Cultural System: Using Solar System Metaphor for Organizing the Islamic, Republic of Iran’s Cultural Organizations

A look at I.R. of Iran’s cultural institutions and organizations, and a survey of their role in shaping the society’s cultural conditions, provide some general and shared characteristics, namely, multiplicity of these organizations, their lack of mission distinction, interference and parallel work in their affairs, lack of coordination in policy making and execution, and lack of a powerful and effective supervisory center. These are the main causes of disharmony in the country’s cultural performance and their aimless expansion with huge budget consumption leading to undesirable the inefficiency of the country’s cultural corpus.
Metaphors have been used to facilitate our understanding of different phenomena including different fields of humanities such as management. The present article has in the same manner adopted the metaphor of “cultural system” , after the expression “Solar System” , in order to shed light on the ideal condition the country’s cultural institutions and organizations can have. To answer the basic question, “Is our main problem in the cultural field a lack of a comprehensive cultural management system?”  the research has first tried to make the matter more explicit and provide solutions by gathering evidence from various practical researches done by the Higher Council for Cultural Revolution and the Expediency Council. It then uses the cultural system metaphor by borrowing some major features from the Solar System, in order to elucidate the ideal cultural arrangement that can contribute to organizing cultural centers and institutions of the I.R. of Iran.