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Chapter 3The Rural-Urban Dichotomy Reexamined: Beyond the Ersatz Debate? (Page 47to 67)

BRUCE KOPPELSocioeconomic evolution in Asia during the last four decades has been extraordinary, both for what has changed and what has not. Certainly two major motifs in anysummary of this evolution are urbanization and rural development -- two processes,commonly studied independently but tacitly recognized to be linked if not alwayscorrelated.Conceptually, what the links are and how they actually function have been the subjectof much debate. A cardinal characteristic of this debate that is not well recognized isthe delusory alternative it has pressed upon its protagonists. On one path are thearguments about how the evolvements, interests, and destinies of one process(urbanization or rural development) constrain, liberate, or otherwise influence theevolvements, interests, and destinies of the other. The best-known example of this path is the urban bias debate. On what has unfolded as the "other" path are thearguments that neither urbanization nor rural development is as discriminating or incisive a force as others that not so much link but transcend rural-urban relations --most notably class, but also, through vehicles such as area studies, themes of history,culture, and politics.

Thus, there are two paths: urban-rural relations as different forms of equilibrium andurban-rural relations as subordinate to other societal processes. Within the landscape bounded by these two paths, the arguments about urban-rural relations in Asia can bestratified according to a number of criteria, as any listing of disciplinary subfields inAsian development studies will attest. It has been acknowledged periodically that theconduct of the urban-rural relations argument is organized in such a way. However, ithas been less readily acknowledged that the most serious cumulative consequence of the urban-rural relations debate has been its contribution not to the stratification butrather to the polarization of development studies.

In "urban" as well as propositionsabout linkages have all become increasingly elliptical, while dialogue between proponents of the concepts has been reduced to near ritualized exchanges of stereotypes.The alternatives in the debate as it is understood are a deceptive dilemma because thechoice is artificial. It is an ersatz debate. Between and perhaps alternative to the twoalternatives, there is a middle ground that has never been adequately mapped. Themiddle ground consists of the linkages, which have by and large been consistentlyignored as having any independent reality. Linkages in the urban-rural relationsdebate are presented either as fundamentally derivative of urban or rural realities (e.g.,seasonal and circular migration, nonfarm labor markets, roads) or as illusorymisspecifications altogether, better replaced by other kinds of articulation concerns(e.g., the conflicts between class formation and division of labor processes at local,regional, national, and global scales; between culture and resources; and betweenhistory and the state).There are good reasons now to argue for the middle ground, for the reality of rural-urban linkages not as derivations or reflections, but as representative and indicative of

independent social facts -- taking form, evolving, and varying for reasons attributableto urbanization and rural development; to look at a number of other social, economic,and political processes; and to explore causes that are idiosyncratic to these linkagesin specific cultural and historical circumstances. Once the conceptual inertia,institutionalized in both intellectual and political paradigms, is exposed andacknowledged, then numerous anomalies and issues arise where few have been seen.The anomalies and issues will be uncovered by exploring the question, "What is thefuture of rural Asia?"

OVERCOMING INERTIA: ANOMALIES IN ASIA

Asia presents many fundamental social, cultural, political, and economic changes --some underway for a considerable amount of time -- as well as some significantexamples of preservation. These processes do not always dovetail with the concepts"urban" and "rural." Some people are now sensing that the scope and implications of change under way in Asia may be seriously misunderstood if strict adherence to older distinctions is maintained and question whether the rural-urban dichotomy (or is it acontinuum?) offers the best foundation for understanding of these processes.One can begin with a simple acknowledgment of the spatial connotations of "rural"and "urban" and then proceed to the complex understandings that have grown aboutand around the idea of "the urban"what amounts to a quarantining of conceptualdevelopment processes, concepts of "rural" and and "the rural" in Asia, ideas rangingfrom the political economy of the urban bias and the liberal economy of theexpanding market to the geographic progression of urban culture and the urbanizationof rural space. However, when these themes are "tested" against both historical andcontemporary evidence of what has happened and is now happening within and between "urban" and "rural" Asia, what soon emerges bears little resemblance to thewell-ordered landscape promised by the dichotomy.The following antonymous pairs are striking: (1) converging material culturescoexisting with diverging ethical-religious cultures; (2) converging"commercialization" of economic relations coexisting with diverging social and political foundations of exchange; (3) converging patterns of social practicecoexisting with diverging patterns of cultural interpretation; (4) converging patterns of class formation and political expression coexisting with diverging patterns of economic organization and social movement; and (5) converging patterns of humansettlement and material culture coexisting with diverging patterns of socialcommunity and historical consciousness. The rural-urban dichotomy can certainlyarray the processes referenced in the pairs, but in doing so do "rural" and "urban" become metaphorically translucent lenses diffusing considerably more light than theyfocus?For instance, despite rapid levels of Asian city growth in recent decades, it is still trueand it is likely to remain true for some time to come that most people in Asia live inwhat are usually called "rural places." Similarly, rapid growth in the numbers of people living in very large metropolitan areas will undoubtedly continue. These arenot unrelated or unimportant facts, but does intelligibility of these facts require the primacy of a rural-urban distinction to illuminate the processes these facts represent?Could the rural-urban distinction fix excessive attention on facts such as populationdensities and a particular view of their underlying processes, and divert attention from

other facts that may be indicators of concurrent processes of equal or superior importance? As settlements designated as urban (often only because of passing somethreshold size) proliferate throughout the countryside, as agrarian modes of production are increasingly supplemented by nonagrarian modes in rural areas andindustrial modes of production are supplemented by nonindustrial modes of production in urban areas, and as population densities in both agrarian andnonagrarian areas increase, does a rural-urban appellation offer the most incisiveappreciation of what is going on?What kinds of systemic understandings, spatially and temporally, do the rural-urbandistinction yield? Two key contributions have been diffusion and urban hierarchies.Diffusion studies have been impressivein tracking the movement of items of material culture across space and time.However, diffusion research has been weak in comprehending and incorporating broader systemic processes from which material culture draws substance. Research onurban hierarchies has drawn attention to linkages between settlements, relying heavilyon land use, transportation, and markets as both causes and products of a presumedevolutionary process. Nevertheless, urban hierarchy research has been stronger atdocumenting relationships

within

the hierarchy between primary and secondary citiesthan at documenting the significance of lower order associations or in offering anontrivial view of what is excluded by the entire hierarchy.As settlement hierarchies become more complex in Asia, an important stress isrevealed: while "rural-urban" is often proclaimed as a continuum (permittinggradations, for example, of urban functions across space), it is almost always appliedas a dichotomy. The dichotomy is implicit in the assumption that rural equals a peasant mode of production, whereas all market-oriented forms of agriculture areconsidered incipient expressions of urban functions. Is the problem one of measurement, or is rural-urban inadequate as a continuum vision? In terms of first-order differences, there are meaningful distinctions between primate cities andunsettled wastelands, but moving from these end points toward the middle, doesurban-rural continue to discriminate the most important differences or identify themost important similarities? Has the concept of an urban hierarchy yielded a view of system definition and boundaries that cannot comfortably accommodate an overlap inurban-rural relations?

A PATH THROUGH THE MIDDLE GROUND: RURAL TRANSFORMATION

Throughout Asia, a fundamental change is under way in what rural societies are, whatlife in rural societies means, what relationships of rural societies to nations-at-largesignify, and what rural societies are becoming. A transformation has been unfoldingthat encompasses agriculture and agrarian society within a broader set of social,economic, political, and cultural relationships. Within these broader relationships,traditional distinctions and meanings that have served so long to maintain the uniqueidentities of rural societies are losing their legitimacy. The questions "what is ruralsociety?" and "does rural society have a future?" are real.For example, increasingly, visions of rural society's future in Asia are stylized,sometimes idealized, portraits, and their staunchest advocates cannot be certainwhether they are valid or durable. Distinctions between rural and urban, agriculturaland industrial, socialist and capitalist, public and private, growth-oriented and equity-