فصلنامه روستا و توسعه
سال چهاردهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 54، تابستان 1390)

This study examines the perspective in rural areas and rural studies in emerging era of globalization and information society with an emphasis on Iran. It looks at new development in technology, demographic and economic trends in rural areas and their impacts on the emergence of new possibilities and constraints in rural areas, which in turn are important for understanding and development of these areas. The present developments have highlighted the shortcomings related to theoretical, methodological and decision making issues and subsequently pinpoints the need for revising the traditional approaches and elaboration of new ones. It is expected that these revisions and adjustments are applied in development process. The present study reviews the existing rural studies and research in Iran and rejects the claim that these studies are futile and useless; It strongly believes that the shortcomings should be examined and analyzed in a more macro dimension in the country. This claim is challenged that new process has caused the downfall of rural studies and marginalization of rural areas. The issue that 30 percent of rural population still live in rural areas and new problems have been emerged in these areas, in parallel with the formation of new trends have urged the researchers to look at the shortcoming as an indicator of the imperativeness of a revision in traditional power based approach, and not as a sign of a decline in rural areas. The paradigm shift from positivism and structuralism to post structuralism and post modernism provide an enabling environment for theoretical and methodological revision.

Farmers empowerment is unavoidable necessity for sustainable development, thus the present survey study is carried out with the purpose to determine environmental empowerment of production cooperative’s farmers and factors affecting it in Fars province. The sample includes 150 members and non-members which are selected by stratified sampling method. Findings show that environmental empowerment of production cooperatives’ members are more than non-members which is directly and significantly related to their participation in training classes and availability of information. Availability of information and area under cultivation of crops explain environmental empowerment of production cooperative’s members. The present study recommends distribution of information and increasing farmers access to it, organization of regular environmental training based on previous activities, acknowledging the capacity and potential of areas under the coverage of cooperatives for the development of agricultural activities as means to improve environmental empowerment of production cooperative’s members.

Considering the importance of agricultural research on economic rate of return and the decline of rural poverty, this study is carried out to determine the effects of agricultural research on rural poverty. The study applies three-stage least square method to estimate system of equations for rural poverty, food prices, farming, horticulture and livestock value added for 1971-2009 time series data. The results of estimation indicate positive effects of research expenditures and the stock of agricultural capital on farming, horticulture and livestock value added, while labor force has a negative effect on farming, horticulture and livestock value added. There is a negative relationship between food prices and farming, horticulture and livestock value added. Gini coefficient and food prices have direct impact and the income of rural house has an indirect effect on absolute rural poverty. Considering the serial influence of these variables it can be concluded that a negative relationship exists between agricultural research expenditures and absolute rural poverty.

This study examines factors affecting rural people participation in rural development groups formed in international carbon sequestration project in South Khorasan Province. The sample size includes 198 members in Hosseinabad Ghinab region in Sarbisheh County. The most effective factors include marital status, type of residency, spouse’s level of education, annual household expenditures, annual household income, having second job. In other words the probability of membership in group increases directly with the increase in annual household expenditure, singleness, permanent residency and the lack of second job. It declines with a rise in spouse’s level of education and annual household income. Based on the results some recommendations are offered to improve the performance of these groups.

Among the problems and issues of rural areas is natural disaster and disregard to its management, the lack of a system to deal with disasters in an organized manner is among the issues and problems of rural areas. Thus, this study applies, based on fundamental principles, scientific structure of required system in a descriptive-analytical method to design a support system for spatial planning in rural areas and as a practical example it has been implemented in Mazandaran province in relation to avalanche. This system adopts criteria such as ground slope, direction of slope, elevation, wind direction, wind speed, earth curvature, rain fall and date. It is able to manage risk avalanche in the form of different scenarios with respect to rural areas. Based on study findings, beside the presentation of mentioned system, the study reports that 3322 square kilometers in the province are vulnerable to avalanche; Amol, Nour and Tonekabon are areas which are highly vulnerable to avalanche and 6 villages in Tonekabon are ranked first, followed by villages in Nour, Amol and Chalous.

The subject of rural people participation in rural development projects and attention to rural community needs and demands is an inevitable fact in achieving development goals. Thus the importance of this role should be considered in development. This paper considers the consequences of rural people participation in rural development of Marhamatabad district in Miandoab county. The study is a survey and data is collected by a questionnaire and the sample size is equal to 349 of the head of households. The mean of rural people participation, as independent variable, is 53.4 and Kordkandi and Moradkhanlou are categorized as villages with the lowest level of participation and Qepchaq and Firouzabad as the villages with high level of participation. In addition the village development level as dependent variable shows that from the total of 14 villages, 4 villages are categorized as high level of development, 6 as low level of development and 4 as medium level of development. The study uses one way analysis of variance to examine the impacts of rural people participation on rural development (F=12.9) which is significant and it confirms the hypothesis that rural people participation affects rural development.

Due to their recent formation, Village Assistance Offices (VAOs) face different problems. Awareness of and attempts to solve these problems can help this new organization and raise its efficiency. This study is an attempt to examine the barriers to the success of VAOs. This study is a survey research. It uses questionnaires to collect data. The statistical population consists of all the village assistance officers in Selseleh county in Lorestan province. The findings of the study show that among different variables these are the most important that cause the failure of VAOs: executive problems and barriers, financial problems, social problems, personal problems and legal problems respectively.

Different variables can affect the success and failure of Islamic rural councils. This study examines the impacts of four variables on the performance of Islamic rural councils in Kermanshah county: 1) rural people’s awareness about the responsibilities of councils, 2) council’s members awareness about their responsibilities and authorities,3) level of social acceptance, and 4)the level of salary and benefits. The sample includes three groups of people: 1) people eligible to vote in selected villages134, 2) government staff related to Islamic council 16, and 3) the member of rural councils in selected villages 20. The sample is selected randomly by Cochran method. The correlation between variables is examined by Spearman test. The results confirm the relationship between first and third variables with the dependent variable and reject the relationship between second and fourth variables with the dependent variable.

The purpose of present study is to examine factors affecting the knowledge of sustainable cultivation of rice high yield variety in Mazandaran province. This study is a survey and statistical sample includes 270 rice cultivators in Amol, Babol and Sari counties which are selected by simple random method. Research data is collected by a questionnaire. The most important findings indicate positive and significant relationship between age, level of education, level of participation, gross income of high yielding variety, management characteristics, rice cultivation experience, total area of farming land, total area of land under rice cultivation and area under high yield rice variety cultivation as independent variable and sustainable agricultural knowledge as dependent variable. In addition the results from regression show that management characteristics, level of education, age, total area of land under rice cultivation, level of participation and rice cultivation experience can explain 35% of changes in sustainable agricultural knowledge as dependent variable.