ABSTRACT
A wide variety of cultures, in many different historical epochs make linguistic distinctions, differentiating the ‘central places’ of society from that which lies beyond. Modern Western notions of ‘city’ and ‘countryside’, with derivations reaching back into the ancient Mediterranean world, form but one instance of a more widespread distinction, evident in cultures as dispersed as MesoAmerica and China. That the purposes to which such distinctions are put are broadly similar in each of these cases seems highly improbable (Wheatley, 1972). Equally problematic, however, are the specific cultural connotations that have become attached in Western thought to the ‘city’ and ‘countryside’. Foremost among these is the association of the city (or at least some cities) with innovation, social change and modernity. For some this association is interpreted in a positive way, with cities and those who live in them portrayed as agents of ‘progress’, ‘civilization’, and ‘enlightenment’, For others the urban milieu is disapproved of in so far as cities produce social pathology, moral disorder and the destruction of ‘community’. Such contrasting prognoses for urban life should not be taken to exclude a third possibility; that in which ‘progress’ and ‘disorder’, ‘pathology’ and ‘emancipation’, are seen to coexist in the city. Whichever of these views is taken, however, each depends largely on a contrast with the supposed immobility and conservatism of the countryside. This contrast applies whether the rural world is depicted in a benign manner as an Arcadian world of peace and innocence, or is regarded pejoratively as brutish and ignorant.
