Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities

Abstract From the Naserite era until now, the body has always been the issue of disputes, conflicts and competition between social groups, political parties and different discourses in Iran. Despite this, studies of the body, in general, the relationship between the political system and the body in Iran, in particular, is a new domain that has not received serious attention from academic circles in the country. The present article is a systematic review of the researches accomplished in this field over the last two decades. Such a study, in addition to providing an analysis of approaches, methods, issues, and findings of these studies, and reviewing the weaknesses and strengths of the existing research, can identify the neglected fields in this domain and lead to a deeper understanding of the issue of the body as a social and political construct in the contemporary Iranian society. As such, relying on the analysis of the content and themes of the available sources, we are looking for a systematic analysis of the problematic, study tradition and methodology of these studies. The findings show that the most basic problem of these researchers is to study the role and place of the body in the process of nation building and modernity in Iran, or the body as a factor of conflict between power (political sovereignty) and Iranian social groups and activists. Also, the tradition of sociology with two theoretical approaches, post-structuralist and structuralist, can be considered as the dominant approach in the studies of politics and the body in Iranian social sciences during the last two decades..

Abstract University, as a crucial social context, not only facilitates continuous scientific experience but also plays a pivotal role in shaping students' character through diverse interactions and situations. This study aims to examine how universities help contribute the formation of students' character. This study employs a mixed-method approach (quantitative-qualitative). The quantitative phase involves a random sampling of 290 undergraduate and graduate students from Tehran universities, using researcher-developed questionnaires. Quantitative data are analyzed using statistical software. The qualitative phase consists of in-depth interviews with higher education managers and experts, analyzed through thematic analysis. Findings reveal that moral character significantly predicts students' academic performance and the development of ethical and social virtues and attitudes. The data analysis identifies four main dimensions in enhancing students’ character: 1) Empowering and virtue-oriented attitudes (including intellectual growth, mindfulness, and self-efficacy); 2) Personality attitudes (including extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness); 3) Social attitudes (including novelty-seeking, harm avoidance, and active agency), and 4) Ethical attitudes (including moral education, learning from experience, and cultivation of human values). The university's central role in creating an environment for interaction, learning, and growth of these attitudes is also highlighted.

Abstract Entrepreneurial agency, defined as people's ability to discover and exploit business opportunities and create new value, is a complicated notion that necessitates an interdisciplinary approach and the integration of various views. Adopting this approach in the first step requires understanding the knowledge-based agencies and selecting related fields, which in this article is done through the scientometric analysis method. 18060 English-language items from the WOS database were selected and evaluated. The co-citation analysis of sources indicated five major clusters: Sociology, organization and management, agency theory, neuroscience/cognitive science, and psychology. The authors' co-citation analysis revealed seven theoretical groups. The co-occurrence analysis of key phrases and time trends revealed that concepts such as agency theory, human agency, and structure-agency duality originated in the 1970s and 1980s, but newer concepts such as teacher agency and entrepreneurial agency arose more recently. The findings revealed that the concept of agency evokes diverse interpretations depending on the field researched upon. In economics and law, it refers to representation and the principal-agent relationship. In public administration and political science, it refers to an organization or firm that performs a function for another. In philosophy, sociology, psychology, education, cognitive science, and neuroscience, it refers to the capacity, condition, or state of executing an action or exerting power, as well as the human ability to perform conscious and purposeful activities. Finally, to investigate entrepreneurial agency at the individual level, an integrated study of psychology and the social sciences is proposed.

Abstract With the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the understanding of power also gradually changed. Soft power by modifying the limited focus of realist power analysis i.e. possessing specific tangible resources to maintain and increase national power, introduces persuasive power; the ability to shape the desires of others not by force but through persuasion distinguishes between hard and soft power. In terms of effectiveness, it clearly showed the nature of the behavior and the concreteness of the resources. In Joseph Nye's explanation, soft power is an analytical concept that matches and overlaps with realist, liberal, and constructivist views and theories. Higher education can be regarded as an apparatus of soft power, thereby entailing examination of its relationship with other international theories.  The basic question is the position of the soft power of higher education in international theories and how it can be theoretically explained in the theories that have also observed pragmatic behaviors. Here, by explaining higher education as a cultural matter and an apparatus of soft power, we demonstrate its relationship with the theories of realism, liberalism and constructivism. Methodologically, we are conducting an interdisciplinary study, citing library studies and explaining descriptive review. In examining each of these theories, we present narratives, conceptual and theoretical frameworks regarding the role of the soft power of higher education to explain its role in domestic development and national interests in various political, social, cultural, technological and economic fields, maintaining peace and preventing conflict as well as its role in expanding public diplomacy and soft power of higher education.

Abstract With due attention to growing need of countries for energy resources, new and diverse topics in the field of law and energy have been designed that strengthen extensive interdisciplinary studies and researches in this field. The legal dimension of the exploitation of energy types, including the protection of the environment, foreign investment, and the creation of legal mechanism at domestic and international levels, energy security, and other issues of countries necessitates interdisciplinary studies and the publication of legal researches related to energy substantially. Energy Law is one of the interdisciplinary majors that have been taken into consideration in faculties of several countries, including Australia, England, the United States, and Canada. The fact that Energy Law as a major can itself be under other specialized courses which increase its value as an academic field and it can be said that the establishment of "Energy Law" as an interdisciplinary major, considering its scope and content in the curriculum of the faculty of law of other countries, including Iran, is undeniable. This article tries to provide an appropriate context for energy law as an interdisciplinary major to the students of law and other related disciplines.  For this purpose, in addition to explaining the concept, characteristics and status of energy, we will examine the principles, elements and levels of this major.

Abstract Clothing is an important topic in social studies, but structural approaches have received little attention due to a lack of frameworks for formulating meanings of clothes. The purpose of this study was to pore over on the linguistic effects of clothes. The main question is, to what extent can the meaning of clothes be explained within the framework of a linguistic system? For this purpose, the structural analysis method of Ferdinand de Saussure was used. Results showed this method can recognize elements and relations of the clothing system but not explain historical trends. The clothing system is governed by the logic of signifier and signified and is an arena of contentious semiotics. Discussing the origins and implications of signs requires case studies of synchrony and diachrony of clothes. Regardless of history, studying clothing is inconclusive; it is both a system and history. Confrontation between dress rules and individual dressing represents social dynamics. Clothing has linguistic logic with codes but no vocabulary or grammar to convey alphabetical messages. The structure of clothing in society has extensive intertextual relations and cannot be considered a true language, only a pseudo-language.

Abstract The article defines and identifies features of the ecological humanities, understood as a symptom of the emergence of a new scientific paradigm. It focuses on ecoposthumanities—a tendency that has been developing since the late nineties within the framework of posthumanist criticism of anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism, and Western science. The article highlights the role of traditional ecological knowledge, as well as the development of biohumanities (an inclusive type of knowledge that connects human, social sciences, and life sciences) as important aspects of ecoposthumanities. The ecological humanities offer a utopian vision of meta-communities of humans and non-humans based on symbiotic relations, co-evolution, and co-dependency, and anticipate future knowledge building in terms of extended mind, distributed cognition, biocommunication, and empathy.