ABSTRACT
In 1954 Robert Redfield and Milton Singer published their article “The cultural role of cities,” in which they dwelt on the distinction between cities of orthogenetic and heterogenetic cultural transformation. The orthogenetic cities, well-represented in the early beginnings of urbanism in the world, engaged with a relatively homogeneous peasant cultural “little tradition” (presumably including local variations) and refined it into a more elaborate, sophisticated “great tradition.” Cultural process in the heterogenetic cities entailed “the creating of original modes of thought that have authority beyond or in conflict with old cultures and civilizations.” In Redfield’s and Singer’s view, these latter were cities in which one or both of two things were true. The prevailing understandings and relationships would have to do with the technical rather than the moral order, which is to say that administrative regulation, business and technical convenience would be dominant; and the cities in question were populated by inhabitants of diverse cultural origins, removed from the indigenous loci of their cultures.
