Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• ali Ayar ¹
• Moosa Anbari ²

¹ Post-doctoral researcher at Tehran University Social Research Institute

² Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran

Abstract

Using the critical ethnographic method, this study examines the effect of development interventions on the social sphere and economic activity of local communities in Ilam and Lorestan provinces. The findings of the research show that the development has put the pre-intervention ecosystem which was dominated by the social issue under the attack of the economic issue. In the process of development intervention, the cultural capacities and traditions that connect and help local economic perceptions have been neglected, and instead official and capital-oriented government programs have been expanded in objective and subjective dimensions; The result of the weakening of popular traditions is the rise of new pseudo-technocratic groups that consider local cultural values such as hard work, contentment, cooperation, and generosity as symbols of backwardness. In fact, native activists, as new self-directed productive managers, have become those who are caught in the trap of donations, loans and hires to market their labor force and provide their livelihood. In order to show this reduction, we have used the metaphor of a walnut tree as a symbol of a hardworking, connected and diligent nature-oriented society, and a eucalyptus tree as a symbol of borrowed intervention, a consumerist, pretentious and discrete society,

Keywords

• Critical ethnography
• intervention
• developers
• local community
• economic action
• social existence

Main Subjects

• Sociology