The Sociology of Rural Life

Sam Hillyard

• Publisher: Berg Publishers
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781845201395
• eBook ISBN: 9781847886231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Rural Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

From fox-hunting to farming, the vigor with which rural activities and living are defended overturns received notions of a sleepy and complacent countryside. Alongside these developments, the rise of the organic food movement has helped to revitalize an already politicized rural population. Over the years 'rural life' has been defined, redefined and eventually fallen out of fashion as a sociological concept - in contrast to urban studies, which has flourished. This much-needed reappraisal calls for its reinterpretation in light of the profound changes affecting the countryside. First providing an overview of rural sociology, Hillyard goes on to offer contemporary case studies that clearly demonstrate the need for a reinvigorated rural sociology. Tackling a range of contentious issues, this book offers a new model for rural sociology and reassesses its role in contemporary society. A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org

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‘A Problem in Search of a Discipline’ (Hamilton 1990: 232): the History of Rural Sociology

Tönnies and Nineteenth-century Commentaries on the Rural

Tönnies’s (1955) [1887] seminal work, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, is often appealed to as a starting point from which to begin to theorise the rural, indeed, to the extent that Newby (1977a) labels him the father of rural sociology – albeit whilst also perceiving him to be the father of the community studies approach. Tönnies’s writing, in retrospect, can be seen as part of the new emerging discipline of sociology, which itself was influenced by the impact of the agricultural revolution. Tönnies’s work therefore provides a useful starting point from which to view how rural societies have been characterised by sociologists in the past.

Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936)

The context of the second half of the nineteenth century and what came to be termed the industrial revolution¹ presented a challenge for the very earliest sociologists: namely, how was society understood before the transformation; and how could it be best conceptualised subsequently? Tönnies was writing in a context of the emergence of sociology as a discipline in its own right, alongside significant figures such as Hegel, Comte, Spencer and Marx. However, Tönnies is perhaps best situated among the second wave of writers to emerge in the new field of sociology. In France, his peers included Emile Durkheim and, in Germany, Simmel and Weber.²

Tönnies characterised the rise of urban industrialism – and its associated demographic shift from the country to the city – as involving a loss of community. His text, published in 1887, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft applied these two, twin terms to describe the contrast between pre-industrial and post-industrial societies. The rise of the urban city was instrumental in this process:

one could speak of a Gemeinschaft (community) comprising the whole of mankind … But human Gesellschaft (society) is conceived as mere coexistence of people independent of each other.

(Tönnies 1955 [1887]: 38)

So, immediately, Tönnies’s (1955) analysis contained a critique of the impact of industrialisation upon social relations. That is, the disruption of removing people from the familiar context of the rural to the anonymity of the city led, inevitably, to a loss of interactional associations between social factors. The cumulative effect of this was, for Tönnies, Gesellschaft. Tönnies’s concept of Gesellschaft refers to the large-scale, impersonal, calculative and contractual relationships that, according to Tönnies, were increasing in the industrial world at the expense of ‘community’ or Gemeinschaft. The latter was more than familiarity and continuity, but also:

a totality which is not a mere aggregation of its parts but one which is made up of these parts in such a manner that they are dependent upon and conditioned by the totality … and hence as a form possesses reality and substance.

(Tönnies 1955 [1887]: 40–41)

The two, twin concepts therefore invite points of contrast and comparison that can be, loosely, characterised as shown in Table 1.

Unravelling these concepts in a little more depth, however, allows some insight into whether Tönnies’s (1955) analysis was indeed a critique of industrialisation, or rather a balanced account in which the respective advantages and implicit problems associated with each form of social relations are present. In relation to Gemeinschaft, social relationships were defined as intimate, enduring and based upon a clear understanding of each other’s individual position in society. That is, a person’s status was estimated according to whom that person was, rather than what that person had done. However, such relationships were relatively immobile, both geographically and socially (up and down the social scale). Therefore, in that respect, status was ascribed (that is, relatively fixed at birth) rather than achieved (based on merit or performance). The Gemeinschaft society, as characterised by Tönnies (1955), was therefore less a meritocracy than a relatively closed community. As Lee and Newby (1983) noted, such societies were relatively homogeneous, since well-recognised moral custodians, such as the church and the family, enforced their culture quite rigidly. Sentiments within this form of society placed a high premium on the sanctity of kinship and territoriality. At its core, Gemeinschaft was the sentimental attachment to the conventions and mores of a ‘beloved place’ enshrined in a tradition which was handed down over the generations from family to family and therefore both the church and the family were more important and much stronger in pre-industrial society. Derived from this form of social relations were enduring, close-knit relationships, which were in turn characterised by greater emotional cohesion, greater depth of sentiment and greater continuity – and hence were ultimately more meaningful.

In summary, Gemeinschaft implied close ties – both economic and emotional – to one geographic locale, but at the same time these were closely intertwined with a depth and richness in personal social relations.

In contrast, Gesellschaft was, broadly, everything that Gemeinschaft was not. The move towards industrialism and urbanism, for Tönnies, was associated with an increase in the scale, and therefore the impersonality, of society. This impersonality enabled social interaction to become more easily regulated by contract (as opposed to obligation and expectation), so that relationships become more calculative and more specific. However, they were also more rational, in the sense that they were restricted to a definitive end and constructed with definite means of obtaining such ends. That is, social relations were laid bare under a contract system and the implicit web of obligations and ties of Gemeinschaft negated by the explicit brokering of work and roles.

However, as a consequence the associational qualities of Gemeinschaft were also negated and most of the virtues and morality of ‘community’were lost under industrialisation. Therefore Tönnies’s (1955) is a critique against the utilitarian’s society of rational individuals: that is, that individuals, once disconnected from the close form of association to be found prior to industrialisation, lost the stability or moral centre that characterised the Gemeinschaft way of life. Writ large, the replacement of Gemeinschaft by Gesellschaft relationships was ultimately a prerequisite of the rise of capitalism and hence of the rise of nineteenth-century industrial society. In this sense, Tönnies (1955) provided an early critique of the impact of capitalism upon human forms of association – the impact of macro structure change as analysed in terms of its impacts on the meso level. The importance of Tönnies’s contribution to sociology, and rural sociology more explicitly, is therefore closely aligned to the historical timing of his work. Tönnies’s own writings (across the years 1880–1920) were of a time when sociological writing was university-based, and little interaction or dialogue took place between countries (with the exception of America), unlike the present day. Nevertheless, there were also significant commentaries on the rural stemming implicitly from his contemporaries’ work. Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity, Weber’s lecture on capitalism and rural society and early American sociology’s urban orientation and the developing emphasis upon social policy are briefly considered here.

Durkheim’s Distinction between Mechanical and Organic Solidarity (Distinctions between Rural and Urban Societies)

Durkheim’s concepts of organic and mechanical solidarity contain many parallels with Tönnies’s concepts of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Tönnies developed his concepts many years before Durkheim’s (1984) [1893] The Division of Labour in Society and, as such, arguably informed Durkheim’s later concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity.

Durkheim is often seen as a one of sociology’s more conservative thinkers, particularly when contrasted with Marx. However, Craib argues, ‘he was nevertheless a reforming liberal or socialist in political terms’ (Craib 1992: 14). Durkheim’s methodological approach or position as to the correct approach to the study of sociology is beyond the remit of this book, although this clearly informed the concepts and distinctions that emerged from his work.³ Two of the most notable of these are his distinctions between mechanical and organic solidarity. These concepts are discussed in his text on the increasing division of labour to be observed in capitalist society. Mechanical solidarity in primitive societies was based on the common beliefs and consensus found in the collective consciousness. The new form of order in advanced (capitalist) societies is based on organic solidarity. This was based on interdependence of economic ties arising out of differentiation and specialisation within the modern economy.

The context, like that of Tönnies’s time, was the period of change following the industrial revolution in Britain and Europe and its impact upon social relations. Durkheim, like Tönnies, perceived this to have effected an ‘evolutionary change in society from one form of social cohesion to another and in particular the role of individualism in modern societies’ (Craib 1992: 15). However, unlike Tönnies, Durkheim did not perceive such a shift with the sense of pessimism implicit in Tönnies’s interpretation. Rather than the shared beliefs which Durkheim perceived traditional (i.e. pre-industrial revolution) societies to characterise, the division of labour in people’s working lives formed a new bond or contract between social actors. That is, the division of labour created economic dependence upon one another and this formed the new social bond and maintained the equilibrium.

There is a danger of confusing Durkheim’s emphasis upon the division of labour as taking upon the same significance as Marx’s emphasis upon the ownership of the means of production. Unlike Marx, Durkheim does not take the economy to be the driving force of his analysis of social relations. However, the core ontological assumption underpinning his analysis of society was that a shared moral basis was necessary to the social order (that is, to ensure the continued smooth running of society). Somewhat confusingly, Newby (1980) reflects on Durkheim’s use of mechanistic and organic descriptors, and finds organic more evocative of a rural way of life:

The use of the word ‘organic’ emphasizes the elision between the aesthetic and the ecological on the one hand and the social on the other. It obviously derives in part from its connotations with the land and fertility.

(Newby 1977a: 16)

There are, perhaps, a few reasons underpinning Newby’s (1980) interpretation, which inverts the romanticised view of traditional ways of life as synonymous with the rural. First, Durkheim was, to borrow Craib’s (1992) term, ‘drunk’ on the concept of society. Society was, in this sense, the new, modern, industrial society that he sought to analyse and explain, rather than the traditional, pre-dating society. Therefore, the more positive, consensus-based modern society may translate more positive characteristics. The other, and perhaps more interesting in relation to the concern here with rural sociology, is the more explicit continuum visible between rural and urban in Durkheim’s analysis. Craib offers a useful summary:

Strictly speaking ‘mechanical solidarity’ is not itself a form of social structure but it is the form of solidarity found in ‘segmented societies’ – societies originally clan (kinship) based but later on based on locality.

(Craib 1992: 66)

Here the emphasis is upon geographic locality and a type or form of social relations. This is far more explicit than is the case in Tönnies’s analysis, as will later be discussed with reference to the work of Ray Pahl. In the work of Durkheim, therefore, we can detect an emphasis upon locale as a significant influence upon the social characteristics of the society residing there. However, Max Weber’s analysis serves to take the notion of locale further, for in imprinting upon the cultural values or outlooks of an individual it ultimately becomes removed from any fixed geographical context.

Weber (1970) [1904] on Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany⁴

Weber’s (1970) commentary of rural societies is based on a lecture he delivered in 1904. Whilst the essay goes on to specifically address Germany rural society (in particular the differences between the social formations of the east and west) he discusses the condition more broadly, including the English and American situations as well as that of mainland Europe. Weber argues that rural areas are distinctive and therefore that they warrant sociological attention:

Of all communities, the social constitution of rural districts are the most individual and the most closely connected with particular historical developments.

(Weber 1970: 363)

Weber’s (1970) approach is therefore historical in his attempt to capture the complexities of the phenomena of rural societies. Like Tönnies, he finds that the rural is in decline:

For a rural society, separate from the urban social community, does not exist at the present time in a great part of the modern civilised world. It no longer exists in England, except, perhaps, in the thoughts of dreamers. The constant proprietor of the soil, the landlord, is not an agriculturalist but a lessor; and the temporary owner of the estate, the tenant or lessee, is an entrepreneur capitalist like any other.

(Weber 1970: 363)

The link between urban and rural (like Tönnies and indeed Marx) is the impact and phenomenon of capitalism and its relative impact upon farming. The spread of a capitalist ethic is Weber’s (1970) particular concern and the manner in which land comes to represent not only agricultural opportunities but also social status. To buy or own significant tracts of land, he argued, also acts as ‘an entrance fee into this [higher or elevated] social stratum’ (Weber 1970: 366). However, Weber’s (1970) interest lies in the shifts within agriculture within his own native country, Germany. Particularly, his analysis focuses upon the differentiations of farming intensities between east and west regions of Germany. He argues that the increasing value and social status of land is significant:

by increasing the capital required for agricultural operations, capitalism causes an increase in the number of renters of land who are idle. In these ways, peculiar contrasting effects of capitalism are produced, and these contrasting effects by themselves make the open countryside of Europe appear to support a separate ‘rural society’.

(Weber 1970: 366–367)

He argues that this serves to differentiate between the old system of farming, which could be loosely described as the old, economically independent aristocracy, and the new urban capitalist emphasis upon the posse...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘A Problem in Search of Discipline’ (Hamilton 1990: 232) the History of Rural Sociology
• 2 New Issues in Rural Sociology and Rural Studies
• 3 The 2001 Foot-and-mouth Disease Epidemic in the UK
• 4 The Hunting Debate: Rural Political Protest and the Mobilisation of Defence of Country Sports
• 5 Game Shooting in the United Kingdom
• 6 Representing the Rural: New Methods and Approaches
• Conclusion: the Future of Rural Societies and Rural Sociology
• Appendix
• Notes
• Glossary of Key Terms
• References
• eCopyright