http://www.jss-isa.ir/ Journal of Iranian Social Studies en daily 1 Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0330 Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0330 http://www.jss-isa.ir/article_737637.html Background and aim: Despite advances in HIV prevention and treatment, stigma and discrimination against People Living with HIV (PLHIV) remain pervasive within healthcare settings, particularly in dental care. This study explored the multilayered processes of exclusion and concealment experienced by PLHIV in dental services, with a particular focus on the discrepancy between dentists' professional knowledge and clinical practice and the lived experiences of patients in Mashhad, Iran. Data and method: A qualitative field study was conducted using two complementary components. First, participant observation was employed to examine the clinical practices of 55 dentists across three socioeconomic districts of Mashhad under real-world conditions, with the researcher presenting as a person living with HIV. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight PLHIV recruited through a Behavioral Diseases Counseling Center. Observational and interview data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Findings: Of the 55 dentists observed, 38 demonstrated exclusionary practices by refusing treatment or referring patients elsewhere. Exclusion was most prevalent in the high socioeconomic district and least common in the low socioeconomic district. Referral to designated treatment centers emerged as the dominant exclusionary practice, often resulting in prolonged treatment-seeking pathways. Interview findings indicated that fear of stigma, shame, anger, and hopelessness shaped patients' experiences following HIV diagnosis. Concealment of HIV status functioned as a strategy for balancing the need for treatment against anticipated discrimination. While supportive institutional environments enhanced quality of life and social participation, discriminatory experiences within healthcare, family, educational, and occupational settings reinforced concealment and internalized stigma. Conclusion: The exclusion of PLHIV from dental care reflects not technical limitations but the social construction of HIV, a persistent knowledge–practice gap among dental professionals, and deficiencies in health policy and regulatory oversight. Strengthening regulatory mechanisms, implementing simulation-based practical training for healthcare providers, and reinforcing anti-discrimination policies are essential to reducing institutional stigma and improving equitable access to dental care. http://www.jss-isa.ir/article_738614.html 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. http://www.jss-isa.ir/article_739050.html Background and aim: Marital intimacy is a fundamental component of the quality of marital relationships and family well-being. However, the social and relational mechanisms contributing to its erosion have received comparatively limited attention. This study aimed to explain the process of reproducing gender domination and how it is linked to the erosion of marital intimacy. Data and method: This qualitative study employed Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory approach. Participants were 29 married women and men from Yazd, Iran, selected through purposive maximum-variation sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using initial, focused, and theoretical coding, constant comparison, and theoretical memo-writing. Findings: The findings showed that gender domination does not directly reduce marital intimacy; rather, it operates through a gradual and cumulative process. The reproduction of gender norms and unequal power relations constrains couples’ capacity to recognize each other’s needs and provide responsive care. This disruption weakens mutual recognition and perceptions of relational justice, ultimately leading to the erosion of emotional capital and a decline in marital intimacy. Based on these findings, a processual model of the Care-Bonding Cycle of Erosion was conceptualized. Conclusion: The model demonstrates that marital intimacy develops through a dynamic cycle of need recognition, caring responsiveness, mutual recognition, and relational justice. Disruption of this cycle shifts the relationship from a pathway of care-based bonding toward a pathway of erosion. The primary contribution of this study is its processual explanation of how unequal power relations are transformed into the gradual erosion of emotional bonds within marital life. http://www.jss-isa.ir/article_740701.html 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. http://www.jss-isa.ir/article_741112.html 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. http://www.jss-isa.ir/article_741155.html Background and aim: Despite the prominent place of sweets in the culture and everyday life of the people of Yazd, the cultural dimensions of their continued consumption have received relatively little independent attention. Data and method: This study was conducted using a qualitative approach and an ethnographic method. Data were collected through participant observation, sustained engagement in confectioneries, sweet-making workshops, households, and ritual occasions, along with field notes. To complement the data, semi-structured interviews were subsequently conducted with seven confectioners and seven consumers. The data were analyzed using Spradley’s three-stage method. Findings: The continued consumption of sweets in Yazd results from the interplay of culture, economy, climate, social status, collective memory, and emotional relationships, and cannot be explained solely in terms of taste preferences or nutritional needs. In different contexts, including gatherings, celebrations, mourning ceremonies, visits to the sick, travel, Ramadan, and Nowruz, sweets serve various functions, such as expressing respect, hospitality, strengthening social ties, displaying social status, preserving memories, and transmitting cultural values. In addition, concepts that emerged from the field, including “installment sweets,” “junk sweets,” “sweets as symbolic capital,” “the ceremonial display of sweets,” and “sweets as a cultural response,” reveal less explored dimensions of the culture of sweet consumption. Conclusion: This study shows that sweets in Yazd serve as a cultural medium through which identity, social relations, and collective memory are reproduced.