Modernity and Housing

Abstract

This article analyzes rural housing from a cultural point of view in the past and present. It studies housing as one of the main elements of lifestyle to understand the rural life as a whole. The author, first, studies the effects of modernity on housing culture in the areas such as modernization, rationalization, secularisation, globalization, individualization, democratization, urbanization, mediatization, commercialization and bureaucratization. Then, he describes these developments in an Iranian village which is the birthplace of the author using on ethnographical explanation. This study shows that the characteristics of rural housing which were: noncommodification, strong connection with village, being a birth place and somewhere to be nurtured, being mixed with family and historical myths and narratives, coexisting with the nature, lack of privacy have undergone charges. Therefore, we can not address them by adopting a classical approach considering village as the locus of tradition and city as the locus of modernity. The author believes that a kind of “Iranian rural modernity” has been formed in Iranian villages.

Keywords

• ethnography
• iranian rural modernity
• lifestyle
• rural housing