Based on the article below, contrast rural and urban social patterns.

Make a matrix to
show your comparison. Deadline: January 7, 2020. Please refer to sample template.

Point of Comparison Characteristics

Rural Urban

SOCIAL PATTERNS

In 1990, nearly six out of every ten Filipinos lived in villages or barangays.
Each barangay consisted of a number of sitios (neighborhoods), clusters of households that were
the basic building blocks of society above the family. Each sitio comprised 15 to 30 households,
and most barangays numbered from 150 to 200 households. As a rule, barangays also contained
an elementary school, one or two small retail stores, and a small Roman Catholic chapel. They
were combined administratively into municipalities.

In the larger center, one could find a much more substantial church and rectory for the resident
priest, other non-Roman Catholic churches, a number of retail stores and the weekly marketplace,
a full six-year elementary school and probably a high school, a rice and corn mill, a pit for
cockfights, and the homes of most landowners and middle-class teachers and professionals living
in the municipality. This urban concentration was not only the administrative center but also the
social, economic, educational, and recreational locus. This was particularly so where the center
was itself a full-scale town, complete with restaurants, cinemas, banks, specialty stores, gas
stations, repair shops, bowling alleys, a rural health clinic, and perhaps a hospital and hotel or
two. Television sets were found in most homes in such towns, whereas some barangays in
remote areas did not even have electricity.

In the rural Philippines, traditional values remained the rule. The family was central to a Filipino's
identity, and many sitios were composed mainly of kin. Kin ties formed the basis for most
friendships and supranuclear family relationships. Filipinos continued to feel a strong obligation
to help their neighbors-- whether in granting a small loan or providing jobs for neighborhood
children, or expecting to be included in neighborhood work projects, such as rebuilding or
reroofing a house and clearing new land. The recipient of the help was expected to provide tools
and food. Membership in the cooperative work group sometimes continued even after a member
left the neighborhood. Likewise, the recipient's siblings joined the group even if they lived outside
the sitio. In this way, familial and residential ties were intermixed.

Before World War II, when landlords and tenants normally lived in close proximity, patron-client
relationships, often infused with mutual affection, frequently grew out of close residential contact.
In the early 1990s, patron-client reciprocal ties continued to characterize relations between
tenants and those landlords who remained in barangays. Beginning with World War II, however,
landlords left the countryside and moved into the larger towns and cities or even to one of the
huge metropolitan centers. By the mid-1980s, most large landowners had moved to the larger
cities, although, as a rule, they also maintained a residence in their provincial center. Landowners
who remained in the municipality itself were usually school teachers, lawyers, and small
entrepreneurs who were neither longstanding large landowners (hacenderos) nor owners of more
than a few hectares of farmland.

In the urban areas, the landowners had the advantages of better education facilities and more
convenient access to banking and business opportunities. This elite exodus from the barangays,
however, brought erosion of landlord-tenant and patron-client ties. The exodus of the wealthiest
families also caused patronage of local programs and charities to suffer.

The strength of dyadic patterns in Philippine life probably caused farmers to continue to seek new
patron-client relationships within their barangays or municipalities. Their personal alliance
systems continued to stress the vertical dimension more than the horizontal. Likewise, they
sought noninstitutional means for settling disputes, rarely going to court except as a last resort.
Just as the local landlord used to be the arbiter of serious disputes, so the barangay head could
be called on to perform this function.

The traditional rural village was an isolated settlement, influenced by a set of values that
discouraged change. It relied, to a great extent, on subsistence farming. By the 1980s, land reform
and lease holding arrangements had somewhat limited the role of the landlords so that farmers
could turn to government credit agencies and merchants as sources of credit. Even the categories
of landlord and tenant changed, because one who owned land might also rent additional land and
thus become both a landlord and a tenant.

In many barangays, the once peaceful atmosphere of the community was gone, and community
cohesion was further complicated by the effects of the New People's Army (NPA) insurgency. If
residents aided the NPA, they faced punishment from government troops. Government troops
could not be everywhere at all times, however, and when they left, those who aided the
government faced vengeance from the NPA. One approach that the government took was to
organize the villagers into armed vigilante groups. Such groups, however, have often been
accused of extortion, intimidation, and even torture.

Economic organization of Philippine farmers has been largely ineffective. This fact has worked to
the disadvantage of all of the farmers, especially the landless farm workers who were neither
owners nor tenants. These landless farmers remained in abject poverty with little opportunity to
better their lot or benefit from land reform or welfare programs.

Even in the 1990s, the pace of life was slower in rural than in urban areas. Increased
communication and education had brought rural and urban culture closer to a common outlook,
however, and the trend toward scientific agriculture and a market economy had brought major
changes in the agricultural base. Scientific farming on a commercialized basis, land reform
programs, and increased access to education and to mass media were all bringing change. In
spite of migration to cities, the rural areas continued to grow in population, from about 33 million
in 1980 to nearly 38 million in 1985. Rural living conditions also improved significantly, so that by
the early 1990s most houses, except in the most remote areas, were built of strong material and
equipped with electricity and indoor plumbing. Source: U.S. Library of Congress