جامعه شناسی کاربردی (Aug 2013)
A Study of Reference Groups of Young Women in Ilam
Abstract
Introduction Selection of reference group and inclination to it is among those important issues that thinkers consider it under various titles. By referring to criteria of a special group, we always assess our deeds, appearance, values, wishes, lifestyles and ourselves. In a case study, this paper intends to focus on women at the age of 16-29 who live in Ilam city to study their reference group. Identifying reference groups and the effective factors in women’s selection were the main purpose of this paper. So we tried to find the answer of such questions as "what are the reference groups for young women in Ilam?" "What are their characteristic attributes?" "Is there any conflict in the trends of reference group selection?" "What are the effective structural factors in this selection?" "Merton’s reference group theory was selected as theoretical approach because not only is it more comprehensive than Mead's, Cooley's, and Simmer's theories, but it is also able to cover the main questions of this research. The main points of this theory include: relative deprivation, reference group, membership and non-membership, multiple reference groups, negative reference groups, effective structural factors in this selection, the consequences of this reference group selection, conflicts in inclination to reference group Materials & Methods A qualitative approach with in-depth interview and observation technics were used as research methodology. Also, purposive sampling and standards of saturation were applied to quit data collection and start analyzing it, respectively Discussion of Results & Conclusion The results show that Ilam society is a convergent and intergroup society in which women are more inclined to membership reference groups, especially to their families and less to non-membership reference groups. But dissatisfaction of women from closed environment of families, classes and society made it necessary that other concepts would describe this situation. These concepts include: Localism and the petti bourgeoisie class. One of the characteristic of this class is that it has a limited ownership and neither is identically similar to worker class nor to capitalist class. It is a socially conservative one and in most cases it attends to traditional issues (Ritzer1998). We can classify all three groups as the petti bourgeoisie class because there was no significant differences among samples in three classes (high, medium and low). The women of this class are dependent to their families and their men (husband or father). In the one hand, they wish to enjoy from wealth, education and social openness. On the other hand, they to strengthen their ties to their families and believe that they can achieve their wishes only by their families. The petti bourgeoisie class in Ilam gets their wishes by looking at upper classes so they try to behave like them, but in contrast to their inclination, there is a situation which we call contentment or localism. Despite of all ambitions and wishes, Ilami woman have an internal force which invites them to content and return to family circle. So because of localism and contentment, they prefer not to hurt their families for their own personal choices of cloth, social relationships, etc.
