Mohammad Javad Abdolahi
Abstract
In Iran, most research on history of unemployment has been conducted by government subordinate institutions. These studies have mostly tried to provide policies for the state in the ...
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In Iran, most research on history of unemployment has been conducted by government subordinate institutions. These studies have mostly tried to provide policies for the state in the field of unemployment, based on official figures derived from public censuses. The hidden assumption in these studies with quantitative methods is the a-chronic of economic concepts such as unemployment. However, what remains to be neglected in these researches is the heterogeneity of the meaning of economic concepts, such as unemployment in different periods. Therefore, the question in the present paper is how unemployment, as a concept that is usually static, can be transformed into a historical research subject, as a changing concept. The present paper claims that unemployment can be transformed into a subject for historical research as a changing concept, with the help of the approach of social historians in the terms of labor and unemployment concepts. As a matter of fact, it has been shown that how to go beyond these studies with quantitative methods in interpreting unemployment through describing the conflict between ideological dimension and the material reality of unemployment.
