The Town–Country Antithesis and the Environment

Abstract

Current sociological interest in “real utopias” demands a critical evaluation of potential academic contributions to the subject. The following is a sociological critique of the real utopian project of abolishing the antithesis between town and country. The analysis uncovers a fundamental dilemma in theorizing how to transform this antithesis. On one hand, social and natural scientists have acknowledged that modern urbanization and the urban–rural divide contribute to the creation of a rift in the relationship between humans and the natural environment. On the other hand, modern cities, based on arguments about the efficiency of urban density, are defended by a wide variety of scholars. Nevertheless, in turning to a socioecological framework of analysis based on the work of Marx and Engels and metabolic rift theory, this dilemma can be resolved. This framework emphasizes that modern cities are the result of interdependent development, which is expressed through the antithesis between town and country. This antithesis is the intervening mechanism in which the metabolic rift is spatially observed and carried out. That the ecological rift is now planetary demands a real utopian project in which dramatically different social and spatial relations are theorized.