The process of modernization enables the development of rural communities as the basis of popular beliefs when these communities are exposed to external forces. It is important to pay attention to beliefs as folk or superstitions.In this way, with a critical approach to classical modernization researches, the effect of popular beliefs in sustainable rural development is explained. In the ideas of the thinkers of the modernization school, a kind of consensus can be seen in the division of developed and underdeveloped societies. which originates from the viewpoints of "evolutionism" and "functionalism". In the theoretical framework of the current research, we benefit from Durkheim's theory of social division of labor - with a different view in contrast to the general principles of the modernization school in expressing the obstacles to development. The approach of this qualitative research, the method of gathering information in it, is documentary, as well as the technique used, content analysis. The studies conducted in the villages of South Khorasan province are about the meaningful relationship between popular beliefs and sustainable rural development. informs In general, it can be concluded that the division of societies in Durkheim's theory into mechanical and organic correlation shows the course of movement of societies and not necessarily the backwardness of primitive societies in the sense of an obstacle in the direction of reaching any type of development; As the approaches of the modernization version propose from the social point of view. Manuscript profile