Social Sciences

Abstract Introduction
The present study offers a qualitative and sociological analysis of high school male student dropout in Baneh County. Contrary to initial perspectives that reduced dropout to an individual failure, moral deviance, or purely academic shortfall, it is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon emerging at the intersection of economic, cultural, and social structures. In border regions like Baneh, this phenomenon assumes a distinct articulation as the centralized logic of formal education encounters the specific ecology of a "border economy". The rise of border bazaars and the rapid circulation of commercial capital in Baneh have established a new framework for social status, creating a deep conflict between the "cash values of the market" and the "deferred, abstract promises of the school". Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to understand the semantic construction of school dropout and describe the structural conditions giving rise to it in the border context of Baneh. The conceptual framework integrates theories of spatial production and capital accumulation (David Harvey), structural reproduction and cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu), linguistic codes (Basil Bernstein), strain theory (Robert K. Merton), symbolic interactionism, and the concept of "powerful knowledge" (Michael Young) to explain the confrontation between two conflicting structural logics: the hegemony of the market versus the formal education system.
Methodology
This research adopted a qualitative approach with phenomenological and structuralist orientations, utilizing inductive thematic analysis based on Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. To prevent recall bias and capture the full complexity of the field, criterion-based purposive sampling was conducted across three distinct layers until theoretical saturation was reached: First Layer (Core Sample): 15 male dropouts currently working in the market (aged 15–25, who dropped out within the past five years); Second Layer (Class Contexts): 15 parents of male dropouts working in the market (aged 38–60); Third Layer (Educational Structure): 10 teachers, counselors, and principals from Baneh high schools (with at least 5 years of experience). During data analysis, 235 descriptive open codes were initially extracted, which were systematically categorized through continuous comparison into 29 sub-themes, ultimately synthesizing a dense network of 10 main themes. Data validity and trustworthiness were ensured through triangulation, member checking, and critical reflexivity.
Findings
Qualitative data analysis led to the identification of 10 main themes, structured across two levels: structural and perceptual/life-world: At the first level, structural and institutional contexts—through the "hegemony of the bazaar-city and the supremacy of border businesses," alongside the commodification of urban space—have shifted the criterion of success from educational attainment to immediate cash income. Simultaneously, the "inefficiency and rigidity of the educational system, "stemming from the misalignment of abstract curricula with ecological needs, has led to the occupational alienation of students. Furthermore, the "commodification of degrees and the obstruction of meritocracy"—marked by the depreciation of university degrees in the labor market and a lack of meritocracy in public sector employment—combined with the "erosion of teachers' status and the shift in reference groups," has undermined the social standing of educators, replacing them with merchants and traders as new role models, thereby reproducing the "peddler-border-carrier (Koulbar) subject". At the second level, the semantic life-world of students is shaped under "premature dreams and a thirst for financial independence" aimed at achieving early male maturity. Coupled with a "perception of academic temporal dislocation and the contrast between immediate and deferred rationality," students perceive the slow pace of schooling as lagging behind the immediate returns of the market. This dynamic is further deepened by the "preference for speculative values over knowledge values" and the dominance of instrumental rationality, leading to the departure from school being redefined as a "positive action and autonomous agency"—a rational and deliberate decision. Nonetheless, this process is accompanied by the "psychological reconstruction and experience of class rejection and humiliation" arising from constant material comparisons and the onset of school phobia, ultimately culminating in the "reduction of the degree to a purchasable commodity meant only to clear administrative hurdles" and the complete erosion of the intrinsic value of learning.
Discussion and Conclusion
The findings demonstrate that male high school dropout in Baneh cannot be reduced to absolute poverty, low intellect, or individual deficiencies. Rather, leaving the formal education system is the outcome of a fundamental conflict between the logic of the border ecosystem and the centralized national education system. In Baneh, the dominance of the border economy, rapid capital velocity, and the visible material success of the nouveau riche have severely eroded the symbolic prestige of educational institutions and teaching staff. Observing unemployment and material poverty among educated individuals, alongside a perceived lack of transparency in public sector recruitment, students experience a form of "academic temporal dislocation"—viewing time spent in school as a waste that causes them to lag behind the fast-paced market. Under these conditions, dropping out becomes an "agentic and rational process". Actors reinterpret leaving school as a shortcut to financial independence, peer status, freedom from class humiliation, and entry into adulthood and manhood. Ultimately, academic degrees degrade from intrinsically valuable intellectual achievements into mere purchasable administrative commodities. Addressing this crisis requires a fundamental revision of centralized curricula, educational decentralization, the implementation of vocational training tailored to the border ecosystem, and the restoration of both the economic and symbolic status of schools.

Abstract 1. Introduction
Historically, the university in Iran has served as the primary institution for the production, organization, and legitimization of knowledge, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. It has played a central role in defining intellectual norms, training elites, and constructing truth. However, over the last decade, the Iranian university has faced a significant decline in epistemic authority, institutional closure, bureaucratic rigidity, and an inability to address the intellectual demands of the new generation. Parallel to this institutional erosion, the expansion of digital infrastructure and social media platforms (Instagram, Telegram, YouTube), in conjunction with the emergence and growth of “Independent Social Science Schools” (such as Shams Academy, Bidar School, Tehran School, and Halqe-ye Yek-Chand), has shattered the university’s historical monopoly. Accordingly, the central problem of this research is to investigate the pluralization of social science education outside the formal academic circuit and to answer how these alternative learning ecosystems, emerging in the light of the attention economy and new media, influence the institutional position and imperial authority of the Iranian university.
2. Literature Review
In global higher education literature, the critique of the university often centers on neoliberal logic, the commercialization of science, and the commodification of knowledge (e.g., Bill Readings’ “The University in Ruins” and David Nugent’s “Knowledge and Empire”). However, empirical studies in Iran (Kazemi, 2018; Sedighian Bidgoli, 2018; Ghaneirad, 2011) demonstrate that the predicament of the Iranian university is not its organic connection to the market or the commodification of knowledge, but rather institutional isolation, bureaucratic ossification, exclusionary licensing systems, and the structural marginalization of independent intellectual currents. To explain this phenomenon, this research employs a multi-faceted post-structuralist framework: Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of “apparatus” (dispositif) and “power/knowledge” to analyze disciplinary mechanisms and subjectification; Deleuze and Guattari’s “lines of flight” and “desire-machines” to explain the dynamic exodus of audiences from formal circuits; Stuart Hall’s “cultural articulation” to integrate theoretical content with media forms; and Henri Bergson’s juxtaposition of “mechanical time” versus “fluid and expansive temporality” to explain accelerated digital existence.
3. Methodology
This research is grounded in an interpretive-qualitative paradigm with a post-structuralist approach. Data were gathered from two complementary sources: first, statistical data from the “National Survey on Social Media Culture in Iran” (2023, Iranian Research Institute for Culture, Art and Communication) to map the context of user behavior; and second, four in-depth semi-structured interviews (60–90 minutes each) with the founders and managers of five prominent independent social science institutions (Shams Academy, Bidar School, Tehran School, and Halqe-ye Yek-Chand), selected via purposive sampling based on four criteria: active media presence, educational continuity, production of alternative content, and distinctive aesthetics. Data analysis followed “thematic analysis” (Braun & Clarke, 2006) alongside “rhizomatic writing/thinking with theory” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012), while the structure of conceptual relationships was examined using “conceptual network analysis” (via the igraph package in R) to measure degree centrality and betweenness centrality.
4. Results
The research findings indicate a fundamental transformation in the technological and epistemic foundations of informal education:
· Platform Shift: Education has shifted from the print-based logic and poster-advertising of the 2000s (institutions such as Porsesh and Roodad-e Tazeh) to the algorithmic circuits of social media (particularly Instagram) since the 2010s.
· Post-Digital Subjectification: Based on national data, 86% of Iranian users are active daily on social media, and 63% receive their news from these platforms. Within this space, an “open body” and a “hesitant yet active subject” have been constructed—a subject in a post-truth condition who seeks verification not from formal authorities, but through dialogue with peers (32%) or cross-platform validation (35%).
· Attention Economy and Visibility Politics: The survival and activism of these institutions oscillate between the strategy of “adaptation to algorithmic formal logic” and “aesthetic resistance.”
· Emergence of New Theoretical Figures: The epicenter of theoretical disputes has migrated from university courtyards and debates among traditional professors (such as Abazari and Kachouian) to the ecosystem of Reels and Stories created by platform-based thinkers (such as Ardabili and Saleh Najafi).
· Conceptual Network Analysis: “University” retains the highest centrality (Degree 22, Betweenness 0.3272) as the pole of comparison; “Subject” (0.3042) is the primary mediator; and “Independent Schools,” despite a high degree (16), have low betweenness (0.0564), indicating their functional independence and archipelago-like structure.
5. Discussion
Independent schools do not act as mere “complements” to the university, nor do they seek to fully “replace” it; rather, they function as the university’s “structural other.” The post-Revolutionary discursive closure of the university, the hegemony of exclusionary bureaucracy, and the expulsion of critical thinkers created lines of flight that ejected the desire for learning outside. In this space, a post-disciplinary subjectivity has formed, which, unlike the rigid discipline of the university classroom, is based on connectivity, fluidity, and network-centricity. Through cultural articulation, independent schools have successfully linked critical theory to concrete issues, lifestyles, and the aesthetic tastes of their audiences, replacing the rigid academic calendar with expansive, instantaneous digital temporality—thereby constructing a new regime of validity and epistemic legitimacy outside the monopoly of academic degrees.
6. Conclusion
What is occurring in the field of social science education in Iran is an epistemic rupture and a reconfiguration of power and knowledge relations. The “University Empire” has encountered deep structural cracks and has lost its sole monopoly on legitimizing the understanding of society and the human condition. However, the horizon is not the erasure of the university nor absolute submission to platform logic, but rather the establishment of a permanent field of tension between the orthodox academic order and diverse, networked forces. In this context, independent schools have solidified their leadership in emerging theoretical fields and digital culture, while the “Iranian networked subject” has become the final and decisive agent of this post-authoritarian architecture.

Abstract Introduction
The social unrest of 2022 (1401) transformed Iranian universities into important sites of collective action and social conflict. It coincided with universities’ reopening after COVID-19 and developments following Mahsa Amini’s death and the emergence of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. University spaces became sites for expressing dissatisfaction, confronting institutional order, and diverse forms of action. Although previous studies have examined student movements and the 2022 unrest, less attention has been paid to lived experiences and how unrest became embedded in everyday university life and institutional relations. The study examines the dimensions of unrest in university space and how students experienced and interpreted it.
Research Question
The main research question is: How did the social unrest of 2022 emerge, become experienced, and become organized through interaction with institutional structures in university space? It examines conditions of emergence, students’ actions and interactions with university structures, and consequences for university life.
Literature Review
Research on student action has largely emphasized organization, collective demands, mobilization, and collective action; other studies interpret university actions as extensions of broader social developments. These approaches provide less insight into everyday conflict, diverse forms of action, and interaction between student agency and institutional regulation. This study therefore approaches unrest through lived experiences, as a process intertwined with everyday life and institutional relations.
Methodology
This qualitative study employed Strauss and Corbin’s systematic grounded theory, using 29 semi-structured interviews with students from different fields and open, axial, and selective coding. Concepts and categories were developed from interview data to construct a model explaining the emergence, experience, and consequences of unrest. Allameh Tabataba’i University was selected for the continuity and intensity of events and the possibility of examining experiences through winter 2022–2023.
Results
Findings were organized into thirteen interconnected categories: erosion of the normative institutional order, activation of moral-emotional sensitivities, accumulation of conflictual experiences, disruption in social continuity, institutional affordances for student action, generational value-normative changes, transformations in mental horizons, plurality and structural divisions within the student body, institutional control-regulatory dynamics, representations and circulation of meanings in media and virtual spaces, internal student dynamics, perceptual-emotional erosion of agency, and external interventions and shocks.
The core concept is “biocontention,” referring to a situation in which conflict over ways of living, everyday interactions, bodily experience, and expression takes shape within everyday university life. Four interrelated axes constitute this experience: “saying what had previously remained unsaid,” “making the divide visible,” “testing the possibility of being,” and “redefining the university.” These are interconnected dimensions rather than successive stages.
Students used diverse strategies, including gatherings, sit-ins, slogans, statements, symbolic appropriation of space, performances, collective absence from classes, everyday resistance, risk management, horizontal organization, dialogue and bargaining with university officials, and legal and institutional responses. These strategies involved maintaining presence, managing risks, and preserving or redefining action within the university. Consequences appeared at lived-mental, relational-collective, and institutional-university levels.
Discussion
The findings indicate that the 2022 university unrest cannot be fully captured as an organized, goal-oriented movement based on clearly defined demands. Boundaries between overt action and everyday resistance, individual and collective action, and everyday and political life were continuously blurred. Biocontention connects forms of action, lived experiences, and institutional relations within a common field of conflict. This perspective also highlights how students’ actions were shaped by changing institutional responses, shifting relations, and tensions between individual experience, collective participation, and university regulation throughout the period examined. The university became an arena where conflict was experienced and negotiated through encounters with institutional order. It was redefined as a space where relations among students, institutional rules, power, bodily experience, and ways of living were renegotiated in everyday interactions.
Conclusion
By developing biocontention, this study offers a framework for understanding 2022 unrest through everyday life, student action, and institutional relations. Unrest emerged through broader social conditions, accumulated experiences, institutional possibilities for action, changing mental horizons, media representations, and institutional regulation. Its consequences reshaped students’ university experiences, collective relations, future horizons, and relationship with institutional order. This framework enables examination beyond organizational or event-centered approaches, placing lived experiences and transformations in university relations at the center of analysis.

Abstract This study critiques the technical-managerial approach to urban waste management and seeks to examine the social, political, and symbolic roles of waste disposal sites in relation to the communities surrounding them. Its case study is the Anjilsi waste disposal site in Babol, Iran, from 1998 to 2024, and it reformulates the initial question, “Why did this project fail?”, through the lens of Actor-Network Theory. The research draws on field ethnography conducted in Anjilsi and the surrounding villages and interviews with relevant institutions. It also analyzes residents, institutions, leachate, and birds equally as actors. The findings indicate that the site’s condition resulted from the interaction and stabilization of a network comprising both human and non-human actors, while social and managerial concepts themselves were constituted through this process. The article argues that understanding this situation requires moving beyond a technical-engineering approach confined to the physical site, since waste has no fixed essence and a waste site is fundamentally a social phenomenon that exceeds the nature/culture dichotomy; accordingly, the study offers a reading of social history that moves beyond the binary logic of dominant and subordinate positions.

Abstract The expansion of digital technologies, new data sources, and computational methods has facilitated the development of Computational Social Science (CSS) and diversified its research approaches. This study evaluates research patterns in CSS by examining scientific collaboration, conceptual and methodological structures, and citation relationships. Using a bibliometric approach, 926 English-language articles indexed in Scopus that explicitly referred to CSS were analyzed through co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence, co-citation, and bibliographic coupling analyses. The findings reveal that the scientific collaboration network consists of multiple, relatively fragmented research communities. At the conceptual level, terms related to social media, big data, machine learning, and natural language processing occupy central positions. Co-citation analysis reveals the field’s connections with journals from various disciplines, while bibliographic coupling highlights the prominence of interdisciplinary journals and those associated with data-driven and computational fields. Overall, the findings demonstrate the prominence of technological concepts and computational methods within the field’s conceptual structure, alongside diverse collaboration patterns and citation relationships. However, these results do not establish a causal relationship between technological advances and changes in research priorities or knowledge production mechanisms; rather, they reveal aspects of research patterns in CSS within the context of technological transformations.

Abstract This study was conducted to qualitatively explore the underlying patterns of early marriage within the rural context of Kuhdasht County. The participants included 16 women from the Zirtang-e Seyab rural district of Kouhdasht county, who had married before the age of 18 and were selected through snowball sampling. Data were collected through in-depth, face-to-face interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. The participants’ mean age at marriage was 14.6 years. Initial coding yielded 179 codes, which were reduced to 92 concepts after removing duplicates. Subsequently, by categorizing similar concepts, 13 sub-themes were extracted, which were finally integrated and organized into 3 main themes: “Persistence of Traditional Socio-Cultural Patterns,” “Economic and Non-Economic Poverty and Deprivation,” and “Individual Immaturity and Unfinished Childhood.” The findings indicated that child marriage is a complex issue, with its numerous cases in rural areas stemming from the intertwined nature of traditions, unequal cultural structures, social limitations, and economic pressures, which make informed decision-making for marriage difficult. A necessary step for change in such a situation is to raise awareness among parents and families about inappropriate cultural traditions and their irreparable psychological and physical harms to girls.