Analyzing social cohesion in open spaces of multiethnic poor neighborhoods: a grounded theory study

During the past two decades, economic crises and climate change have triggered mass migrations from rural areas to big cities and metropolises. Considering that the destination cities often lack the required capacity to systematically accommodate these newcomers, immigrants settle in unofficially on city margins. Since these immigrants have different ethnicities, the informal settlements constructed by them turn into multiethnic informal Settlements in which development of proper social ties becomes impeded. As a result, social cohesion is weakened and eventually ceases to exist among the residents in open community spaces. In this regard, the present study aims to analyze this process and the effects of multiethnicity on social cohesion in the open community spaces of poor urban areas and the role of environmental factors in this mechanism. The Hesar Imam Khomeini neighborhood, which is located in Hamadan Province and has a rural core, has given shelter to Lurish, Kurdish, Turkish and Persian-speaking immigrants during recent years, which makes it a suitable sample for study. Because of the existing limitations and in order to achieve the goal of the study, the grounded theory was used to conduct the research. In-depth interview was carried out on sixteen residents of the neighborhood, four individuals from each ethnicity. After coding the interviews using the theory, a grounded model of the study was formed. The results indicate that multiethnicity has negatively affected behavior settings, vibrancy and consequently social cohesion in the open community spaces of the area of study through the three factors of “different expectations from neighborhood space”, “different time of attendance in open spaces” and “different residence size”. It can be proposed that “creating spatial shared values” is one of the most effective strategies which can be used for narrowing gaps and increasing social cohesion in multiethnic neighborhoods

A Comparative Study of Gender Development Indexes in the Province of Lorestan in 2006

Introduction Gender inequality is a part of socio-economic inequality in all societies. Overcoming discrimination is most important in the poverty reduction programmes every societies especialy in developing countries and a useful tools for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals that announced by UNDP. The Gander development index (GDI) is often considered a “gender-sensitive extension of the HDI” (Klasen 245). It addresses gender-gaps in life expectancy, education, and incomes. It uses an “inequality aversion” penalty, which creates a development score penalty for gender gaps in any of the categories of the Human Development Index which include life expectancy, adult literacy, school enrollment, and logarithmic transformations of per-capita income. The GDI cannot be used independently from the Human Development Index (HDI) score and so, it cannot be used on its own as an indicator of gender-gaps. Only the gap between the HDI and the GDI can actually be accurately considered; the GDI on its own is not an independent measure of gender-gaps. In the years since its creation in 1995, much debate has arisen surrounding the reliability, and usefulness of the Gender Development Index (GDI) in making adequate comparisons between different countries and in promoting gender-sensitive development. The GDI is particularly criticized for being often mistakenly interpreted as an independent measure of gender-gaps when it is not, in fact, intended to be interpreted in that way, because it can only be used in combination with the scores from the Human Development Index, but not on its own. Additionally, the data that is needed in order to calculate the GDI is not always readily available in many countries, making the measure very hard to calculate uniformly and internationally (Ibid). So the participation and role of women in various cultural, social, economic and political fields determine levels of development indicators in each country around the world. Existing data’s shows that women's condition in Iran’s during last decades have dual status. In terms of some HDI indicators component such as health and education, women in Iran are in a situation more better than most countries in the region, but their share of participation rate in labor market and income earning is in very low level in compare with other developing countries. In this case Lorestan province is one of the most poor areas. Material & Methods This study’s research method was been second data analysis as a interpretive approach, and critical perspective. While focusing on theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the gender development index be discussed. So this research took about the methods that used here is numerical taxonomy and data matrix - have been used too. Discussion of Results & Conclusions As mentioned in state of problems, here the finding shows that Lorestan gender development indicators (GDI) are in low level. But inter provinces analysis among town and cities shows many different among districts. For examples in field of cultural- educational indicators, cities of Borujerd and Khorramabad occupied high developed rank, and then Doroud and Poldokhtar rank is relatively developed cities, some other cities such as Koohdasht,and Azna been relatively disadvantaged and finally most poor sections of cities are located in Aligoodarz and Delfan. Base on results and this study finding a longtime development plans is needed to try increase and improve of gender development indicators in all cities with focus on poor areas same Delfan and Alighoodarz

Transforming agriculture to climate change in Famenin County, West Iran through a focus on environmental, economic and social factors

When the social, economic, or ecological conditions under which socio-ecological systems are expected to adapt become untenable, a system may transform into a fundamentally new system. Within agricultural systems, farmers have the option of significantly transforming their practices, or migrating elsewhere in the search for a better lifestyle (and exiting the agricultural socio-ecological system). However, if governments, communities and industry leaders are to provide climate change impact support to agricultural regions, then it becomes critical to predict the conditions under which farmers, households and communities will choose to either transform their farming or migrate. We hypothesize that those conditions are likely to reflect environmental, economic and social conditions within a region, where some communities and/or some farmers may respond differently depending on their environmental, economic and social factors. Here, we examine how the perception of farmers to transformational change is influenced by social, environmental and economic factors in six villages within the Famenin County of western Iran, which have experienced a notable recent decrease in groundwater levels, an increase in temperature due to reduced rainfall and no support from government. Results show that environmental, economic and social factors were all important influences on the social transformations that were occurring within each village and across the region. In sum, environmental flexibility and local corporation eased the transformation process. Place attachment and social capital were critical to facilitate transformation during all parts of the transformation process. These results are discussed as two separate scenarios. Keywords: Transformation, Climate change adaptation, Environmental dependency, Economic factors, Social factor