The State and Rural Development in Post-Revolutionary Iran

Abstract

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Rethinking rural entrepreneurship in the era of globalization: some observations from Iran

“…Instead, we are faced with hegemonic rural discourses aimed at strengthening the power of rural magnates and the state while weakening the peasant middle class. Even the Construction Jihad was an administrative system "based on the mobilization of the masses" (Shakoori, 2001) with a very strong political ideology behind it, so it is obvious that when its ideology was paling, its corresponding projects also have been vanished. Right now there are some state organizations in the country which are responsible for rural and agriculture entrepreneurship, for example Agriculture Jihad (Jahad ′e Keshavarzi in Persian), Rural Cooperative Organization (Sazman 'e Taavon 'e Roostaee in Persian), and Social Welfare, Cooperative and Labor Organization.…”

“…Right now in Iran, there is a pervasive rhetoric political apparatus in support of rural and deprived people (gheshr-e mahroom in Persian); meanwhile, many of the financial supports and the loans go for the rural or urban elites and oligarchy even for the lay rural persons who have deep relations with the authorities and benefit from a developed social capital. Permanent marginalization of Iran's rural society since the 1960s is an outcome of the 1962 land reform program, and the increasing focus on petrol inside the national economy (Shakoori, 2001). It is ideal to incorporate globalization during the twenty-first century as a new important actor to Ehsani's (2006) argument about rural degradation.…”

“…With regard to Iran, it is argued (Vosooghi & Eemani, 2010) that since 2000, the rural development paradigm has been shifting as a result of the impact of postmodernism, and the emergence of environmentalism and feminism. Meanwhile, it can be said that the mainstream meaning of the rurality is dominated by the (rural) development literature (Shakoori, 2001) and as a result of this, and according to Dabson's (2005) and Cloke's (2006) parlance, there is a political-economic and functional interpretation or discourse of rurality which is highly concerned with the agriculture as a main rural profession with the constant flow of agriculture products from rural to urban regions. Also, after a brief review of the titles of the works that have been published in one of the most influential rural-specific Iranian academic journals entitled Village and Development (Roosta va Tose-e in Persian), it will be so clear that the majority of its papers (about 80%) presuppose the political-economic and functional notion of rurality and have the phrasing of "impact of…on…" or "the factors of…" as their titles and the quantitative surveys as their methodologies; consequently, there are a very limited number of the qualitative researches regarding to the deconstruction of rurality or rural entrepreneurship.…”

Rural Development in Iran: A Survey of Policies and Outcomes

“…Most of the planning has been imposed from above, not formulated at the village level. The Village Councils, in many cases, had not been set up or were few in number compared to the service centers (Azkia, 1986; Shakoori, 2001). For instance, of 1,573 projected centers, only 730 district centers had been opened, 58 percent below the target (Schirazi, 1993, p. 142).…”

“…A point to be added is that the above-mentioned developments only indicates that today rural areas have been, more than ever before, experiencing modern changes in accessing a variety of living facilities and occupational opportunities in aggregate terms; nevertheless, a close examination of the nature of changes, in terms of the distribution of beneficiaries, indicates persistent inequalities. For example, micro (village) level research confirms that developmentally potential villages/or villagers have mostly benefited from post-revolutionary changes (e.g., Mir-Hosseini, 1987; Shakoori, 2001). Macro-level data and analyses also confirm success in improving the standard of living and the quality of life at the macro (national) level, in aggregate term, and failure in improving the overall distribution of income and basic services at the micro (e.g., villages, social groups, households) level, in individual term (e.g., Amid, 2009; Fotros & Maaboudi, 2011; Naghdi, Azami, Naghd, Faghi Solouk, & Ghiasvand, 2013; Noorbakhsh, 2002).…”