Iranian Journal of Sociology

Abstract During the recent years, suicide has increased dramatically among the Abdanani youths. To describing the experience and understanding suicide and phenomenal world and the consequences of this action is of great importance in gaining full knowledge of the world-life of the youths. This research is conducted based on qualitative method and existentialist phenomenology is used to carry out the field research; the data are analyzed using colaizzi method. The findings indicate that those who committed suicide have seen it as a facilitation, breaking with tradition, and escaping reality .Therefore, different feelings and understandings of suicide have developed among the subjects under study, ranging from accepting to rejecting suicide. The participants’ experience and understanding of phenomenal world, implies despair and continuity of calamities. Suicide has different consequences and effects on the organic body of those committing it which can be categorized under two main topics: “fragility of the physical body” and “phenomenal isolation of the body”. Semantic constructs suggest that those committing suicide are experiencing a complicated, unsafe and problematic world-life.

Abstract Science institution and university have their own cultures and like other phenomena have been changed over time. It seems Iranian academic culture has changed in recent years. The paper aims to study cultural changes at university and its consequences. The research method is qualitative and in order to capture the meaning domain, Grounded Theory (GT) is used. In this study, we have conducted semistructured interviews with 34 lectures of social sciences at Tehran universities. Coding and data extraction is performed with the use of Atlas/ Ti software. The findings consist of the major categories of social, intervening and contextual conditions, recruitment, evaluation and promotion of professors, knowledge organization and professors' strategies. According to the interactions between conditions and phenomena in terms of cultural transition, descriptive narration displayed on the core category of "recruitment, evaluation and promotion" which represents anomy of knowledge production and knowledge transmission.

Abstract Autobiography genre, in its canonical and conventional sense of the word, is a sum of acceptable and legitimate methods and trends in narrating the life story. In other words, this genre foregrounds regulated and specific forms of constituting the life story, and at the same time, excludes alternative forms of doing so. Therefore autobiography genre eventually imposes a normative compulsion on how to constitute a life story; and by doing so, it tries to distinguish the acceptable methods and forms from the unacceptable ones. These foregrounding and exclusion have important consequences and significations if we consider the fact that the conventional and canonical forms of autobiography only make some sorts of subjectivity possible, and hence limits other sorts of subjectivity at the same time. In other words, canonical forms of autobiography insist on constituting certain kinds of life experience, and therefore impose absence on the other kinds. One of the fields in which this absence may have decisive significations, is the category of gender, and more specifically, the category of women's autobiography. That's due to the fact that the canonical field of autobiography has historically excluded the women's life writing from the canon, and therefore has become a distinctive genre only because of this exclusion. In other words, one of the most decisive exclusions in the process of defining autobiography genre is certainly a genderbased exclusion. Thus, introducing women's autobiography can be seen as an act of destabilizing the conventional and canonical genre of autobiography, and at the same time, it may also lead to some alternative forms and spaces for constituting the life experience of women. In this article, by focusing on various students' autobiographies, we've tried to depict and describe these student's struggles for constituting the feminine life story and experience; a struggle which is, more than anything else, carried out by resisting, as well as departing from, the canonical forms of autobiography.

Abstract By reviewing the normative studies of the formation of the public sphere from a historical perspective, this paper represents the hypothesis that the public sphere emerged in Iran and in the West at the same time, particularly in Britain. But unlike the West in which the public sphere resisted the governmental pressure and developed every day, in Iran power networks were the main obstacles facing the development of the public sphere, especially in Safavid dynasty era. Therefore, the expansion of the social expressions of religion led to the circumstances in which the public sphere was dominated by religion. With the rise of religious authority, public institutions (like coffeehouses which were the seeds of the public sphere) were destroyed and replaced by religious institutions and rituals. Later on in Qajar dynasty era, the government destroyed the remnants of the public sphere. So unlike the West, in Iran public institutions could not resist the governmental power and censorship. Ignoring such historical backgrounds have led to studies in this area which are based on normative and prescriptive approaches, thinking that obstacles in the way of emerging public sphere are to be found in political structure and believing it to be a right to demand it from government and political structures. While in the West it was the other way around: democracy was born out of the public sphere. The author has extracted the signs of simultaneous emergence of public sphere in West and Iran and the backgrounds of changes in public sphere content towards religious rituals, based on the analysis of European travelogues in two periods. The final analysis of this paper is that the weakness of public sphere in Iran has a social content.

Abstract This article aims at testing Henry Lefebvre's theory of right to the city in Tehran. By adopting a quantitative approach, implications and relevance of the framework and the concepts, as well as the possibility of adding gender as an effective independent variable to the framework will be investigated. The results from a sample of 168 men and women in all 22 municipalities of Tehran indicate that the theory is substantially relevant in Iranian society with a single exception of the concept of production of space. This could be a consequence of culturalpolitical differences in the concept of right and citizenship in different social contexts. Logistic regression analysis also shows that there are gender based differences in the realization of right to the city in Tehran. Women's enjoy less participation and appropriation in the city and gender plays an important role along with class in realization of right to the city.

Abstract This study examines the Kurds’ collective memory in Boukan. The concept of collective memory is a new realm of sociological investigation, especially among studies of Iran’s social groups. The most important historical points in collective memory of Kurds and the way they regarded them as important, is the main problem of this study. We asked three most important events of Iran s’ history from 9 decades ago. Theoretical framework of study is Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory. The respondents’ attitudes toward their identities in four aspects are independents variables. Using survey method and upon cluster sampling, the questionnaire has been responded by 342 people. According to the respondents; The Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Mahabad State of 1945, the Oil Nationalization, the Imposed War and Iran’s presidential election of 2009, are the prominent events. Kruskal Wallis test shows significant difference relationships between age and attitude toward religious identity with first important events; the age and education with second important events; the education and attitude toward national identity for the third important events. The main reasons mentioned by respondents to justify importance of Islamic Revolution is religious one, building a state for Mahabad State of 1945, the trauma and damage for war, preserving national benefits for Oil Nationalization Movement and protest for the Iran’s presidential election.

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