the Iranian economy are reproduced in Iran through the anti-capitalist foreign policy of the government. In this article, we have used the method of irony based on Kierkegaard's theory, and we have also proposed the neo-Marxist configuration of this irony in the symptomatic reading and problematic break of Althusser, as well as Badiou's non-expressive dialectic and affirmative dialectic, in a concrete way. According to the findings of this research, adopting an ironic approach regarding the ratio of aggressive foreign policy and the type of domestic economic system, in the context of the theoretical capacities of the New Left, causes the certainty of some hypotheses to be questioned. And the problematic break from neoliberal discourse depends on the turn of capitalist rules because anti-capitalist foreign policy reproduces economic neoliberalism