The Effect of Environmental-Individual Factors on Commitment to Marriage Traditions (The Case of Rural and Urban Students of Sanandaj Universities)

Introduction Marriage is an old religious and human tradition, which has been publicized by religions and the law, historically. It is a contract by which man and woman share a life and form a family. Research on matrimony in Western societies show more tolerance and liberal attitudes towards marriage's values and process, like informal matrimonial life, sexual relations before marriage, and divorce; in other words, the traditional roles of ‘breadwinner man’ and ‘homemaker woman’ has changed. Because of modernization processes, these changed values have influenced developing countries as well; and by changing matrimonial values, views on love, marriage culture, lifestyle and everyday life, taste of people, may bring some cultural problems and challenges to society. Sanandaj, the largest city in Kurdistan of Iran, is an exemplar society for research on this subject. The culture of Sanandaj is affected by two hegemonic cultures simultaneously: the Western and the domestic culture. The main question of this study revolves around exploring the rate of changes in marriage culture in Sanandaj, especially in rural communities, in the face of globalizing effects of Western culture. For studying this problem, we have considered the attitudes of rural students regarding commitment to traditional culture of marriage. We examined the relationship between such variables as gender, level of education, geographical location, watching satellite TV, and the level of religiosity, with commitment to marriage traditions. Materials & Methods In total, approaches that try to explain changes of marriage culture are dividable in two groups: A) Structural approaches, for example, ‘modernization theory', that emphasizes the role of structural change in society's evolution. B) Cultural approaches, for example, ‘development idealism theory’, that emphasizes the role of cultural and values changes, like individualism, and secularism. Ronald Inglehart, elaborated his theory in the frame of cultural approach. His theory, which is based on the result of a four-stag study on global values in 85 societies, tries to explain value and cultural changes. Inglehart believes that culture adapt itself with its environment. In other word, culture response to political, economic and technological changes, in the long term. According to this theory, two factors of environment and individual characteristics play an important role in commitment to values and attitudes. This study uses survey method and for collecting its data uses a researcher-made questionnaire. Research population includes all Sanandaj students, whose number is estimated to be 27636 individuals, of whom 378 respondents were selected using Cochran formula. Discussion of Results & Conclusions The results of the study show that attitudes of rural students are different from urban students. The first are more committed to traditional culture. The same is true when it comes to religious commitment; rural women and men tend to be more committed to marriage in contrast with urban women and men; Education has no significant effect on attitude towards marriage in this study; watching satellite TV makes a difference between urban and rural environments. This variable has a positive and significant relationship on attitudes of rural students about matrimony. In sum, we can say that there is distinction between rural and urban students from the viewpoint of attitudes towards marriage culture; rural students are more committed to matrimonial ceremonies and traditions. With regard to these results, policymakers should pay attention to dissimilarities of attitudes between rural and urban people