Modernization and rural political culture: (Case of study: Mako city villagers)

The present study examines the relationship between modernization and political culture among the villagers of Mako. This study moves in the direction of testing the theories of the first and second wave of political development. The theoretical framework of the research is based on the theories of Daniel Lerner and Karl Deutsch and uses Gabriel Almond's classification to measure the variable of political culture. The type of research is quantitative and uses the survey technique to collect data. The data was extracted from the volume of 381 through a questionnaire. The results of this research show that the political culture of Mako villagers is not uniform. The findings show that there is a relationship between political culture and religiosity, the use of new communication media, and the education of villagers; In this way, the low and high level of religiosity among the villagers will follow with it, respectively, the participatory and ten-core political culture. Also, the higher the level of education and the use of new communication media among the villagers, according to their political culture, they will tend towards the participatory type of said culture. In this way, the present research shows that simply being a villager does not mean having a traditional political culture such as ten-core and subjugation, and macro-narratives and essentialist classical theories of political development should be avoided about villagers.
The findings of the present research indicate several theoretical considerations: First of all, unlike the first wave of political development theories and specifically Lerner's and Karl Deutsch's mobilization theories, mere urbanization and demographic data, respectively, will not lead to a movement towards participatory political culture. Based on this logic, the introduction of new communication media in the Iranian world will change the political culture of rural areas. In fact, being rural does not necessarily entail a non-participatory political culture. Second, to explain the political culture of the villagers of Mako city, a combination of theoretical indicators derived from the theoretical framework of the current research is sufficient, and relying on a single category alone will not explain the political culture indicators of the present statistical population. Based on this, 75% of Mako villagers' political culture tends to be participatory, and only about 25% of the average has been towards the parochial political culture. Also, according to the categorization, the political culture of the villagers has been on the privileged border of subjective and participatory political culture. In a way, the political culture of Mako villagers is a combination of subjective and participatory political culture. At the same time, more than 60 percent of the villagers' religiosity tended to be higher, and about 40 percent of their religiosity was lower than the average. The average score of religiosity, which shows the balanced and weighted center of the data, is 81.17, which is very close to the determined average. Also, according to the distribution of the data, more than 60 percent of the villagers tend to use their communication media upwards, and about 40 percent of them are below the average. These findings, along with the theoretical considerations derived from Lerner and Deutsch's theories, prove that the more the influence of modernization elements decreases in community, the more the political culture ruling the community will be further away from the participatory political culture. More objectively, religiosity as a social variable that is in opposition to modernization, prevents the direction of finding the political culture of the villagers towards the participatory type of political culture. In contrast to the religiosity variable, the amount of use of new communication media and education is significant . These variables are alongside with the modern trend, creating a context to be aware of the changes and transformations that have taken place in the modern world and will provide the means to achieve a participatory political culture even in a rural society. In this research, the average score of the use of communication media, which shows the balanced and weighted center of the data, is 14.67, which is very close to the determined average. As much as the amount of use of the villagers of Mako County exceeds this balance weight, the necessary context for moving towards a more participatory political culture will be provided and And on the contrary, less use of this media will make it possible to stay in the traditional world and the political culture aligned with it, i.e. subjective and participatory political culture. This is also connected with the variable of education. In other words, education also causes a split in the traditional political culture ruling rural areas and will cause a difference between the political culture of educated villagers and those without higher education. Finally, this research shows that macro-narratives and essentialist narratives of classical theories of political development about villagers should be avoided.