Sociology
A. Feizolahi; K. Kamarbeigi
Abstract
Apathy is a passive activity in which individuals avoid active engagement and altruism while lacking interest in or concern about social problems. This paper aims to analyze social apathy in Ilam province and find its causes and consequences. The study was conducted by a qualitative method according ...
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Apathy is a passive activity in which individuals avoid active engagement and altruism while lacking interest in or concern about social problems. This paper aims to analyze social apathy in Ilam province and find its causes and consequences. The study was conducted by a qualitative method according to the grounded theory approach and using purposive sampling strategies (theoretical sampling). The required data were collected through interviews with 28 participants. Data were analyzed using the Strauss and Corbin coding paradigm in three stages of open, axial, and selective coding. As the results showed, ignorance of citizens’ role, political structure, rising expectations, selfish individualism, the decline in collective loyalty, social trade-offs, socioeconomic inequalities, and the accumulation of poverty and misery were the causal factors. Besides, the contextual factors included social loafing, non-assertiveness, economization of culture, legal gap, failure of the training system, the chaos of tradition, nepotism, low-performance civil organizations, and isolationism. Finally, government inefficiency, collective hysteria, and media malfunction were intervening factors. As the findings of the study show, ‘social disorganization’ was the main core of the research, which results from causal, contextual, and intervening factors.
