This thesis examines the relationship between education, experience, and earnings in the context of human capital theory in the manufacturing sector of Iran. Using a sample of 15755 full-time male workers clustered within 35 firms, both single-level and multilevel statistical techniques were employed to evaluate the contribution of education and experience to earnings. The research also examines the advantages of applying a multilevel method of analysis to investigate the above relationship. This study has shown that, in the manufacturing sector of Iranian industry, the amount of education and experience is significantly and systematically associated with the earnings of employees. This helps to corroborate the notion that human capital acquired through education and experience provides individual economic benefits through improving the earning capacity of individuals. These findings are consistent with many other analyses of earnings based on human capital theory. The multilevel analysis showed that data used are affected by a hierarchical or clustered structure and the relationship between human capital variables and earnings varies across firms. As a result, as argued by multilevel methodologists and confirmed by our findings, the application of the OLS models in a hierarchical structure leads to incorrect inferences. This study has also shown that the relatively new statistical technique of multilevel modelling provides a powerful tool for examining earnings differentials and some of the effects of labour market structures on earnings. In general the use of a multilevel model provides evidence for the pecuniary externality effects of human capital. By treating individual firms as second level units of analysis, it has been shown that part of the differences in earnings can be attributed to the firms in which individuals are working. In particular clusters of highly educated people seem to have a positive effect on the amount of human capital created through experience. It would be interesting to see whether this finding has wider application. The multilevel technique also strengthens the explanatory power of human capital variables. Using qualitative methods, this research also examines the question "why does investment in human capital increase earnings?" The main findings tend to support the human capital interpretation of education rather than pure screening.

The purpose of this dissertation was to study the economic development in Iran during its major planning periods and also to formulate a mathematical model of the economy of Iran and explore the applicability of an income expenditure model in a developing nation such as Iran.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / For generations, the Iranian psyche has been scarred by the vicissitudes of history and politics. A series of radical events, among them the 1953 CIA-led coup that ushered in the Pahlavi regime, the Islamic Revolution of 1978, the hostage crisis of 1979, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have caused emotional and physical upheavals in the lives of Iranians, scattering them across the planet, fracturing their once-sacred family units, and tangling their personal and collective identities. The twelve stories in Azadi examine these upheavals in fictional form. Against the backdrop of this swath of history, the characters in the stories struggle to retain their sense of themselves, not only as individuals but also as members of a family and a culture. The collection opens a compelling and much-needed window into a rich culture that is both under-represented and superficially depicted in literature from the English-speaking world. / 2031-01-01T00:00:00Z

This dissertation is an attempt to pose a challenge to the reified image of Kurdishness and Kurdayeti (awakening Kurdish nationalism), from an ethnographical perspective. The focus group is the comparatively understudied Kurmanji-speaking Kurds of Urmia county in Iran, both in rural and urban contexts. The questions is why do the Kurds of this study, in particular, and Kurds all over the Middle East, in general, have a high potential for mobilization during politically charged moments? / 博士(グローバル社会研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in Global Society Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

A diaspora’s flag is the symbolic representation of that community. The Iranian flag, however, is a contested symbol among the Iranian diasporic community. As this research shows, the Iranian diaspora exhibits its cultural, political, and religious identities through three different Iranian flags. Through qualitative research, entailing months of participant observation and a series of semi-structured interviews, I investigate the underlying reasons for this flag disagreement. Through this research, I argue that an Iranian diaspora’s pre-migration communal history and post-migration environmental factors influence its establishment and maintenance in the host nation. In this study, I revisit the diaspora literature to argue for the complexity of the concept of diaspora. I demonstrate how a diaspora assists the community in restructuring its lost cultural identity and establishing a social space to belong, in the time of the spatial and cultural dislocation. The Iranian diaspora’s flag selection is a symbolic representation of communal establishment and identity formation for the community. The Iranian flag debate indicates a communal divide; it is also an instrument to set social boundaries to develop a community under the symbolic representation of the ancestral homeland. Furthermore, this research explores how the Iranian diaspora uses the Iranian flag as a proxy to indicate socio-communal expectations and intersectional social hierarchies that already exist among the Iranian community. When discussing the flag’s symbolic significance, the respondents relate the flag with three recurring themes of religion, gender, and sexuality. The association of the Iranian flag with these three social factors indicates the communal dynamics of the Iranian diaspora. These communal dynamics establish certain norms and values, but they also redefine each flag based on its socio-political history. The attached meaning to each flag consequently causes tension and disagreement among the Iranian community, which is not solely political. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The Iranian diaspora is a young and growing community that came into existence after the Islamic revolution of 1979. In this diaspora, there are three different flags on display, and each flag represents a socio-political ideology. The symbolic application of the flag facilitates this research in exploring the social interaction among the Iranian diaspora residing in the Greater Toronto Area and York Region. Through the examination of the flag debates, I investigate the significance of community building in the new host nation. I critically analyze the communal divide existing among the Iranian community and the flag debate that is a symbolic representation of Iranian group dynamics. The discussion of the flag for many starts a conversation about community development and socio-communal hierarchy. While the different versions of the Iranian flags bring the diasporic communities together, they also indicate social segregation caused by religious, gender, and sexual hierarchies existing among the Iranian diaspora.

This thesis examines the adaptation of Iranian Canadians (immigrants from Iran in Canada) to the new cultural environment with a special focus on a paradigm shift in their lingua-cultural attitudes. More specifically, it examines the attitudes of Iranian Canadians to ta’arof, an important politeness phenomenon in Farsi that has attracted the attention of many scholars of linguistics and anthropology. The actual use of ta’arof as well as attitudes to its use are compared for two groups of first generation Canadian Iranians (60 participants total), with long and short periods of exposure to Canadian culture. All the participants come from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. This thesis is informed by linguistic relativity, acculturation and politeness theories. The study employs a questionnaire survey as its methodology, commonly used in sociolinguistic studies (e.g. Makarova & Hudyma, 2015; Clement, 1986). The questionnaire contains questions about the respondents' use of ta’arof in different situations, and their attitudes to ta’arof. In addition, it included some sociocultural questions aimed at evaluating the respondents’ level of acculturation. The goal of this study is to describe the use of ta’arof and attitudes to its use among first generation Canadian Iranians, as well as to examine whether social variables such as length of stay in Canada, gender, education and English proficiency contribute to a change in attitudes to ta’arof among first generation Iranian immigrants in Canada. The results show that all the social variables in this study, namely age, gender, education, English proficiency, length of stay in Canada and acculturation can be either positively or negatively correlated with the participants’ use of ta’arof and their attitudes to ta’arof. The results also indicate that “ethnic self-identification,” in terms of “Canadian,” “Iranian,” or “Iranian Canadian,” is positively correlated with “the length of stay in Canada.” The Iranian immigrants with longer duration of stay in Canada are more likely to identify themselves as “Iranian Canadian” than as “Iranian.” Other findings suggest that the Iranian immigrants who have lived for a long perid of time in Canada provide higher acculturation-level responses and use ta’arof less in their interactions with Iranians and non-Iranians in Canada, as compared to immigrants who have lived in Canada for a short period of time. The latter group yields lower acculturation-level responses, and their attitudes to ta’arof are significantly more positive. Overall, even though the Iranian Canadian participants report the use ta’arof in Canada not only in communication within the Iranian diaspora, but also sometimes in communication with members of other Canadian ethnic groups, they dislike the pressures imposed by ta’arof, do not want to teach it to their children, and have overall rather negative attitudes towards ta’arof and its use. With the increase of the duration of stay in Canada, the attitudes to ta’arof become significantly more negative.

This thesis aims to understand how civil society developed and evolved in the modern history of Iran and how it operates in the current day through the eyes of the actors of this realm. The fieldwork of the study was conducted in Tehran in 2006. This study, while questioning the liberal understanding of civil society, endeavours to contemplate a consistent framework in which the Iranian civil society activities could be located. The Iranian case proved the existence of a vivid civil society despite a repressive political climate. However, instead of comprehending the Iranian civil society as constant or developing, this thesis showed that civil society is in fact evolving according to the power relations between the state and civil society. In this sense, Iranian civil society is neither weak or nor strong but rather its strength is changing vis-&agrave / -vis the relations with the Iranian state.

This dissertation is a comparative case study of British policy towards and perceptions of Persia/Iran during the latter's two modern revolutions, 1906-1909 (Constitutional) and 1976-1979 ('Islamic'). The study covers both official perceptions and policy, meaning that of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service and the perceptions of the press, civil society, Parliament and wider public opinion; thus it is not a traditional exercise in diplomatic history. It explores British views of both the Shah/government and opposition forces during these two periods in detail and presents these views in a comparative perspective. The research paints a broad social and historical picture of how changes in both British and Iranian government, society and global status affected their mutual relations. Key themes relate to how the decline of (Edwardian) Liberalism, the transformation of the Left in the twentieth century and Britain's decline as an imperial power affected its perceptions and policy-making in Iran; how civil society and public opinion exerted a disproportionately strong influence in the earlier period before Britain was even a fully democratic society; how notions of Orientalism and Aryanism shaped official and public perceptions; and how changing geopolitics impacted perceptions, particularly in the case of Tsarist Russia versus the Soviet Union. This study has revealed numerous counter-intuitive points about the foreign relations and perceptions of British government and society vis-à-vis Iran and prompts a reconsideration of the evolution of British public and official attitudes during the twentieth century as manifested in the case of Iran at two critical historical junctures.

Writing for solo instruments today offers composers an option to create a framework that results from the psychoacoustic interaction of composer, listener and performer. The interaction between musicians, audience and the concert environment, and the extent to which they themselves embody the material of the music presented, can be called into question and a composer's expectation of the dynamics of the concert situation is part of this examination. This understanding in turn prepares the way for one of the ultimate challenges and achievements for a composer, writing an opera. Opera combines all the other arts with the composer in command, which is not the case when composing for dance or providing auxiliary music for theatre. Writing an opera means that all features of structure and timing are in the composer’s hands. Opera has had a crisis of identity; the market for traditional operas and classic repertoire but there is no overall identity for contemporary operatic writers. However modern opera is still evolving. This thesis will recount a range of musical ideas developed for a variety of classical solo instruments, all of which attempt to create this interactive concert situation, before going on to consider the three year evolution of my opera The Doll Behind the Curtain.

abstract: Shirin Neshat is recognized as the most prominent artist of the Iranian diaspora. Her two photographic series, Women of Allah (1993-97) and The Book of Kings (2012), are both reactions to the socio-political events and the change of female identity in Iran. The search for Iranian identity has a long tradition in Iranian photography. Neshat's figures, with their penetrating gazes, heavy draperies, and body postures, make reference to nineteenth-century Qajar photography. Through various cultural elements in her artworks, Neshat critiques oppression in Iranian society. Neshat employs and inscribes Persian poetry to communicate contradiction within Iranian culture. To read Neshat’s photography, it is crucial to register her use of Persian language and historical poetry. Although the reading and understanding of the Persian texts Neshat inscribes on her photographs plays a fundamental role in the interpretation of her work, Neshat’s artworks are not entirely conceptual. The lack of translation of these included texts in Neshat’s exhibitions indicates a decorative use of Persian calligraphy. The Western eye can aesthetically explore this exotic Eastern decorative calligraphy. The formal qualities of Neshat’s photographs remain, even if the viewer is unable to read or understand the Persian texts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Art History 2015