Qualitative Study of the Multi-Dimensional Backgrounds and Consequences of Smuggling; Case Study of the County of Sardasht According to The Grounded Theory

With regards to the increasing development of smuggling in the bordered county of Sardasht (Sardasht-Kurdistan-Iran), the purpose of this research is the qualitative survey of the backgrounds of developing contraband and its various consequences. The method of research is qualitative and based on the grounded theory. Studying environment is the county of Sardasht and required information has been collected through participatory observation techniques, semistructural interviews with 32 smugglers, ordinary citizens, and collegiate and official well-informed persons. Regarding to the achieved findings, eventually a local theoretical model, paradigmatic model, has been attained including conditions and backgrounds, interactions and outcomes of the phenomenon of smuggling consisting of five axial categories underlying trafficking, interactional processes and central conception of model, and six consequential-axial categories of the action of trafficking. Axial categories underlying the phenomenon of smuggling consist of ecological-geographic positions and problems, specifically cultural oriented, disorderliness of economic structure and inefficiency of controlling institutions, and conventional legitimation of smuggling that during an interactional process has caused the development of smuggling and trafficking-bound identification in the county of Sardasht. The phenomenon of smuggling has various upshots in economic, social, cultural, and political aspects which axial categories of it consists of political divergence and nation-state gap, normalization of smuggling and public participation in it, cultural hegemony, class incompatibility, corrosion of manpower and economic disorders

Smuggling, Grounded Theory, Qualitative Analysis, Sardasht.