Conceptual Fallacies in the Rural-Urban Dichotomy.

Abstract

Conceptual fallacies in the folk-urban dichotomy arise from the use of a spatial metaphor to talk about cultural differences and processes. A fundamental error arises when the misuse of the metaphor leads researchers to treat the spatial distribution of populations as a cause of cultural characteristics. Other errors develop from the assumption that spatial boundaries necessarily coincide with social boundaries. Examples of these fundamental fallacies and others related to them are provided, primarily from a description of historical and contemporary social relations in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico. It is suggested that while the spatial metaphor is deeply engrained in our folk concepts, it should be discarded from our scientific formulations because of the conceptual errors and confusion it engenders. The recognition of a cultural or subcultural difference between urban people and rural people is a cornerstone of Western folklore, and probably of the folklores of all societies that contain urban formations. Be it a comic account of the bumpkin come to town, a romantic celebration of bucolic tranquillity, or a moralistic denouncement of city vices, this theme dots our literature from Horace's Odes to 'The Waltons. Social scientists such as Wirth (1938) and Redfield (1941) have attempted to identify systematically the causes of the cultural differences, but with little success. At least a generation of social/ cultural anthropologists have described the cultural changes country people have gone through while adapting to city life, and more recently the effect on rural places of the acceptance of values and practices generally associated with urban society. The attempt to codify and analyze this part of our folk knowledge has usually involved a treatment of migration, in this case the movement of people from the country to the city. The result of this is spoken of as urbanization. However, writers about urbanization regularly remind each other that there are two kinds1 : the movement of people to the city, and the movement of

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