Mahnaz Karami; Maryam Ghazinejad; Mansoure Azam Azadeh
Abstract
Even though it can be argued that inequality, distance, and social exclusion have always existed across societies, one can not ignore reflecting on the reason why and how it is created together with its consequences for today’s various groups and social systems. The aim of this study is to explain ...
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Even though it can be argued that inequality, distance, and social exclusion have always existed across societies, one can not ignore reflecting on the reason why and how it is created together with its consequences for today’s various groups and social systems. The aim of this study is to explain the relationship between religious identity and the feeling of social exclusion by considering the mediating variable of social distance between two groups of Shiite and Sunni students. The statistical sample includes 279 graduate students of the faculties of social sciences in the three universities of Allameh Tabataba’i, Tehran and Beheshti, in which Sunni and Shiite students were chosen through snowball method and random selection, respectively. The findings indicate that the mean values of feelings of social exclusion, social distance and religious identity among Sunni students are higher than Shiite ones. Also, there is a direct relationship between the level of religious identity and the feeling of social exclusion, and the same is true for social distance and the feeling of social exclusion. Multivariate regression analysis reveals that the variables included in the equation have been able to explain a significant part of the variance of the changes related to the dependent variable. The results of path analysis also demonstrate that the variables of religious identity, ethnicity and social distance are related to the feeling of social exclusion.
mohammad abdollahi; omid ghader zadeh
Volume 10, Issue 24 , February 2004, , Pages 1-36
Abstract
One of the most secure channels of achieving social consensus and solidarity in Iran is the feeling of intimacy and social acceptance among the Iranian ethnic communities and groups. Adopting a socialogical approach, the present study investigates the degree of social distance between the inhabitants ...
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One of the most secure channels of achieving social consensus and solidarity in Iran is the feeling of intimacy and social acceptance among the Iranian ethnic communities and groups. Adopting a socialogical approach, the present study investigates the degree of social distance between the inhabitants of Baneh (who are Kurds) and members of other ethnic communities. In this study, the term social distance refers to the tendency among members of an ethnic community to accept or reject members of other ethnic communities. The tendency encompasses cognitive and emotional dimensions together with preparedness for action an appropriate conceptual framework was therefore designed for the analysis. It reviews the micro - and macro - level perspectives and theories of sociology, social psychology and the existing empirical resources. The results of the interview with the sample which consisted of 399 inhabitants of Baneh, demonstrates that the interviewees feel the least distant from persian/Fars ethnic communities, and the most distant from Arab ethnic communities come first, and Azari, Baluch, Lor, and Arab ethnic communities come next in success on. The research findings show that micro-sociological approaches to the study of ethnic distance in Iran are insufficient. Considering the fact that ethnic distance, and consequently, ethnic interactions in Iran, are influenced by the cultural, social, political and economic atmosphere of the country and the historical developments related to this atmosphere, it is necessary to pay attention to macro-level perspectives and theories, such as Heshter's theory of internal colonialism, which is based on the role of variables such as deprivation, degree of economic inequity and discrimination among ethnic communities, and which emphasizes the formation of ethnic identity and mobilization, and to integrate these perspectives into micro-level theories. The findings of this study demonstrate that social distance exists among the ethnic communities of Iran. The study therefore places special emphasis on the formulation and adoption of an appropriate ethnic policy to reduce such adistance in the country.
