THE RURAL‐URBAN CONTINUUM1

Abstract

SummaryThe Rural‐Urban ContinuumRecent powerful criticisms of the rural‐urban continuum make clear the need for new conceptual orientations. Detailed studies of central areas of cities demonstrate the existence of urban villages in which the pattern of social relationships does not support notions of urban‐ism as a way of life. Settlement types appear in general to be less important than class and life‐cycle characteristics in determining ways of life, yet an ideal‐type metropolitan village, reached as a result of empirical research in S. E. England, demonstrates that this particular settlement type may be an important element in the life‐style of a specific cosmopolitan middle‐class group. Thus, some people are in the city but not of it, whereas others are of the city and not in it. Both gemeinschaftlich and gesellschaftlich relationships are found in different groups in the same place.In an attempt to assess whether the continuum should perhaps be better conceived as a process rather than a typology, empirical studies from various parts of the world are reviewed. The common theme appears to be the confrontation between the local and the national and this is as likely to occur in the urban as in the rural physical setting. This confrontation is seen as a process of crucial importance for the rural sociologist who is primarily interested in small‐scale societies. Future research might fruitfully use the concept of role and social network, or study patron‐client relationships and community power structures when attempting to illuminate or understand the process.There are a whole series of continua, which together form a process, acting not so much on communities as on groups and individuals at particular places in the social structure. Rather than a continuum it would be better to imagine a whole series of meshes of different textures superimposed on each other, together forming a process which is creating a much more complex pattern.