Trend Analysis of Evolution in the Socio-Cultural Structures of the Peri Urban Villages (Case Study: Saqqez City -Kurdistan Province)

INTRODUCTION Changes in recent decades and the rapid procedure of urbanization against village-escape, especially in the third world countries, have had different natures, and have made the rural communities encounter problematic developments in both qualitative and quantitative aspects. In the present study, the surrounding villages have been surveyed, which have immediate border with Saqqez city, items such as rental houses, appearance and dress condition, literacy condition, the way and place of spending the leisure time, the state of social relations and resident's communication, funeral and a wedding ceremonies, have been considered as variables related to social and cultural characteristics. Also, the effects they may take from due to their vicinity to Saqqez City. Accordingly, the proposed hypothesis in this study is: There is a relationship between physical development of Saqqez City and changes in socio-cultural structure in the surrounding villages.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The small and middle towns establish the most relationship with rural settlements of their sphere of influence as central places. So, they have common proposed schools and social theories. Some of these schools and theories regarding the relationship between towns and rural areas, with emphasis on social features consist of the school of structural geography, the school of space behavior geography, the theory of urban and rural development, and the central place theory and the strategy of rural - urban development.
In trend analysis of the socio-cultural developments in the structure of surrounding villages, the authors know the school of structural geography more dominant than others and believe that socio-cultural structures dominant over developing countries in general, and also the study area in particular are influential factors affecting the surrounding villages. So, this school can analyze some parts of these developments. But the theories emphasized and surveyed in order to explain the developments of the surrounding villages are more in the field of Mutual urban and rural relations and are around area planning.
METHODOLOGY The present study is an applied one based on its goals and it is descriptive-analytic in terms of nature. In this study, the population consists of Saqqez City and the surrounding villages and 8 villages located some kilometers away from Saqqez City.
The number of participants was 3660 people that according to Morgan table, 345 developed questionnaires were distributed between the residents of intended villages and its authorities.
The validity of the researcher-made questionnaires was approved according to research methods, books and expert's views and opinions. The reliability of the questionnaires was measured by Cronbach's alpha which was 0.92 indicating the confidence and reliability of the variables in the questionnaire. T-tests and regression tests were used to test the hypothesis.
DISCUSSION According to single sample t-test, the comparison between the mean of factors such as clothing type, level of literacy, social interactions, entry of non-natives, and customs etc. in villages were measured, which are indicative of the level of effectiveness, and suggests having meaningful relationship and being at the lowest level of critical value of alpha that indicates the great effectiveness.
Most of this effectiveness is related to the possibility of continuing education and the least of it is related to decrease in degree of security in the villages under study. This means that proximity to the city had a great impact on increasing level of literacy, especially for women. These changes are also seen in other factors such as changes in the clothing type.
The physical development of Saqqez city was also effective on the increasing of the population of the surrounding villages, and Kahrizeh village had taken the highest effect among others. Regarding what was expressed, it can be said that proximity to Saqqez city, easy access to villages and also, expanding and improving transportation condition and increasing daily communication with the city, increased use of the media and especially television and satellite caused surrounding villages of Saqqez city to be affected socio-culturally, and as it was mentioned, changes in clothing type, social interactions of village's residents and population changes indicate this fact.
CONCLUSION Based on the results found and according to the previous theories and studies, the hypothesis was proposed as “There is a relationship between physical development of Saqqez city and socio-cultural developments in structures of surrounding villages”. While proving this issue, the research findings give an indication of quick developments in socio-cultural matters, in addition to physical and economic characteristics.
It should be noted that all these developments are along in the same line and affect each other because physical and economic changes will also bring cultural changes which in this regard, a decrease in social interaction, change in clothing and appearance (especially girls), and an increase in the level of education and the possibility of continuing, significant demographic changes, changes in way of maintaining or holding traditional customs can be mentioned.
Rural development can be defined as the process of classifying strength and weak points of villages to choose them as viable settlements, appropriate to human growth. Accordingly, for each rural settlement in accordance with internal conditions (strengths and weaknesses) and external conditions (local, regional, and national) a specific development plan should be considered so that a schedule can be planned for the villages located in the middle towns based on the suburban model (which is a ``functional model of relations between cities and the villages).