Difference of Rural and Urban Society

After having learnt about the various characteristics of the rural society, it will now be easier for us to compare it with the urban society. Just to revise: rural and urban societies, or the village and the city, constitute two ends of the continuum. Over a

period of time, rural societies undergo a variety of changes. Some of them are assimilated into urban societies; some start resembling urban societies in certain material and social terms, but retain their identity as a village; while some remain less affected by the forces emerging from cities. It may be so because of their location. Villages closer to the centers of urban growth are likely to change appreciably and faster than their counterparts located in interior areas. With the passage of time, villages may grow into towns, which later on grow into cities. Continuity may, thus, be unmistakably noticed in the transition from the village to the city.

For cities, which grow from the village, the term used by Robert Redfield and Milton Singer is ‘orthogenetic cities’. These cities ‘emerge from below’,from the village, rather than get imposed on a population from outside. When a city is imposed on a populace, as happened during the colonial period in India, it is called a ‘heterogenetic city’. Such a city, ‘emerging from above’, does not have its origin in local villages. 

The social consequences of these two types of cities are not alike. In an orthogenetic city, the migrants coming from villages will have less of a ‘culture shock’ on encountering the city and will not suffer much from any sort of ‘cultural inadequacy’ while dealing with the city dwellers. By contrast, both the experience of a culture shock and the feeling of cultural inadequacy will be tremendously high for rural migrants in a heterogenetic city. It is so because an orthogenetic city carries forward the traditions of the village and the villagers can identify the segments of their culture in it and can relate with them easily. In a heterogenetic city, by contrast, members will feel completely out of place, because such a city contains the elements of a tradition that grew somewhere else, with which the local people have no familiarity. Consequently, they will feel out of place in it.

The point that has been stressed throughout this lesson is that generally rural and urban areas are dependent upon each other. There is a mutually supportive relationship between them. Sociologists have analyzed these relations in economic, political, social, and cultural terms.