Sociological Analysis of Social Trust in the Zoroastrian Community in Tehran

Abstract

Iran is a heterogeneous and pluralistic nation in terms of both ethnicity and religion. Ignoring the needs and demands of minorities upon manufacturing governmental policies and social and developmental planning weakens the minorities’ nationalistic cohesion, but it also consolidates their minority favoritism attitudes. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to sociologically analyze the factors affecting the social trust of Zoroastrians in Tehran and the main question of this study is, what factors may decrease or increase the Tehrani Zoroastrians’ social trust? According to the main purpose of this study and the status of the statistical population of the research, the theory of Putnam, Giddens, Coleman, Inglehart, Sztompka, Offe, and Johnson was selected as the theoretical framework of the study. For methodology, survey and multi-stage (cluster) sampling and sampling techniques were employed. Since most Zoroastrians live in specific parts of Tehran and given the principle of randomness of the sample, in this study, multi-stage cluster sampling was used to identify the respondents. This method is often used in large-scale studies, where the geographical distribution of people is scattered and wide. In this study, in the first stage, out of the twenty-two districts of Tehran, three districts (districts 4, 6, and 12), regions with the most Zoroastrian population, have been randomly selected. In the next stage, from each district, several neighborhoods with the most Zoroastrian population (Tehranpars, Amirabad, Takht Tavous, Yousefabad, and 30 Tir), and then from each neighborhood two or three blocks were selected. Finally, a number of houses were randomly selected from each block in the form of circular block; eventually, a single person from each household was selected, as the respondent, if he was a Zoroastrian. The statistical population of the study consists of all Zoroastrians living in Tehran, which according to the Zoroastrian Association of Tehran are about 7000 people. The sample size is 210 people. The results showed the social trust level of 20.9 percent of the respondents is low, the social trust level of 52.4 percent of respondents is moderate, and the social trust level of 26.7 percent of them is high. The relationship among the variables of socio-economic status, sense of social security, life satisfaction, sense of discrimination, social exclusion, and social trust is significant. Also, the factors of feeling of discrimination and social exclusion were found to have the greatest impact on social trust; however, any relationship among personal characteristics (except age) and social trust was denied.