Iranian sociological streams and trends are, as in some other eastern countries, deeply affected and dominated by western scholars’ thoughts and theories. The centers, which are variable relative to the peripheral contexts, export theories and approaches, in the case of Iran, mostly through translation of American and British books and articles, for which we provide empirical data over and over. Iranian social inquiry seems to have a very small contribution to the international literature of social science in terms of theorizing ability. What we call Iranian social science, more than a specific locally recognizable current, is the empirical body of literature produced to test imported theories inside the borders of a political entity named Iran.

Two groups of factors have contributed to the formation of Iranian associations and academic individuals’ status as peripheral in the international social science academic arena.

The first group consists of external factors such as prevailing eurocentrism, English language hegemony, and inevitable political-economic problems.

The second group of factors are internal factors. Iranian academics’ and academic organizations’ attitudes towards researchers’ choices of their research topics, preferred methodologies and applied theories, has resulted in aridity and stagnation of social research in Iran. Excessive emphasis on the positivist paradigm, quantitative research, arbitrary interpretation of indigenization of social science, and lack of problem-oriented research, have led to the contemporary ambiguous status of social sciences in Iran…

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