The fruit of difference : the rural-urban continuum as a system of identity

    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Bell, Michael M. (author / Department of Sociology and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT) and Department of Sociology and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT
    Format:
    Journal article
    Publication Date:
    1992
    Published:
    USA
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 90 Document Number: C06477
    Journal Title:
    Rural Sociology
    Journal Title Details:
    57 (1) : 65-82
    Subject Term:
    perceptions, rural communities, rural conditions, rural interests, rural sociology, and rural-urban differences
    Notes:
    James F. Evans Collection, Today sociologists tend to doubt the rural-urban continuum, the idea that community is more characteristic of country places than cities. Based on an ethnographic study of an English exurban village, I argue that the continuum remains an important source of identity for country residents, one from which they derive social-psychological and material benefits. They root this conception of themselves as country people in nature, making this identity a particularly secure one. These real social consequences suggest that sociology should no longer doubt the reality of the rural-urban continuum, at least at the level of the definition of the situation. It, therefore, should remain an important topic of sociological study. (original)

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