The Decline of Community in Iran: A chronological story

The empirical data show a fundamental transformation in the fabric of the Iranian society in recent decades. The essence of this transformation is what we have called the “decline of community’, also labelled as the ‘depletion of social capital’, referring to the loss of social ties and the erosion of moral life which hold members of society together. In this article, drawing on a large volume of statistics, of different types and from different sources, we have traced the timing of this great transformation. Those data point to a period of about two decades – between mid-1980s and mid-2000s – in which various social indicators have shown a major shift of direction. Understanding this transformation is particularly important because most of the public debates and discourses about changes in Iran have been heavily focused on, and revolving around, political and state-related issues, ignoring the changes in the deeper and less readily visible layers of societal life and collective conscience. As we have discussed elsewhere, such a transformation is likely to impact all other aspects of life and the society’s mode of operation; hence, any analysis of social trends and any suggestions for social reform in Iran need to take this transformation into account.