How the entrepreneurship can set aside the rural development process: a historical and discursive reflection on rural entrepreneurship and development policies in Iran

This conceptual and theoretical research argues about some implications of the post-development era for rural entrepreneurship as a new developmental strategy and approach. This paper tries to remind us that the entrepreneurship is not an easy ride and has some dark sides; therefore, there is a pressing need to make entrepreneurship more welcoming to criticism and to clarify its common sense ways of thinking and practicing. From the methodological point of view, this study is some sort of an explanatory and instrumental case study and its focus is on the process of rural development in Iran as a specific event or phenomenon. The paper draws on Campbell Jones and André Spicer’s critical theory and approach and is inspired by Aram Ziai’s skeptical post-development in order to unmask the mainstream entrepreneurship discourse and practice in Iran. The paper claims that although rural entrepreneurship is not a deceitful mirage or malignant myth, its current situation in Iran is definitely a sharp deviance from the classic development goals, and therefore the deconstruction of its mainstream discourse and practices is an urgent need. As the main propose of the paper, this deconstruction should be based on a skeptical and critical unmasking theoretical framework. Through answering some important questions, one of the main arguments of the paper is that now it is time to return to the classical goals of development, but after exercising some radical discursive and practical entrepreneurial policy changes.