1 – Development and urbanization process

The concept of change has always been of interest to social scientists in various forms, but specific attention to the concept of development and planning for achieving development has become a valuable goal for most countries in the 20th century, leading to the implementation of development planning in order to reach its indicators. This attention intensified after World War II and the need for reconstruction of the destruction caused by the war, as well as the independence of former colonies (Joghataei and colleagues, 2016: 55).

The idea of progress and transformation has always been inherent in human societies, but after the European Renaissance and increased attention to concepts such as growth, evolution, and progress, the independent concept of “development” gradually emerged. In Iran, the first national development plan was implemented in 1948. The title of pre-revolution development plans was “Construction and Development Plan” and as the name suggests, the main focus of the plan was on production, construction, agriculture, communications, and telecommunications.

2 – Operationalizing Social Development in Development Programs

Based on a review of various domestic and foreign sources, the most comprehensive and inclusive components of social development can be described as follows (Jaghtaei et al., 1395).

3 – Modernization

Modernization in recent decades has revealed the shortcomings and flaws of these theories, especially in explaining the historical development of non-Western societies (Kamali, 2006). Researchers have attempted to use new approaches to understand and explain modernity and its various dimensions.

In the theory of Eisenstadt, the foundation of modernity lies in the concepts of human autonomy and historical openness. In the modern situation, humans are considered to be autonomous in an abstract sense, with no predetermined destiny for themselves or their existence. In this state, humans are seen as capable of constructing themselves, society, and nature. In other words, the concept of autonomy is based on the assumption of human agency in creating all dimensions of individual and social life, and thus modernity is seen as a way of life based on this autonomy. Peter Wagner writes about the importance of autonomy in defining modernity: “Whenever humans come to understand themselves as autonomous beings, modernity exists” (Wagner, 2008:

4 – Conclusion

Based on Iranian modernity, the developments of the modern global system, including competition among major powers, world wars, and the state of the global economy, have placed Iranians in a position to respond to new political and social challenges. Additionally, indirect colonization by major global powers such as Russia, Britain, and the United States has created a platform for reactions from Iranian actors. Therefore, Iranian modernity is one form of reactive modernity, examples of which can be seen in the Ottoman Empire, Japan, China, and others. Iranian actors have strived in the past hundred years, individually and collectively, to create creative responses to challenging conditions. The result of all these processes has been the formation of modern Iranian nation-states, which bear the mark of a specific historical trajectory of political modernity in Iran.

Sources:

1- Faiza Joghatai, Mir Taher Mousavi, Mohammad Javad Zahedi. 2016. Dimensions and components of social development in development programs, Journal of Social Welfare Research, Sixteenth Year, Number 6.
2- Salar Ehtehadnejad Kashani, Ali Saai. 2017. Sociological analysis of the formation of modernity in Iran: An attempt to construct a multi-level theoretical framework, Journal of Social and Cultural Development Studies, Sixth Volume, Number 2, Pages 151-175.
3- Kamali, Masoud (2006), “Multiple modernities, civil society and Islam: The case of Iran and Turkey”, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (Studies in social and political thought, 10).
4- Wagner, Peter (2008), “Modernity as experience and interpretation: A new sociology of modernity”. London: Polity.