Journal of Community Development (Rural and Urban)
Year:2010 | Volume:1 | Issue:1 (36)|Papers Count:9

Regional rural development in border of rivers, bed of flood plains without attention to rivers Hydrologic and Dynamic in basin topside, incentive increase of flood danger, bane, financial and infrastructure damage in rural region. Therefore, significance of flood zoning map provision in flooded plain management delineated. In this article with attention to climate characters, topographic profile in flood plains, rainfalls sustain time and flood recurrence period, appoint to flood zoning in course of Gorganrud River for identity of rural point in flood hazard. This way could aid planers to think a necessary planning and management scheme for danger reduction before flood occurrence in rural area and rural flood hazard suppression to minimum limit. For achieve this result, use of HEC-GeoRAS model in GIS sphere and LANDSAT ETM+ satellite images, DTM and etc. result show that used model is a useful and appropriate tools for flood management in rural area.

Participation is one of the main factors of development, especially of sustainable development. But in Developing countries plans and projects of rural development has failure because of not considering this fact. We studied the social attitudes and their effects on the rate of social participation by using survey method. We chose randomly 190 head of the families of Desheh by using Cochran Formula. To collect the needed data, we have applied questionnaires', interviews and using Spss and descriptive and interpretive statistics proportional with the levels of studied variables and data to analyze. In the finding section, we have measured indicators of social participation in subjective and objective levels along with the social attitudes including: believing in group working, innovation, fatalism, improvement and progress of village condition and tribalism. Due to finding, we came to this conclusion that: if we have a higher degree of innovation, willing to group working and belief in improvement among villagers, we will have a higher degree of social participation. whilst, tribalism and fatalism function as obstacles of participation among villagers. Also multi variant regression showed that belief in improvement, progress and fatalism in order have the most and the least effects on social participation.

In this essay after reviewing studies on rural communities with historical and documentary methods, the process of emerging rural studies have been analyzed in three groups. The first group includes monographs and writings which studied the rural society generally. These studies don't have theoretical orientation to rural society and can be dividing into two categories as general and special. However, monographic reports are two groups. Some of them are supplements to socioeconomic studies that have been conducted in rural areas and others are independent reports. The second group is historical and theoretical studies. They have theoretical orientation; methodology based on historical documents historical analysis, and often had been affected by ideological values. The rural studies focused on political dimensions of rural areas and criticized the consequences of land reforms in 1340 decade. After the revolution we can see more emphasis on negative outcomes of land reform and systems of rural exploitation, changes in the systems of ownership, the forces of production, management changes, new social stratification system and changes in the power structure and developmental outcomes of the Islamic Revolution. The third group of studies has educational orientation. They discussed rural issues in the form of social science academic courses such as rural sociology and rural development. The final section of the article mentioned to weaknesses, needs, new subjects, problems and use of new methodologies in rural studies.

This research investigates rural women, as half of productive human force in agriculture. The studied village is Miande in Gilan. The aim of the research is study of differences in the situation of rural women activities in family in past and present (in different age groups) and discovers the most affective factors that changed their economic activities. In this study, the qualitative approach was used to response basic questions of research. Rural participatory appraisal used to study situation of rural women activities during one year. Results showed the quantity of women agricultural work decreased in relation to past. After this finding, by using the grounded theory method the most important reason that generated this phenomenon in different age groups was studied. Results show that the most important reason are “accept influence from city”, “desire to have urban characteristics”, “comparing self with urban girls and women”, “the only way to reach better social and economic status is: education”, “negative attitude of rural parents to ruralization of children and doing agriculture activity by them”, “difference between city and village in relation to utilizing of some life equipments”, resulted in appearance of the phenomenon “value-norm change” among rural girls and women of second and third generations. In this situation rural people by using of strategies of “hating to do agricultural activities”, “replacing daily workers”, “attempt of rural girls and women in resembling of their life style to urban girls and women life style”, “recommendation of the farmer to children to continue education, not being farmer and to live in city”, “migration of families to city”, interact with the phenomenon. Consequences of using these strategies in the village are: “finishing work in farm rapidly”, “reducing the work hours of women”, “necessity of receiving the workers and controlling the workers”, “increasing the wage of workers because of increasing demand”, “increasing the cost of planting, maintain and harvest”, “owe of some farmers to Allaf”, “continuing the education of children, hating of children of doing agricultural activities and live in village”, “sale, rent, sharecropping or planting by workers from migrant families”, “selling house to citizens, renting to renter or being empty…”, “increasing the presence of non-native people in village” and “tendency of other rural people to migration”.

The need of rural areas to energy, the value of fossil resources, fossil fuels shortage, environmental effects, problems in transporting fuels, and dispersion of villages across the country, are necessities for attention to prepare the energy from local and renewable resources for rural areas. One of the important actions in using renewable energy is the solar water heater and bathrooms installation in rural areas. The main issue in spreading of these equipments is villagers' acceptance. This research used survey method in studying Bardaskan villages in the Khorasan Razavi Province. Among all considered variations (age, education, amount of income, attitude on technology, attitude on living in village, access to credits and relative advantage of domestic solar water heaters) the amount of income and relative advantage are the main factors for villagers' acceptance.

Local councils such as city and village councils with horizontal structures play a main role in advancement of development programs. Village Councils are local councils which are elected by public vote in all villages throughout Iran. Council members in each village are elected by direct public vote for a 4-year term. These councils are the newest agents in the local management of Iran. Although councils have a long past in contemporary history of Iran, considering Baladieh (Municipal) and city councils, they hadn't institutionalization and strong and effective social roots. Therefore, they couldn't have an effective role in sustainable development programs. Village councils can play a major role in rural development, but they have been less noted than city councils with an analytical approach. This documentary article studied official documents and research reports in the field of Islamic village councils in Iran. The aim is identification and analysis of problems and challenges of the councils in sustainable development. The main challenges of these organizations are the limited share of women in rural management (despite their considerable population in villages), low levels of human capital among councilors and also among villagers, migration of councilors and the young people from rural areas to cities, and also reduction of social capital between councils and villagers. Institutionalization and strengthening rural management, reducing administrative centralization, , and some programs such as allotting a quota to women in local management organizations are among the article suggestions for a better and effective local organization in sustainable rural development.

Collective struggle which is ancient phenomena, exits in some small communities and villages as a social problem, yet. In this article we try to analysis the issue from a sociological perspective and show the role of social phenomena in forming it. Our case studies in two village shows: (1) in a village with many collective struggles, there are diverse social groups which their competition to access authority status and scarce resources (land and water), leads to collective struggle, (2) in a village without collective struggle, there are not diverse social groups. Instead, there is a tight network of kinship relations that led to a social solidarity and absent of collective struggle.