Modernity and Family Changes in Rural Kurdistan (Case Study: Rural Areas of Mukerian)

During the last century and in a period of time called modern history of Iran, we have seen different changes in life of urban communities as a whole, and urban and rural Kurdistan in particular. The range and power of such changes have been in such a level that we can see “value changes” in this field. Data of this research, considering sociocultural peculiarities of the village understudy, was gathered by employing qualitative method and grounded theory and applying techniques like deep interviews, oral history and field participation. Repeated visits to the study field in order to collect the required information and measure the reliability of the collected information and also to test the theoretical validity, have continued until the last stage of the research. Theoretically, new theories of modernization and some of the theories related to interpretative sociology have been our guidelines and especially Engelhard's theory of values evolution, new theories of modernization and reflexive modernity of Giddens have formed our conceptual framework. After conducting about twenty individual interviews with elites and members of the local community and eight group discussions, theoretical saturation was obtained. In the data analysis section, about 187 basic concepts, 12 minor categories and 4 main categories have been extracted and finally summarized in the form of presenting the main category of the research. Observation, studies and “lived experience” of researcher shows the happening of different “objective- subjective” kind of changes in the “life world” of Kurdish rural areas under the influence of environmental, historical, political and cultural conditions of geographical region called “Mukerian” (located on the borders of Iraq and Turkey) in different fields among them Family and different issues in relation with family. In fact on one side we are observing “creation of some new and modern traditions” and on the other side “modernization of some old traditions” in Iranian rural community and so in Kurdistan such as family member relations with each other, relations between women and men, their parents and their children, love and sexual issues, secrecy and feminization of the family, divorce, marriage and related traditions.