Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Postdoctoral Researcher of Economic Sociology-Development, Institute of Social Studies and Research, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Using the critical ethnography method, this research examines the effect of developmental interventions on the social space and economic activity of local communities in the Middle Zagros site (Ilam and Lorestan provinces). The findings indicate that the development has put the pre-intervention life world, which was dominated by social issues, under the attack of economic issues. In the process of developmental intervention, the cultural capacities and traditions that connect and help local economic activities have been neglected. 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, the metaphor of the walnut tree as a symbol of a hardworking, connected, and diligent nature-oriented society, and the eucalyptus tree as a symbol of borrowed intervention, a consuming, pretentious, and discrete society have been used. With the deterioration of the local community, cooperative economic actions, hard work, and contentment have been limited, and consumer-oriented, discrete, and completely profitable economic competitions have taken their place.
Keywords: Critical Ethnography, Intervention, Developers, Local Community, Economic Action, Social Existence.
Introduction
Developmental interventions have been associated with positive achievements and improvement of some welfare and social indicators. However, in cases where these interventions have been implemented disproportionately with the social existence, they have also had a negative side. Local communities in Iran have experienced various interventions and authoritarian changes in the name of development since the beginning of the Pahlavi period. This research is an attempt to explain how, with developmental interventions, the whole existence in collectivist and ethical communities was reduced to an economic matter, and altruistic, cooperative, tolerant, altruistic, and hospitable people turned into relatively selfish and profit-seeking people. How, in a paradoxical situation, despite the dominance of the economy, need and poverty have spread?
Conceptual Framework
In order to create theoretical sensitivity in understanding and interpreting developmental interventions, the following theoretical concepts have been used. According to Durkheim, society is an independent reality that moves and evolves according to the coordinates of its existence, which cannot be changed from the outside or by force. Therefore, the forced division of labor is considered to be the cause of social disorder. By presenting an understanding of society as a system, Nolan and Lenski provide us with the insight that interventions by changing some components of a system provide the context for changing other components. Habermas' system- life-word conceptual system relies on the proposition that with the separation between the life-world and the system, the life-world is colonized by the system.
Materials and Methods
The present research has used the multi-sited ethnography method by adopting a qualitative approach. Critical ethnography goes behind the scenes and disrupts neutral and certain-considered assumptions. To collect data, observation, in-depth interviews, group discussions, situational conversations, and site notes have been used. The analysis has been done by repeatedly reviewing different data, going back and forth to the site in order to saturate the theory and extract the main themes. The studied site is generally Middle Zagros, i.e., Lorestan and Ilam provinces, but six places, including two cities and four villages in Ilam and Lorestan provinces, have been selected. According to the multi-sited ethnographic approach, the researcher has explored one event, which is developmental interventions in several sites. To check the ability to confirm and transfer research or qualitative validity, on the one hand, organized themes with experts. On the other hand, propositions extracted from qualitative data have been shared with participants. Furthermore, the long-term presence of the researcher, multi-dimensionalization of data, rich description, and triangulation have been used for validation.
Findings
In this research, in order to understand the effect of developmental interventions in the local communities of Iran, a multi-site critical ethnography method in the Ilam and Lorestan provinces has been used. After analyzing the data, the authors were able to extract six comprehensive concepts to understand the effect of these interventions. These themes are: from accompanying the social matter to the dominance of the economic matter, from cultural capacities to cultural programs, the arrival of developmentalists, draining the social life-world, and the emergence of snobbism: from work as an identity to work as a disgrace, from the traditions of helping charity and being hired, and from the connected society to rival communities.
Conclusion
Although developmental interventions have had undeniable achievements for local communities, in many cases, due to the lack of fit with the environment, they have ultimately harmed the social entity because it has placed the society in which the social matter was dominant and its economic actions were managed and understood with altruistic and communal social logic in the onslaught of the economic matter. Developers with subjective and objective interventions, including symbolic violence centered on media and education, first introduced and humiliated the huge cultural reserves, institutions, and systems that help economic action as a hindrance and obstacle to development and then provided the ground for their destruction. Due to their interventions in different aspects of life in local communities, the opportunities for native economic activity were reduced day by day. As a result of these interventions, activists are experiencing forms of poverty by destroying the social context in the absence and collapse of supporting institutions and systems. The metaphor from walnut to eucalyptus is employed to show the change of direction from an industrious, interconnected, and belonging society to one's fellows and the environment to a discrete, consuming, and indifferent society to one's fellows and the environment.
Acknowledgments
This article is extracted from the corresponding author's postdoctoral research project. Therefore, the authors consider it their duty to acknowledge and thank the honorable heads and respected staff of the Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) and the Institute of Social Studies and Research of the University of Tehran, as well as all the participants in the research.
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