ABSTRACT
The Middle East is undergoing profound economic and social changes. The processes in each country, though different in detail in each case, may collectively be described as industrial and urban revolution. Pre-urban society can be identified as that society where there is a predominant dependence on farming practice and farm based small scale industry. Two characteristics of the modernisation of pre-urban societies are a developing degree of complementarity of economic function and a more marked mobility of the population. Partially urban society is characterised by the growth of urban communities based on craft specialisms and civil or military administrators whose goods and services are offered to, or imposed on, the rural population in return for the products of agriculture and pastoralism. In a predominantly urban society, economic activity is carried out through a more formal relationship of land, labour and capital than is the case in pre-urban or partially urban society.
