Playlist:  Urban Yemen and Rural Iran: Through An Ethnographic Lens by Jenna Makowski, Alexander Street Press

The Turkmen are an ethnic minority living in the vast expanse of desert in northern and eastern Iran. Until the late 1990s, they lived in relative isolation, in small, family-oriented villages.

Most Turkmen villages have a mosque, and the ritual of circumcision for young boys is considered as important as a wedding day. The ritual is often accompanied by a festival, and is a rite of passage for all boys.

Women take on most of the manual labor, including working the fields and weaving. They often work to the breaking point, and suicide is common.

Though most Turkmen in Iran live in villages, a small percentage still continue a nomadic way of life, following their sheep. The Kashgai of the southern Turkmen desert, for example, carry their entire villages on the backs of camels. In this clip, the anthropologist converses with a nomadic Turkmen, debating the advantages and disadvantages of life in Iran's capital.

Three years after their initial fieldwork, the anthropologists return to the Turkmen villages to find a drastically changed scene. Electricity, cars, buses and televisions have become part of daily life, changing peoples' habits and patterns. Many TVs pick up stations out of Russia, where the Turkmen are exposed to Western programs otherwise censured in Iran.

With changes in transportation and lifestyle, women in Turkmen villages now travel to urban areas to sell the products they create. There is increased interaction between urban and rural communities in Iran.

Located on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, Yemen's geography consists of vast desert expanses and isolated mountains. The capital of Yemen, Sana'a, is one of the oldest cities in the world and a center for qat trade, purchase and use.

Qat is believed to have been discovered by a shepherd who noticed his goats were drawn to a certain plant, becoming hyperactive upon eating it. Though chewed throughout the southern Arabian peninsula and eastern Africa, it's only in Yemen that qat's addictive quality has become ingrained in cultural habits. During the civil war of the 1990s, both sides agreed to daily cease-fires in order to chew. The plant is Yemen's primary crop, filling mountains of terraced sides and picked daily for local markets.

The wedding of Abdulaziz is a hopeful catalyst for larger peace negotiations between two families. Deep-seated rituals and traditions underlie the multi-day ceremony, in which arguments and disputes are settled with the help of a sheik. Music, dance and qat all play critical roles in the ceremonies and the larger social functions at the heart of the wedding. According to the groom, qat was an essential tool that helped to mediate the dispute.

Qat's effects are caused by cathinone, an ingredient of amphetamines. In addition to the social risks of addiction, qat negatively affects sleep, diet, dental hygiene and heart rate. Furthermore, qat is grown with potentially deadly pesticides that don't always wash away before being chewed.