ABSTRACT
Embedded in the theoretical literature are two very different ways of thinking about the relationship between city and countryside. They are usually conflated, which leads to analytical confusion, promotes needless disputation, and obstructs a more sophisticated understanding of the problematique in general. On the one hand there are questions of balance: How do rural and urban incomes and standards of living stack up? What are the financial flows between them? How are the economic, human, and social and cultural costs of industrialization distributed? What are the distributive or redistributive effects of state policy and action? On the other hand are questions of structural cleavage: What separates rural and urban people, at all levels of the social structure (landlords vs. capitalists, middle peasants vs. the petit bourgeoisie, poor peasants or rural proletarians vs. urban workers)? What different opportunity structures and mobility prospects face them? What are the different ways in which they are organized within their respective modes of production and within the political arena?
