Journal of Iranian Social Studies

Abstract Note: This machine-generated abstract was prepared by the journal’s editorial team. Please consult the full article for the author’s original argument.
Background and Objective: Iranian identity has not had a uniform meaning or form across historical periods. Recounting three personal and scholarly encounters with the question of identity, Ahmad Ashraf traces the development of his views. The article aims to distinguish “Iranian identity” in earlier periods from “Iranian national identity” in its modern sense—a distinction that, in the author’s view, some accounts of Iranian history overlook.
Methods and Sources: The article adopts a historical sociological approach and combines narrative with analysis. Ashraf draws on his childhood and adolescent experiences, his observations of nomadic communities and villagers in 1345 SH (1966–67), and his subsequent research. The historical discussion examines works of history and geography, advice literature, and literary texts. To trace the use of the name “Iran” and related terms, Ashraf describes collecting evidence from these sources and examining it by historical period.
Findings: The author’s field observations suggest that familiarity with national songs and symbols did not necessarily imply a shared understanding of Iran. Some children in nomadic communities associated “Iran” with a nearby town, while some villagers used the term Mellat in a religious sense. In its historical analysis, the article distinguishes the cultural, ethnic, and religious antecedents of the idea of Iran from its political formulation. Drawing on Gnoli’s interpretation, it locates the emergence of a distinctly political meaning of “Iran” in the Sasanian period. Ashraf also explains how Iran’s traditional history was transmitted through the Khwaday-namags, the Shahnameh, and oral narratives, and identifies several stages in the development of Iranian identity between the post-Sasanian period and the emergence of the modern nation-state.
Discussion and Conclusion: For Ashraf, the persistence of certain Iranian narratives and symbols does not mean that the concept of identity remained unchanged throughout history. The historical and cultural consciousness of Iranians in earlier periods must be understood in its own context and distinguished from the national identity associated with the modern nation-state. The article therefore challenges the projection of modern concepts of nationality onto antiquity and emphasizes the need to read historical sources without applying later concepts retrospectively.

Abstract Background and aim: Suicide attempts among adolescents are a multidimensional phenomenon that cannot be explained solely by individual factors and require attention to familial and social contexts. This study aimed to identify the causal configurations affecting different types of suicide attempt behaviors among adolescents in Mashhad.
Data and method: This study was conducted using a mixed-methods approach, employing qualitative content analysis and qualitative comparative analysis based on Boolean algebra. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 61 adolescents aged 15 to 18 years who had experienced non-fatal suicide attempts. Participants were selected through purposive sampling and based on the principle of maximum variation.
Findings: The findings revealed four main types of suicide attempts, including “escape from suffering,” “impulsive-reactive,” “protest-communicative,” and “existential.” Dysfunctional family relationships were the central causal condition across all types. In the escape from suffering type, the simultaneous presence of structural family breakdown, social isolation, and environmental pressures played a determining role. The impulsive-reactive type emerged in families with relative cohesion but harmful emotional relationships. The existential type was explained by structural loneliness and a crisis of meaning, while the protest-communicative type was explained by the lack of legitimate channels for expressing protest and environmental pressures.
Conclusion: The findings indicate that family dysfunction, in interaction with weak intermediary and support institutions, places adolescents in a cycle of suffering and structural impasse, shaping different pathways to suicide attempts. Therefore, effective prevention requires interventions beyond the individual level, based on strengthening families and developing social and support networks.

Abstract Background and Objective: This article assesses data governance in the Iranian Welfare Information Database (IWID) through critical policy analysis, drawing on data justice and historical institutionalism. Although Iran’s transition toward data-driven social policy seeks better targeting and more efficient resource allocation, the key question is whether this architecture is grounded in meaningful participation, transparency, accountability, and data justice.
Methods and Data: This qualitative study is based on more than 25 semi-structured interviews with senior managers, deputies, specialized advisors, and researchers in welfare and data; participation in more than 35 expert meetings; and analysis of official documents from 2024–2025. Data were interpreted through combined thematic analysis in dialogue with data justice and historical institutionalism.
Findings: The findings show that IWID reproduces a centralized model of data governance at three levels: citizenship, community, and institutional. Citizens become objects of visibility; local communities and civil society organizations are marginalized; and welfare institutions lack interpretive participation in data. This pattern is rooted in the post-revolutionary institutional trajectory and fragmented welfare institutions, which have constrained multilevel mechanisms of participation, transparency, and accountability.
Discussion and Conclusion: Without redesigning participation rules—including standardized self-reporting, the right to appeal and explanation, the right not to be datafied, meaningful roles for local communities, and differentiated analytical access for welfare institutions—data-driven social policy in Iran risks knowledge inequalities, concentration of interpretive power, and structural de-participation.

Abstract Background and aim: This article examines the representation of extremism in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons. Rather than treating ideological violence as the direct product of a single doctrine or personality type, it asks how crises of identity and meaning become connected to group organization, existential anxiety, and the moral treatment of others within the novel’s narrative structure.
Data and method: The study uses structured qualitative content analysis of Soroush Habibi’s Persian translation of Demons. Meaning units were selected from dialogue, narrative description, character action, and event sequences involving Stavrogin, Pyotr Verkhovensky, Kirillov, Shatov, Stepan Trofimovich, and several female and child figures. Identity crisis, gradual radicalization, and terror management served as sensitizing concepts; subcategories were refined through repeated reading and comparison of textual evidence.
Findings: Extremism is represented as the interaction of identity instability, group pressure, shame, fear, moral emptiness, and the instrumentalization of others. Pyotr converts individual vulnerabilities into organizational violence through secrecy, threat, the manipulation of moral language, and shared crime. Stavrogin and Kirillov reveal distinct existential and ethical trajectories, while Shatov represents the possibility—and cost—of leaving the radical group.
Conclusion: Demons portrays extremist violence as a multilevel process rather than an inevitable consequence of identity crisis or fear. Violence becomes stabilized when unstable commitments, coercive group mechanisms, and existential pressures reinforce one another and when other persons are reduced to instruments of power, cohesion, pleasure, or elimination.

Abstract ackground and aim: This study examined adolescents’ leisure styles in the digital age, focusing on their associations with family cultural and economic capital and with academic achievement. The framework drew on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, DiMaggio’s account of cultural participation and educational advantage, and Castells’ network society perspective. Data and method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 321 secondary-school students in Khomam County, northern Iran, selected through multistage sampling. Data from a researcher-developed questionnaire were analyzed in SPSS 26 using principal component analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation, Pearson correlations, and multiple regression. Findings: PCA supported five leisure styles—cultural-learning, digital-communicative, physical-sportive, passive-media, and high-risk/excitement-seeking—explaining 63.7% of total variance (KMO = 0.721; Bartlett’s χ²(120) = 1462.09, p < .001). Cultural capital showed broader and more consistent associations with leisure styles than economic capital, significantly predicting cultural-learning, passive-media, and physical-sportive leisure. Digital-communicative leisure was unrelated to family capital and was more strongly associated with age and residence. In the multivariable academic-performance model, cultural-learning leisure was positively associated with GPA, whereas high-risk/excitement-seeking leisure was negatively associated; other styles had no independent effects. Conclusion: Adolescent leisure is socially patterned and educationally consequential. Its quality and orientation appear more important than access to time or material resources alone, supporting complementary use of cultural capital and network society perspectives. The findings also underscore the value of family, school, and digital-literacy initiatives that expand constructive leisure opportunities.