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Most of the world has been rural most of the time. Even today the percentage of the world’s population that live in cities is indeed very small.
What are the characteristics of urban communities? In almost all the countries of the world, urban communities are distinguished from rural ones on the basis of population. Thus, communities containing population of 2000, 2500, 20,000, and of 30,000 are regarded as urban in France, the United States, Holland and Japan respectively. In Iceland the line is drawn at 300.
The distinctions made on the basis of population make no meaning. The differences among towns of varying population are sometimes so great that they are really differences of kind, and not simply of degree.
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A municipal town containing, say, 20,000 population stands in sharp contrast to metropolitan cities like Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta, Sometimes urban and rural communities are distinguished in terms of geographical location. But it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. “Scattered farmsteads pass imperceptibly into villages and villages into towns”. Rural areas also differ in many respects.
For example, in the U.S.A. farmers generally live in the centre of their farm lands, and not in villages. The farmers in India, on the other hand, live in villages from which they go out to cultivate the field. Like cities, again, the size of villages also differs vary widely.
“The contrast between city and country, therefore, breaks down into a series of contrasts. We may think of a spectrum with the rural community standing at one extreme and the large-scale metropolis at the other”.
An urban area is defined in the Indian Census in terms of the following features. All areas under a Municipal Corporation or a Municipality or under a Notified Area Committee or under a Cantonment will be regarded as urban areas. Besides, those areas which will satisfy the following pre-conditions will also be considered to be urban.
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The pre-conditions are:
(i) The density of population per square mile should not be less than 1000.
(ii) The total population of the area should not be less than 5000.
(iii) Of the total number of employed people, at least three-fourths must be employed in non-agricultural occupation,
(iv) According to the State Census Commissioner the area must exhibit distinct urban features.
Obviously, areas which do not satisfy these conditions are classed as rural. The outstanding sociological characteristics that differentiate a rural community and an urban one are the modes of community life, habits and attitudes of the people, and not simply size and geographical location. The principal occupation of the people in rural areas all over the world is farming.
And farming is not merely an economic activity; it is also a way of life. Whatever might be the differences in terms of race and climate, of location and of resources, there is a marked and general contrast in every country between the social life of the rural areas and that of urban areas.
A typical rural outlook is determined chiefly by three factors:
(a) Predominance of primary, face-to-face relationships and contacts in rural areas. The ways of a ruralize are, therefore, fixed for him by society, usage and custom. Mention may be made, in this connection, of the relatively dominant role of the rural family.
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An urbanite, on the other hand, has an exactly opposite setting. He lives under conditions characterised by decline of primary, face-to-face relationships and corresponding increase of secondary group ties.
(b) His occupation, viz. farming, which, as we have already noted, broadly influences his attitude towards life, his philosophy, his thoughts and aspirations. There is little, if at all, variety in the occupational pattern of a ruralize.
The towns and cities, in contrast, offer an almost limitless range of ways to make a living. It is, indeed, impossible to describe the diversity and the heterogeneity of occupational life in the city. The occupation of an urbanite keeps him aloof from nature,
(c) Absence of keen competition among farmers tends to make them more conservative and tradition-bound. The living and working conditions of an urbanite are comparatively more competitive than is ever known to the farmer.
We should also take into account the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the environmental conditions of a ruralize and an urbanite respectively.
“The countryside presents a sameness to those who dwell on the land. The city alters its attractions with every passing block. Soil and cement are two different environments, and of the two the cement has more shapes….(The countryman) responds more directly to the hours of daylight and the hours of night, and follows in greater harmony the progression of the seasons. The earth itself gives him a predominant mode of occupation and determines his time to work and his time to sleep. The country pursues his span of life in intimate relationship with the physical forces that made the day and the year, the weather and the wind. The city man, on the contrary, performs his tasks in independence of the wind’s vicissitudes and the season’s change”.
Socio-Cultural Contrasts between City and Country:
To begin with, a rural community is necessarily a little community. The smallness in size permits frequent face-to face contacts among the members of such a community. Each person knows “a great deal about his neighbors, their activities, preferences and attitudes”.
The social pressure is, therefore, very effective in enforcing conformity to group mores. In addition, the dominance of the family extends over very wide fields of individual life in rural areas—over marriage, mode of living, occupation, recreation, etc.
The urban community, on the other hand, is a large community in which the dominance of the family and the intimate face-to-face relationships tend to be more and more dissolved. In this “impersonalized urban world”, therefore, specialised agencies like police, courts, teacher and social workers take over the regulatory functions of the family and the neighborhood.
Secondly, in the country, where farming is a dominant mode of occupation, a farmer cannot obviously be a specialist. He has to know how to cultivate different kinds of crops and to tend different kinds of animals, how to mend a fence and repair a plough, and to dig a well and repair his dwelling hut.
He acquires skills of a more general and unspecialized kind. His work being unspecialized, the need for specialised organisation is virtually eliminated. A rural community cannot also afford to support too many specialised agencies or organisations.
“The few organisations most frequently found in a small community are the family and some religious organisation. These two organisations perform many functions other than procreation, child-bearing,-and worship that in a large community would be found in single special purpose organisations, such as a factory or a sports club”.
In the city, on the contrary, each man is a specialist, performing day after day, and in all seasons, essentially the same job. Economic functions are taken away from the household and individual is thrown into associational relations determined by specific interests of work and temperament.
Thirdly, absence of variety of occupations in rural areas tends to narrow down the possibilities of horizontal mobility of a farmer from one occupation to the other. Nor does he have the scope, so long as he remains a farmer, of promotion or elevation up the social scale according to his ability and experience.
The economic specialisation of the urban community is, on the other hand, “the source of social groupings, both vertical involving occupational divisions on the same social level, and horizontal”, involving divisions of unequal social status.
Fourthly, in rural areas the family is relatively dominant, and consequently, the individual does not seem to count as a separate entity. As a matter of fact, the status of the individual depends largely upon the status of the family. Whatever might be his special talents and capabilities, he cannot outgrow his family.
In other words, ascription, rather than achievement, is the ruling principle in the determination of the social status of an individual. In the city, on the other hand, the status of an individual depends largely upon his accomplishments, merits and capabilities. This is due to the fact that urban life is characterised by competition and mobility.
Finally, the comparative stability and serenity of rural life amidst natural surroundings is reflected in its cultural expression which “tends to retain a relatively simple form, as folklore, folk legends, folk songs, folk dances”.
On the other hand, the urban life is cut off from natural surroundings. Hence it lacks stability and serenity of rural life. Moreover, urban community is heterogeneous and changeful. The urbanite, therefore, wants among other things, novelty and excitement.
Socio-Psychological Contrasts between City and Country:
Differences in objective situations that obtain in the country and the city impress themselves on the mentality of the ruralize and the urbanite. To begin with, agriculture is affected, to a large extent, by the forces of nature—such as rainfall, sunshine, drought and flood—which are beyond the control of farmers.
Naturally, they become fatalistic and superstitious. “He must come to terms with inscrutable powers, and the limits of his power make him susceptible to traditional beliefs”. An urbanite, on the contrary, is not bound by any such shackles of tradition.
He develops a more dynamic and positive approach towards life. Nothing seems to be beyond his powers. He develops the capacity of responding quickly to changing situations. Secondly, community sentiment is less intense in the city than that in the country.
Maclver and Page discuss this difference from three aspects:
(i) We-feeling of the urbanite is less intense than that of the ruralite. This is due to the fact that many specialised associations compete with the community for the allegiance of an urbanite. For this reason, he fails to grow feeling of deep attachment and identification with the community,
(ii) The role-feeling is similarly affected. In rural areas, everybody knows what others do or should do. Naturally, each one is conscious of his responsibility and of the role he must play. In the cities, such a feeling is altogether absent because of the complexities and vastness of the city,
(iii) The dependency-feeling of the city-dweller is also comparatively less. Since he does not grow any community sentiment, and since he does not depend on the community for the satisfaction of his needs, it is easy for him, more than the countryman, to move from one community to the other.
It is true that no sharp line can be drawn between them but it is nevertheless true that throughout history these two ways of life have exemplified two different cultures.
Vast changes in the means of communication and transportation in recent decades have narrowed down considerably the disparities between them.
But some differences will probably remain, giving one cast to rural life and another to urban. “In this respect we have to think of country and city, not in the geographic sense as two different places, but in the sociological sense as two different kinds of groupings and two different modes of life”.