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The City and the Country

David Midgley

in Writing Weimar: Critical Realism in German Literature, 1918-1933

This chapter describes the traditionally strong antagonism between stereotypical conceptions of urban and rural life, and the particular political significance with which it became invested under the ... More

This chapter describes the traditionally strong antagonism between stereotypical conceptions of urban and rural life, and the particular political significance with which it became invested under the circumstances of the Weimar Republic. The main goal is to examine how the cultural tensions of the time are reflected in the depiction of Berlin on the one hand and provincial society on the other.Less

City and Country: That Awkward Embrace

John M. Merriman

in The Margins of City Life: Explorations of the French Urban Frontier, 1815–1851

This chapter emphasizes the “awkward embrace” between city and country not only in the faubourg but also in the persistence of an urban agricultural population. In addition, it considers how the ... More

This chapter emphasizes the “awkward embrace” between city and country not only in the faubourg but also in the persistence of an urban agricultural population. In addition, it considers how the troubled relationship between state and city affected the urban periphery, and presents an overview of the role of industry in the development of the faubourg. To understand the urban periphery in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, it explores three things: the relationship between state and city as reflected in town walls, particularly military fortifications; the persistence of rural life on the edge of city and town, and within it; and finally, the place of industry in the emergence of the nineteenth-century faubourg.Less

Introduction

Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery

in Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962

This introductory chapter provides a background of the collectivization of agriculture in Romania. The collectivization of agriculture was the first mass action, in largely agrarian countries like ... More

This introductory chapter provides a background of the collectivization of agriculture in Romania. The collectivization of agriculture was the first mass action, in largely agrarian countries like the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Romania, through which the new communist regime initiated its radical program of social, political, cultural, and economic transformation. Collectivizing agriculture was not merely an aspect of the larger policy of industrial development but an attack on the very foundations of rural life. By leaving rural inhabitants without their own means of livelihood, it radically increased their dependence on the Party-state. It both prepared and compelled them to be the proletarians of new industrial facilities. Moreover, it destroyed or at least frayed both the vertical and the horizontal social relations in which villagers were embedded and through which they defined themselves and pursued their existence.Less

Chinese Religion and Rural Cohesion in the Nineteenth Century: (1968)*

Marjorie Topley

Jean DeBernardi (ed.)

in Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, Religion, Medicine and Money

In China in the nineteenth century some of the most important ideas which were religious, or had religious implications, linked the destiny of individuals to their ancestors; to numerous gods and ... More

In China in the nineteenth century some of the most important ideas which were religious, or had religious implications, linked the destiny of individuals to their ancestors; to numerous gods and sanctified worthies; and to certain cosmic “ethers” and “elements” and their process. Rural China was by no means homogeneous in the nineteenth century. It was dotted with villages of different size and composition: some, particularly in the south-east, consisted of single lineages or “clans.” Religion entered into the organization of such communities everywhere to some extent. The nineteenth century was a time when villages had to provide a great deal in the way of their own control and often appealed to religious ideas to do so. The chapter deals four kinds of religious association and semi-religious association in rural life and it begins with an analysis of ancestral cults.Less

The Quality of Social Relations

M.N. Srinivas

in The Remembered Village

This chapter describes the quality of social relations in Rampura. The principle of reciprocity was basic to rural social life. Muyyi was the term used for exchange of labour, and it was resorted to ... More

This chapter describes the quality of social relations in Rampura. The principle of reciprocity was basic to rural social life. Muyyi was the term used for exchange of labour, and it was resorted to when the need for agricultural labour was at its peak. The omnipresence of hierarchical ideas had led to the proliferation and refinement of the symbols of superordination and subordination. The word moka or face was heard frequently in conversation. It stood for a person's image before others and for his self-respect. Friendship and enmity were both widely recognized relationships between individuals, families, and lineages. Gossip was an important activity in the village, and certain features of rural life provided an ideal soil for it. Envy was also a familiar phenomenon. Meanwhile, a sense of humour was an integral part of Indian village life, even though anthropological studies show no evidence of it.Less

Nobility in Rustication

Philip Thibodeau

in Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's Georgics

This chapter attempts to bring to the fore representations of leisure (otium) and villa culture in the Georgics. Despite realistic elements, these also constitute a fantasy that can be usefully ... More

This chapter attempts to bring to the fore representations of leisure (otium) and villa culture in the Georgics. Despite realistic elements, these also constitute a fantasy that can be usefully analyzed in terms of its emphases and omissions, shaped by moral and aesthetic concerns. It first considers Vergil's use of prestige language—value terms like honor, Gloria, and dignitas, heavy in their social overtones—that are attached to elements of rural life. It then looks at the poem's habit of tracing the traditions of the countryside back to their origins in a mythological or heroic past, so that they acquire a dignified genealogy. It next analyzes the poem's representations of festivals within a rustic setting, in order to tie those images to aristocratic habits of euergestism and communal patronage. Finally, it takes a close look at the most extended and explicit account of rustication in the poem, the Laudes Ruris, “Praises of the Countryside” sequence at the end of book 2, observing how Vergil uses that passage to weave the aforementioned themes together.Less

Rurality

Adam Scovell

in Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange

This chapter investigates the use of the rural setting in Folk Horror. David Gladwell's 1976 experimental feature Requiem for a Village questions the logic of such location-bred violence by looking ... More

This chapter investigates the use of the rural setting in Folk Horror. David Gladwell's 1976 experimental feature Requiem for a Village questions the logic of such location-bred violence by looking into darker aspects of the rural. This is not simply through emphasis upon the topographical difference between urban and rural areas but more akin to the accoutrements of rural living and lifestyle; the aesthetics of farming, and other practices that are required to live off the land have a dual character of violence and history. Folk Horror regularly builds its sense of the horrific around societies and groups of people that have very specific ways of life, and it is not by sheer chance that these often happen to be rural rather than urban. This sense of divide between the two accounts for what was called ‘skewed belief systems and ideologies’, but there is more to it than the allowing of pulp forms of paganism and occultism to grow; Folk Horror uses the otherness that can be attributed to rural life to warp the very reality of its narrative worlds and often for its own explicit means.Less

Populism

Edward L. Ayers

in Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906

This chapter describes the relationships between the alliance and their members and the dynamics between the members of different races. The alliance was not driven by a single idea or policy; ... More

This chapter describes the relationships between the alliance and their members and the dynamics between the members of different races. The alliance was not driven by a single idea or policy; rather, it was the general insistence that the government should pursue actions that are more beneficial to its constituents that united it. Conflicts arose between the members of the alliances. The members of the White Alliance had differing views while the blacks, who were members of the Colored Alliance, also had different perspectives. The conflicts were mostly political in character but some were even social. This difference eventually led to the sharp decline of the Colored Alliance. The anxieties of rural life did not help much as it even contributed to the conflicts between the members.Less

Spiritual Efficiency: Rethinking the Rural Church Experience

Kevin M. Lowe

in Baptized with the Soil: Christian Agrarians and the Crusade for Rural America

This chapter focuses on some of the effects that ecumenical agrarian institutions had on local communities. Agrarian reformers took a strong interest in the experience of rural congregations. Drawing ... More

This chapter focuses on some of the effects that ecumenical agrarian institutions had on local communities. Agrarian reformers took a strong interest in the experience of rural congregations. Drawing on a Progressive heritage, they promoted “spiritual efficiency,” including new cooperative strategies for organizing and running churches. The chapter describes programs for consolidating churches, including the larger parish plan, and presents a case study of Tompkins County, New York. At the same time, individual denominations and ecumenical organizations continued to work with ostensibly secular organizations like 4-H to promote rural-focused community celebrations. This rural spirituality found expression especially in two newly designed festivals: Rural Life Sunday and Harvest Home Sunday, which were designed to cement rural people’s devotion to the countryside.Less

‘Practical power and faith’: 1 Ruskin and the Companions of the Guild of St George

Stuart Eagles

in After Ruskin: The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet, 1870–1920

Ruskin's utopianist Guild of St. George was the embodiment of his social challenge. An extension of his personality, it grew partly out of his early involvement with the Working Men's College in ... More

Ruskin's utopianist Guild of St. George was the embodiment of his social challenge. An extension of his personality, it grew partly out of his early involvement with the Working Men's College in London. In microcosm, the Guild served directly both to help educate the workman through a free and carefully organised Museum in Sheffield, and to return a few of Ruskin's most loyal Companions, to a simple rural life. Others, working in the spirit of the Guild, but not directly for it, revived traditional handicrafts in the Lake District and on the Isle of Man. Before Ruskin's death, the dedication of his Companions was responsible for securing the Guild's modest successes, and although their efforts became less focused after 1900, they continued to support the sorts of progressive social institutions in which many of Ruskin's disciples congregated outside the Guild.Less

Sex and the country: the rural Bildungsromane of Maura Laverty and Patrick Kavanagh

Michael G. Cronin

in Impure Thoughts: Sexuality, Catholicism and Literature in Twentieth-Century Ireland

This chapter focuses on the works of Maura Laverty and Patrick Kavanagh. It first analyses Kavanagh' two versions of the Bildungsroman: his autobiography The Green Fool (1938) and his novel Tarry ... More

This chapter focuses on the works of Maura Laverty and Patrick Kavanagh. It first analyses Kavanagh' two versions of the Bildungsroman: his autobiography The Green Fool (1938) and his novel Tarry Flynn (1948). It then compares his works with Maura Laverty, whose works depict sexuality, rural life and Irish underdevelopment. The chapter argues that Laverty's and Kavanagh's youth narratives and their visions of rural Ireland were important innovations in the history of the Irish Bildungsroman.Less

Economic and Social Change under Japanese Colonialism

Albert L. Park

in Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism, and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea

Chapter 2 outlines the transforming capitalist economy in rural Korea. It discusses how various nationalists and intellectuals responded to the agrarian crisis and saw rural Korea fitting into their ... More

Chapter 2 outlines the transforming capitalist economy in rural Korea. It discusses how various nationalists and intellectuals responded to the agrarian crisis and saw rural Korea fitting into their visions of the ideal nation- state. This discursive description of the impact of capitalism on rural culture and society provides context for understanding why YMCA, Presbyterian, and Ch’ŏndogyo leaders created new faith- based social activist language and why the movements chose to focus their reconstruction efforts on the countryside.Less

Laborer

Gail Hershatter

in The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China's Collective Past

This chapter explores the entwinement of the campaign time of the state with the domestic time of the household during the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent famine in China. It explains that the ... More

This chapter explores the entwinement of the campaign time of the state with the domestic time of the household during the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent famine in China. It explains that the objective of the Great Leap Forward was to reorganize every aspect of rural life and that the expansive utopian plans promised to relieve women of domestic tasks so that their labor could be devoted to these new projects. It suggests that the women's field labor from the late 1950s to the end of the collective era in the early 1980s was an important component of the national economic strategy on which subsequent economic reform has been built.Less

The Painting of Rural Life

in The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt

During the interwar period and up through World War II, peasant studies emerged within social-scientific inquiry in Egypt, a development that must be viewed within a variety of historical contexts. ... More

During the interwar period and up through World War II, peasant studies emerged within social-scientific inquiry in Egypt, a development that must be viewed within a variety of historical contexts. An example of such a context is the Egyptian anti-colonial nationalists' struggle against British colonialism. The expansion of the domain of agricultural scientific knowledge production occupies a central place in the story of science in modern Egypt. Focusing on the Egyptian peasantry, this chapter explores discourses that traverse amateur ethnography, literary realism, and positivist human geographical studies. In particular, it examines the interrelationships among anti-colonial nationalism, class struggle, and peasant rebellion in twentieth-century Egypt. The cataloguing and description of the peasantry as cultural artifacts of national identity gave rise to various genres, including the literary painting of rural life, journalistic and descriptive accounts of the countryside, and analyses based on social psychology. The chapter also examines the emergence of human geography as a discipline that studies the relationship between the geographical environment of Egypt and peasant modes of life.Less

Introduction: Local Lives

Marcel Thomas

in Local Lives, Parallel Histories: Villagers and Everyday Life in the Divided Germany

This chapter introduces the reader to the two case study villages Neukirch and Ebersbach, explains the methodology of the study, and outlines the structure of the book. It also sets out the central ... More

This chapter introduces the reader to the two case study villages Neukirch and Ebersbach, explains the methodology of the study, and outlines the structure of the book. It also sets out the central argument that there were parallel histories of responses to social change among villagers in the divided Germany. The chapter then outlines the three major ways in which the book contributes to scholarship on postwar Germany: Firstly, by highlighting similarities between East and West, it complicates persisting Cold War divisions in the historical literature. Secondly, it emphasizes the complex ways in which East and West Germans engaged with large-scale changes through peculiarly local meanings. Thirdly, by focusing on two case study localities which question conventional divides between the urban and the rural, it challenges understandings of the rural as the traditional ‘other’ in modern society.Less

Prologue Sunflower County, 1994

Chris Myers Asch

in The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer

This chapter describes how Sunflower can be a beautiful place even in the heat of late summer. As a native of Washington, D.C., the author had never experienced rural life, and he found himself ... More

This chapter describes how Sunflower can be a beautiful place even in the heat of late summer. As a native of Washington, D.C., the author had never experienced rural life, and he found himself loving it—vast fields that stretched to the horizon, unhindered by buildings, trees, or elevation changes; the massive sky filled at night with stars he never knew existed; brilliant sunsets that set clouds aflame. He had left behind a world of frenetic busyness, mind-numbing traffic, and relentless hurry for a town without a stoplight or twenty-four-hour convenience store. The author could walk to work in six minutes, and everyone who passed by in a car or pickup waved or called hello. Running errands became a leisurely opportunity to talk with his students' parents and other folks at the post office or Mrs. Russell's grocery store.Less