Abstract
The process by which beliefs, opinions, and other individual, socially malleable attributes spread across a society, known as dissemination, is a broadly recognized concept among sociologists and political scientists. Yet fundamental aspects of how this process can ultimately lead to cultural divergences between rural and urban segments of society are currently poorly understood. This article uses an agent-based model to isolate and analyze one very basic yet essential facet of this issue, namely, the question of how the intrinsic differences in urban and rural population densities influence the levels of cultural homogeneity/heterogeneity that emerge within each region. Because urban and rural cultures do not develop in isolation from one another, the dynamical interplay between the two is of particular import in their evolution. It is found that, in urban areas, the relatively high number of local neighbors with whom one can interact tends to promote cultural homogeneity in both urban and rural regions. Moreover, and rather surprisingly, the higher frequency of potential interactions with neighbors within urban regions promotes homogeneity in urban regions but tends to drive rural regions towards greater levels of heterogeneity.
Highlights
IntroductionTo make headway into this labyrinthine question, we adopt a reductionist approach inspired by Axelrod’s seminal work ( ) on cultural dissemination, which allows us to strategically circumvent some of these complexities and significantly refine this question
In light of contemporary and historical events, it is evident that there exist some striking cultural discrepancies between urban and rural communities. This urban-rural divergence is manifest in many present-day contexts, e.g. in an examination of political beliefs and voter preferences across the United States (Kron ); in television viewing habits (Katz ); in perceptions of fairness and equity regarding federal assistance (Delreal & Clement ); in educational expectations (Andres & Looker ); in leisure-time physical activity (Wilcox et al ), in levels of reported religiosity (Lyons ), etc
The number of features was set to F = and the number of traits per feature to q =, since this proved to be an interesting parameter set in the original Adaptive Culture Model (ACM)
Summary
To make headway into this labyrinthine question, we adopt a reductionist approach inspired by Axelrod’s seminal work ( ) on cultural dissemination, which allows us to strategically circumvent some of these complexities and significantly refine this question Towards this end, we will employ an agent-based, computational network model of cultural dissemination to isolate and examine the e ect of one of the most fundamental, core influences on rural-urban cultural evolution — the di erent population densities in urban vs rural regions. Apart from these two geographically based di erences, no other inherent distinctions between urban and rural agents are assumed In this manner, we are able to isolate the e ects of the frequency of interactions with neighbors and the range of interaction with neighbors, without being subsumed by a host of other relevant but conflating factors a ecting rural-urban development such as migration, local demographics, etc.
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