فصلنامه روستا و توسعه
سال بیست و چهارم شماره 3 (پیاپی 95، پاییز 1400)

One of the active civic institutions in the villages is the rural councils, whose capacity and power can be used in the field of institutionalizing the political participation of the target community. Therefore, purpose of this study was identifying the capacities of rural councils to improve and modify the participation of rural communities in elections process in Khorramabad county of Iran and investigating how to benefit from them. the research method of this paper was the Grounded theory based on the Strauss and Corbin model. The target population of the study was the members of the rural councils of the county and experts related to the affairs of rural councils in the governorate and districts level of this county, from which eighteen persons were selected in a purposeful snowball sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect information, which was assessed by participants; also, in order to increase the credeiability of the research, an audit guide was prepared. The results showed that taking the necessary measures to strengthen the satuts of councils in the political area at the legislative and executive levels as well as revising the duties of the councils could pave the ground for a major change to increase the participation of rural communities in elections; in addition, "strengthening the spirit of participation and teamwork in rural areas", "involving councils in regional decisions" and "respecting the impartiality of council members towards candidates" could be effective and useful in this regard and lead to "increased participation of rural people in determining their destiny".

Sustainable and balanced growth of a country requires rural development in line with urban development as a necessity, which has been neglected by policymakers in most developing countries, especially Iran. In order to find a suitable solution to move in the direction of balanced development, it is necessary to determine the position and development status of rural areas as well as to formulate and implement development policies and programs according to this position. The present study examined 103 villages within eight sub-districts of Hamadan County based on 13 social, economic and cultural indicators. Taxonomic development indicators were used to rank the villages. The study results showed that the villages of Shurin, Gonbad and Cellan had the highest level of development and the villages of Hassanabad, Idehloo and Angelas were the least privileged villages in the county; also, in the evaluation indicators, the rank of each village is different and, in fact, is the result of the sum of the studied indicators. In addition, the study results indicated uncertainty in the existence of a significant relationship between the rank of each village and the indicators; however, the inverse effect of “distance of village from the city” and “the rate of rural development” was confirmed. Therefore, a balanced rural development is expected to be realized in Hamadan County with the increase in the level of services and facilities in less-privileged areas.

The identity of a person gives that person some attributes making him/her distinguishable among other people. This study aimed at analyzing the youth’s identities and studying the differences between their identities in real and virtual worlds in Southern Sarroud sub-district of Boyer-Ahmad County in Iran. The required data were collected through field methods (questionnaire) and document methods. The statistical society of the research included the youth living in this sub-district. Based on the Cochran formula, 376 people in 20 rural settlements were selected using purposive and multi-stage cluster sampling and then, they were tested. The studied dimensions in this research included religious, family, modern and ethnic identities. The results showed that there was a self-disagreement of  between the real and virtual identities of the youth while the maximum and minimum self-disagreements were related to the family identity and modern identity with average rates of 1.85 and -0.24, respectively; that is, the average family identity in the real world is more than that in the virtual world and the average modern identity in the real world is less than that in the virtual world. Also, the results of the Pearson test indicated that there were significant relationships between all the dimensions of the identity in the real and virtual worlds while in the dimensions of religious and family identities, the correlation was negative and in the dimensions of modern and ethnic identities, the correlation was positive.

The purpose of this qualitative research was to analyze the development strategies of Zagros nomadic organizing based on Grounded Theory. The Data were collected by semi-structured interviews and purposive sampling methods with 30 specialists, managers and experts in the field of nomads. The theory extraction and coding process was performed by MAXqda18 software. The study findings indicated that categories such as failure of previous projects, lack of attention to environmental sustainability, lack of attention to human capital, natural and ecological potential of nomadic areas, lack of socio-cultural pathology and lack of attention to upper-level documents as causal conditions affecting the development of the Zagros nomadic organization were identified; also, grounded conditions included categories such as lack of coordination in planning and implementation, lack of financial resources, cultural barriers, lack of specialized manpower, technological and natural barriers; meanwhile, constantly changing the pattern of life, lack of investment and marketing, disregard for the potentials in the region, implementation of parallel development policies and inconsistencies between the provinces of the Zagros area were also identified as intervening conditions. Besides, in order to develop the nomadic organization of the Zagros area, strategies such as decentralized and regional planning, participatory management system, local (tribe) management system, establishment of nomadic cooperatives, nomadic ecotourism and the creation of local markets were identified. Finally, it was found that the development of the Zagros nomadic organization would have consequences such as environmental sustainability, establishing social justice, permanent job as well as restoration of forest and rangeland ecosystems, food security and productivity among the studied population. Accordingly, the study findings can be exploited by the concerned policy makers, planners and managers while paying more attention to the nomads of the region in supporting decisions in order to achieve sustainable development.

In the present qualitative study, the status of changes in the role of women in Garmeh village of Kamfirooz district in Marvdasht County of Iran was investigated in grounded theory method. The statistical population of the study included all thr women active in the agricultural sector and the sample size consisted of sixteen people according to a quota and purposive sampling until the achievement of theoretical saturation. The study findings showed that compared to the past, the amount of agricultural work of rural women has decreased and the main reasons for the occurrence of this phenomenon among different age groups included "being influenced by urban society", "tendency to be urban" and "Comparison with urban girls and women" and so on, all of which have led to the emergence of the phenomenon of "value-normative change" among rural girls and women of the second and third generations; in addition, the rural people interacted with this phenomenon by adopting strategies such as "reluctance to engage in agricultural activities", "replacing the wage labor force", and so on; and the consequences of applying these strategies in the studied village included: "quick completion of work in paddy fields", "increasing the wages of farm workers due to increased demand", "increasing the cost of planting, maintaining and harvesting", "continuing education of children and their unwillingness to engage in agricultural activities and live in the village", "Selling rural houses to urban residents, renting to rural tenants or leaving the house idle, etc." and "other rural people’s desire to emigrate".

Studying the rural population developments in Kurdistan province of Iran in the last six decades shows that the villages of this province have always been in a downward trend. Accordingly, the present study aimed at determining the most important factors affecting this phenomenon in the studied villages. It was a descriptive-analytical research with a survey approach. For this purpose, the population growth rate was firstly calculated over three decades from 1986 to 2016; and the studied counties were categorized into three classes (unsustainable, relatively sustainable, and sustainable); then, there were selected a total of 23 villages as sample villages and also 264 households as sample size using Cochran formula in a cluster classified sampling method in summer and autumn of 2019. The spatial distribution of sustainability of rural settlements using the GIS software in the studied area indicated the condition of 56 villages as unsustainable, 23 as relatively unsustainable and 6 villages as sustainable. The results of multivariate regression showed that in terms of influencing the unsustainability of the population of rural settlements in the studied area, the economic, physical, environmental and social factors were in the first to fourth ranks, with beta coefficients of 0.511, 0.478, 0.363 and 0.218, respectively.

Due to the severe vulnerability of Iranian villages to unforeseen events, compliance with standards is especially necessary and inevitable for the construction of buildings more resistant to earthquakes. Therefore, this descriptive-analytical and field study aimed at investigating the resilience of mountainous and plain villages and reduce the possible damage caused by the earthquake in Amol County of Mazandaran province in Iran. The statistical population of the study included households living in four mountain villages and four plain villages, from which, using Cochran's formula, 270 household heads were selected as the sample size. The required data were collected through observation and structured interview methods as well as a questionnaire; in addition, a hierarchical cluster analysis model was used to measure and analyze the data. During the clustering process, the studied villages were classified into four different clusters in terms of seismic resistance. The study results showed that the single village of the first cluster and the villages of the second cluster located in the mountainous region were the most vulnerable villages, and the villages of the third cluster and the single village of the fourth cluster located in the plains had higher resistance to earthquakes, respectively.