Discourse Analysis of the Development and its Relationship with the Rural Element in the Post-Revolutionary Governments of Iran (Fifth to Tenth Governments)

Introduction In Iran, after the Islamic Revolution, the discourse of development was aligned with the discourse of the revolution. The promises of the revolution to eliminate deprivation and to pay attention to the oppressed had a special focus on the rural areas, and the schools of development emerged with the same promise. During this period, governments were primarily responsible for designing and implementing rural development programs. This article tries to analyze the discourse of each government and the relationship it has with the rural element. In this research, the theoretical perspective of the critical theory in general and revisionist approaches in development, especially the post-development theory, have been used. The purpose of this article is to describe the dominant discourses in the fifth to tenth governments and the position of the rural element in the territory of each discourse. The study also seeks to answer these questions: What are the differences and commonalities in the discourses of post-revolutionary governments? How is the construction of development in post-revolutionary governments in the field of rural development? What effect did the discourses of post-revolutionary governments have on the models chosen for rural development? Material and Methods Methodologically, this research is based on the principles of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and the operational stages of Post-foundational Discourse Analysis (PDA). According to this approach, in this study, the discourse of rural development has been theoretically conceptualized in three steps: (1) Co-construction (2) Reconstruction (3) Collocation. The president is intended to represent the discourse of that government. The texts used in this research are purposefully-selected lectures and interviews of three presidents. In the selection, texts have been considered that include three directions: 1) texts that show the main orientations and policies of each president, 2) texts that mention development and planning in general, and 3) texts in which rural development is specifically addressed. Three speeches were selected from each president, and after studying all the speeches and interviews of the presidents related to these three axes, a text was selected from each axis that is closest to the objectives of this research. Then, the results of the analysis in the texts of the first to fifth five-year development plans prepared by these governments have been validated and