Systemic Approach to Village and Rural Development

This paper reviews village and rural development from a theoretical and methodological point of view. Given the nature of the concerned subject, the central assumption in the present research is that a systemic approach would be the most suitable means of producing a clear understanding over the village phenomenon and consequently inducing somehow a favorable change in the village. Without neglecting either some parts of the rural community or some relations among various parts within the cycle of the system, such an approach might provide a more precise understanding of rural community by its nature of the different aspects and illustrate the intrasystemic relations (among various parts of the rural community) and intersystemic ones (between the village and the higher macro levels of social, economic, cultural, and spatial systems). The concept of system, its features, and its concerned governing principles are studied through this orientation, and the village is focused in both the subsystem level-as a part of the mentioned systems- and the physical space level (ie, of the village in itself).