This paper assesses the relevance of various representations of ruralism/urbanism in Marx, Tonnies, and Weber as these pertain to the current literature on the issue of reflexivity in social science. Acknowledging the linguistic turn in human science inquiry, the reexamination of this discourse does not attempt to develop an "essentialist" definition of rurality. Rather the analysis is concerned with the meaning of the attempts by Marx, Tonnies, and Weber to develop a concept of rurality which involves teasing out the way negations and oppositions operate in their texts. The paper argues that the rural/urban discourse is structured by a modernist interest in engaging otherness and questioning limits. It also shows the difficulty a modernist consciousness has with preserving a sense of the very otherness it needs to engage. Several Canadian studies, which draw on the rural/urban distinction are cited to illustrate the field's conceptual predicament. The paper argues that part of the problem which modernity has with otherness (in this case the otherness of the rural) lies in the scientific requirement that, by virtue of a commitment to objectivity, reflexivity be excluded from the process of inquiry. Reflexivity, as intrinsic and necessary to the process of human science inquiry, is therefore both a topic and a resource for the paper.
a . . . disquieting quality of modernism: its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness, for constituting non-Western arts in its own image, for discovering universal, ahistorical "human" capacities. (Clifford, 1988: 193)
As we readily recognize from media coverage, the urban-rural distinction is alive in popular imagination. Television programs such as North of 60, Picket Fences, NYPD Blue and E.R. display a contrast in ways of living which rural and urban settings are said to represent. The debate in the Canadian parliament on the gun registration bill (1995) was said to have been organized on rural-urban lines. Surveys (e.g., Yerxa, 1992) and popular radio programs (such the CBC's Morningside) claim that a rural setting is often preferred for the superior "quality of life" it offers and for being a good place to raise children.(1)
The urban-rural debate has long been addressed in sociology. Yet, despite its place in popular culture, as a concept, the distinction is said to be sociologically irrelevant, at least according to Pahl (1968) and Gans (1968). The globalization (Giddens, 1991) and the mediatization (Meyrowitz, 1985) of modern society seem to have made the distinctions developed by the sociologists in the late nineteenth century irrelevant for the late twentieth century. Is the urban-rural distinction a modernist conceptualization which now has no relevance in these so-called postmodern times?
In this paper I will show that by making use of contemporary developments in sociology (phenomenology, hermeneutics, poststructuralism and dialectical analysis), the classic contributions of Marx, Tonnies and Weber can be analysed to show the way they participate in and foreshadow the modern and post-modern debate. The paper also argues that the most important contribution of contemporary theoretical developments to sociology is the recognition of the importance of the need to include reflexivity in the process of inquiry. This article, therefore, demonstrates how contemporary theoretical developments can be used to help understand the meaning that the urban-rural distinction had for Marx, Tonnies and Weber. Though written from a standpoint of familiarity with interpretive sociology (a familiarity shared by many Canadian sociologists), the subject matter (the classical tradition and the urban-rural debate) and the point (the need for reflexive sociology) are of concern for the whole tradition.(2)
While distinctions between city and country are almost as old as Western culture itself (Williams, 1973), it is the rise of modernity in general and of the Industrial Revolution in particular which generated the sociological debate about the positive and/or negative consequences of this new development. As Sennett remarks, "up to the time of the Industrial Revolution, the city was taken by most social thinkers to be the image of society itself, and not some special, unique form of society" (1969: 3). The country, whether in its pastoral (Theocritus) or agricultural (Hesiod) representation, was synonymous with nature, i.e., the fertility of spring and summer in contrast to the barrenness and accident of winter (Williams, 1973: 13-34). The rapid changes in society brought on by the Industrial Revolution focussed and organized the theorizing and research concerning urban-rural differences. In particular, the drastic shift in population from rural to urban centres meant that within a period of 100 years, many societies, that had been demographically rural for centuries, became demographically urban.(3) In turn, this change challenged social theorists to reflect on the meaning and influence of urban and rural social organization. For social theorists who sought to understand the transformation in urban and rural life initiated by the industrial revolution, the urban-rural distinction no longer referenced the difference between corruptness of society and the purity of nature (Rousseau) but rather presented social theorists with two different kinds of social organization.
This development in the understanding of the rural from what is Other to human society (nature, beauty, the brutish, the mysterious) to another kind of society, itself demonstrates what Clifford, in the essay cited above (1988: 193), ironically calls "the healthy capacity of modernist consciousness to question its limits and engage otherness." At the end of this century, we are very much aware of the practical consequences of this modernist impulse. Otherness is more often "appropriated or redeemed" rather than truly engaged. And whether one looks to Arendt (1958) or Foucault (1977), or Grant (1969), it seems that the disappearance of any strong conception of otherness mirrors the disappearance of any relevant sociological conception of rurality. The history of the sociological literature on the urban-rural difference is a story which begins with a conception of its decisiveness for understanding ways of living (Wirth, 1938) to its irrelevance as a sociological conception (Gans, 1968; Pahl, 1968). This history begins with the opportunity the distinction raises for comparing two different ways of living (the urban, the rural), and concludes that "any attempt to tie particular patterns of social relationships to specific geographical milieux is a singularly fruitful exercise" (Pahl, 1969: 293).(4) While the reason given to account for the discrepancy between the earlier (Chicago School) and later sociologists is the anti-urban ideological bias of the former (e.g., Hutter, 1988: 41; Pahl, 1969: 85), I will argue that this story reflects both "the capacity of the modernist consciousness to question its limits and engage otherness" and the difficulty a modernist consciousness has with preserving a sense of the very otherness it needs to engage. Because I am also dealing with the inception of modern sociology, I will argue that the sociological project, particularly in its more positivistic expression, is bound up with this modernist problem; part of the problem which modernity has with otherness (in this case the otherness of the rural) lies in the scientific requirement that, by virtue of its commitment to objectivity (Taylor, 1977: 103-31), reflexivity be excluded from the process of inquiry. For the purposes of space, I will concentrate on the work of three seminal nineteenth-century sociologists, Marx, Tonnies, and Weber in order to tease out the tensions built into their influentially formative conceptions of the urban-rural distinction (see Appendix for a more detailed description of the theoretic orientation of this article).
Initially the urban-rural discourse in sociology was organized on the basis of seeking to understand two types of society, the urban society and the rural society. Otherness is now understood to represent not what is other to human understanding/society but rather an alternative way of living. The implications of this discursive strategy means that the engagement of otherness now raises the issues of freedom, evaluation, and change. Modern social science discourse, by casting Other as another social organization, rests on and asserts the claim that society represents a particular way of living and that this way of living has to be understood, evaluated and compared with another way of living. The sociological distinction now has an implicit normative element - which is better? As we will see, Marx and Tonnies are explicit in their answer to this question while Weber recognizes the difficulty a scientific sociology has in addressing this question of value in the first place.
Marx and Engels: The City/Country Progressive/Regressive Distinction
One of the earliest sociologists to address the differences between the city and the country is Marx. He and Engels interpreted the rise of capitalism as a simultaneous subjection
... of the country to the rule of the town. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban populations as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life (1965: 38).
Here and in The German Ideology (1970: 39-95), they argue that rural life nurtured a subservience to nature (68). They see this subservience as a primitive form of society because it is a primitive mode of production. That is, rural life is not an other to the mode of production of capitalism but rather an early stage in its development. The country is organized by the relation between humans and nature, the labour of the farmer for the product of the latter. At this stage of the mode of production, humans have not yet grasped the productive possibilities inherent within their own labour. They have not, according to Marx and Engels, because "physical activity is as yet not separated from mental activity." Thus "[a]verage human common sense is adequate" in relation to what life demands. Moreover, "[t]he antagonism between town and country begins with the transition from barbarism to civilization, from tribe to state, from locality to nation, and runs through the whole history of civilization to the present day" (1970: 69). That is, the very tension between town and country is itself an instance of the rise of civilization as exemplified in the form of the development of nation or state. The existence of the town requires the ability to think independently of the natural task at hand, because exchange and labour as modes of production are liberated from, as against being dominated by, subservience to the land. The town makes human independence recognizable as a possibility and actuality where the country makes domination (of humans by nature, of humans by each other, e.g., landlord/serf) seem natural and necessary.
Marx and Engels argue that the feudal system of ownership prominent in the Middle Ages "started out from the country" (1970: 45). In this feudal system, people were tied to each other in a hierarchical and patriarchal manner in a way which fettered the productive possibilities inherent in human action (1965: 32-48). Rural life leads to idiocy because the nascent productive vitality inherent to all social organization is overwhelmed by the ideology of a deference to tradition which is antithetical to the material and productive possibilities in social organization. Therefore, according to this formulation, rural life is idiotic because it endlessly and unimaginatively repeats the social patterns of previous generations under the guise of a feudal ideology which legitimates patriarchy, hierarchy, and the domination of people in general.
From this perspective, the ideology of family, community, and tradition associated with rurality is a mere "sentimental veil" that bound the majority of people, particularly women and children, to a subordinate, impoverished life, and encouraged a "slothful indolence." By virtue of its ideological antipathy to the novel possibilities in human action, rural life therefore is antipathetic to the resources that the new, who in any society are the young, could bring to the community. Arendt (1958) says that an openness to the novel (inherent in the condition of natality) is the requirement for developing the possibility of human action. The possibility of beginning something new is fundamental to the human condition. Humans are active agents who have the possibility of reacting in ways that are unpredictable, making the unanticipated consequences of action a fundamental topic for sociology (Merton, 1976). However, not every social organization is receptive to and encouraging of this capacity, though there is no social organization which can eliminate it. Rural life, and the feudal society it nurtured, according to Marx and Engels, came to stand for a social organization which was explicitly organized around excluding an openness to the possibilities of human action.
Marx and Reflexivity as Single-Minded Development
Marx and Engels interpreted the urban-rural difference within a frame which celebrated the development of a society (in this case capitalist but eventually communist) that would release the productive forces (and not merely its economy as is often erroneously thought) inherent within the relation between humans and the world. This development, in turn, was to enhance the human liberation of all. We can see from Marx that the concern with quality of life (e.g., which is a better place to live), can not be resolved by an opinion poll; rather, the real issue is which place best helps us recognize our potential for freedom and the kind of social organization that produces the wealth which, according to Marx,(5) free human action requires. Thus, what for many city dwellers appears to be the easy-going life of a rural setting, is for Marx "a slothful indolence" that is socially constructed by the way rural society excludes the novel (the enterprising, the beginning of something new) in its midst.
What this formulation does is question the adequacy of empirical and positivistic ap