ABSTRACT
Rural areas have been seen as both idyllic places of peace and backward areas that stunt the lives of rural people. In the nineteenth century when cities began to grow with industrialisation, there was a population shift from rural to urban areas. Around this time, some scholars and commentators in both the UK and the US presented a romantic idyllic view of rural life compared to the uncertainties of this new urban environment (Tönnies 1887; Borsodi 1929). Both the American Hudson River School of Art and the British Pre-Raphaelite Art Movement were cultural expressions of this rural romanticism. Rural areas were seen as places with intimate human relationships, community spirit, shared goals and values and a strong sense of solidarity. In the US, rural values were also presented as a way of differentiating the nation from a more rapidly urbanising Britain, its former coloniser (Danbom 1997). Urban areas, on the other hand, were seen as characterised by impersonal ties, anonymity and self-interest. In other words, rural areas were characterised by a sense of community while urban areas were seen as characterised by individual self-interest. This also represents the genesis of a ‘rural versus urban’ debate regarding social relations and a way of life; it introduces the idea that social processes and social interaction are different in different spatial areas. As Newby and Buttel (1980) note, early sociology saw very different traditions of analysis toward ‘the rural’ in Europe and the US. European scholars tended to dismiss the rural as residual and saw economic and social innovation coming from urban areas and cities. American scholars on the other hand focused on the need to uphold the integrity of the distinctive qualities of rural life (Sorokin and Zimmerman 1929). This led to the development of the urban–rural continuum, an important but flawed model, which dominated much of European and American rural scholarship for the first half of the twentieth century.
