Essay on City Life vs.

Village Life
(2465 words)
by Negi Mohita Essay

Essay on City Life vs. Village Life!

One of the most striking features of industrial age is the growth of
city life. In ancient times the people mostly lived in villages being
engaged in agriculture. Cities arose here and there as centres of
trade or seats of government. Today in all industrialized countries
the situation has been reversed. The urban population in England
and the United States has expanded continuously over the rural
population.

New facilities of transport and communication have brought

thousands of people nearer to each other and made it convenient for
them to live together in large aggregations. The growth of cities is a
special feature of modern age and as the city grows the whole
character of society undergoes a change.

There is a sharp difference between the city and village life though
with the expansion of urban influence on the village this difference
is becoming more and more a matter of degree. However, in spite of
the recent trends of urbanisation the villages still retain many of
their traditional features and present a sharp contrast with the
urban life.

(i) Force of Traditional Mores:

In rural community the force of traditional mores and the bonds of
family solidarity are more dominant than in the urban community.
According to Biesanz and Biesanz, In the rural community custom
is the king, the folkways and mores control most of behaviour, The
sense of group responsibility which tends to be more and more
dissolved in the growth of the city prevails in village life.

The type of village family is generally patriarchal in which the status

of the individual is the status of his family. There is less individual
questioning and rebellion. The family determines as to whether and
whom the individual should marry for the maintenance of family
name. There is lesser freedom in the selection of life partner. There
are few love-marriages.

Not only marriage but also religion, recreation, occupation pre

determined by family traditions. Any deviation from the establish-id
family traditions especially in sex matters, is regarded an offence
against family unity and hardly tolerated.

The life of all men and women is merged in family life. In short,
family dominates individuals life in village community. Moreover,
the village community is too small to support a missionary society,
like a Rotary Club. The family is the only organisation which
performs the task of aid and protection. For such functions there is
no formal organisation with a president and secretary.

On the other hand, in the city community life is conspicuous by the

absence of family life. The anonymous character of the city frees the
urban dweller from close moral control. Social control becomes the
activity of specialized agencies. Family control is lessened. Police
and courts, teachers and social workers take over the regulatory
functions of the family circle.

A free lance detached from family bonds is looked askance at in

the village while such a person, even his norms of conduct, sexual
and otherwise may pass unnoticed in the city and be admitted to
those places where high class gentry goes. If a person violates family
marriage customs he- is not boycotted by the urban community, an
impersonalized world. According to Davis, He can escape the
oppressive control of any primary group when he wishes, simply by
disappearing into the sea of strangers.

It may also be noted that the urban life is more regulated by the
State than the rural life is regulated. Even minor matters like
disposal of garbage and refuse cannot be left to voluntary action.
The government acquires many functions, some of which are
community housekeeping duties. Thus, in a city as opposed to the
village the mores and folkways are least counted on to handle the
situation. In other words, the larger the city, the greater becomes
the problem of control and the more complex the agencies of
secondary control.

(ii) Primary Contacts:

Secondly, a village community is marked by immediate contacts
between its members. There is a strong we-feeling in the rural
community. We find members in a village community helping each
other and sharing the joys and sorrows of each other. In the village
everybody is known to everybody.

Their relations are personal. Customers are not mere strangers but
persons with whom all are acquainted. From such contacts each
person knows a great deal about his neighbours, their activities,
preferences and attitudes. Status of each one in the village
community is well known.

Written contracts are less important than a word of honour. Crime

in village community is rare. Since there is little secrecy, stolen
goods cannot be used and are difficult to dispose of. Things are
done by mutual understanding. In city life, on the other hand,
nearness counts much less. The inhabitants of a city hardly know
each other.

Sometimes, they do not know even their next-door neighbour

nothing to speak of influencing their activities. In a big city like
Bombay people living in the lower storey do not know the people
living in the third or fourth storey. There is an atmosphere of
indifference and callousness in a city.

In a city like Calcutta, an inhabitant may spend a whole day in the

street and never see a person he knows, though he may see tens of
thousands of people. Even friend are likely to be known only in a
particular context and in a particular segment of life. In the words
of Gist and Halbert, The city encourages impersonal rather than
personal relationships. Most of the relations are indirect.
Competition has a far greater velocity in the city than in the village.

(iii) Simplicity and Uniformity:

Life in a village community is simple and uniform. There are few
ambitious men and fewer excitements. The villagers lead a uniform
life tilling land and rearing animals. Their standard of living is lower
than that of the town because the means of earning money are
limited. They view land as the most substantial of all heritages.

Agriculture is their major occupation. When oppressive taxes or

other measures threaten their ownership of land, they align
themselves with radical movements as happened in Soviet Russia.
The standard of living of the urban people is higher.

They are more prodigal than the village people. Country life
suggests save, City life suggests spend. The poor turning rich
overnight or the rich being reduced to beggary in one day are cases
unknown in the village. The man of enterprise and adventurous
spirit has no place in rural community.

The city dweller becomes indifferent to extremes of all kinds.

Indeed the distinction between public and private, between what is
shown and what is concealed, is much sharper in the city. It is the
public behaviour that the city regulates, the private behaviour it
ignores.

(iv) Specialization:
Another contrast between village and urban community is
concerning the modes of production. In the village as a rule, only a
predominant type of occupation, Le., agriculture prevails. Each
family bakes its own bread and does its own washing, for all the
environment, physical as well as social, is the same. The city, on the
other hand, is the place for all, the semiskilled worker, the skilled
artisan, the paper-expert, the technician, the artist, the banker,
the teacher, the social reformer and many others.

It is a heterogeneous group of people engaged in various pursuits.

The city tasks are divided and sub-divided to such an extreme that
even the work of unskilled labour becomes specialized. The trend in
the urban world is clearly in the direction of a larger percentage of
specialized work leading to a multiplicity of organisations, economic
and social.
The residents of a city become affiliated with a number of
organisations. Their social relations are mostly indirect and
secondary. Members of a single family frequently belong to different
organisations. Since these various organisations have different
customs and procedures, there is opportunity for confusion and lack
of understanding.

(v) Proper Placing of All:

The process of selection for the specialized work is keener. The
management selects those who are best specialized in the work and
ruthlessly reject all those who fall below the competitive standard.
The owner of special ability has greater chances of quick promotion.
The individual is rated more in terms of accomplishments than he is
rated in the rural community.

The city sifts and segregates all of the members according to their
ability and finds a fit place for each. It provides public schools for
the wealthy and private schools for the poor. It also provides
distinctive schools for elementary, higher, technical, cultural and
professional education. It even provides separate schools for
defective persons, e.g. Deaf and Dumb school.

(vi) Social Mobility:

The city requires and promotes great social mobility. It lays
emphasis on achievement rather than the ascription of status. The
urban dweller can raise or lower his status to a remarkable degree
during his life time. The caste element in social stratification is
minimized.

Status centres on the occupation, on the nature and competence of

the activity, rather than on the accident of birth. As opposed to the
village in a city social climbing is most prevalent. Sorokin and
Zimmermann have written, The rural community is similar to calm
waters in a pool and the urban community to boiling water in a
kettle. Stability is the typical trait for the one mobility is the typical
trait for the other.

(vii) Areas of specialization:

Specialization is also seen in the physical structure of the city.
Distinctive areas are marked for different activities. Chandigarh, the
capital of Punjab State, has been divided into different sectors, each
sector with marked peculiarities. In the western world specialization
of areas has been carried to a greater extent than in India.

The structure varies from city to city in accordance with the size,
site and needs, of the city, but generally everywhere in the western
world there is a clear division of space into zones of business
activity, of low rentals and residential congestion, of transitory
abode, of middle-class residence, of industrial concentration, and
so forth.

(viii) Position of Women:

Specialization in the city has also influenced the life of women. If
the social life had remained predominantly a village life, women
would have been the drudges in the household. Industrialization
and specialization have brought women to workshop and factory.
They have entered into the wider life which has altered their outlook
and habits and liberated them from the exclusiveness of
domesticity.

As MacIver observes, The individualization of women has been

fostered by urban life and the resulting freer reciprocity of
relationship between men and women, as individuals, is exercising
and will doubtless continue to exercise, since the process is still
advancing, a significant influence on the whole structure of society.

(ix) Contrast of Qualities:

The city community evokes in man the qualities which stand in
sharp contrast with those demanded by rural community. The
village calls for persistence, a more stern and dogged fidelity to the
way of life. He is fatalistic and is in constant contact with nature. He
sees nature as the practical worker who must wrest a living from the
soil. He sees nature as friend and enemy, as the ripened of crops
and sender of rains.

The forces of nature are beyond his control and reckoning. He is

attached to- rituals and becomes superstitious and religious. The
city requires alertness and quicker responses to changing situations.
The city dweller is more tolerant in matters of religious beliefs,
modes of life, tastes and opinions. According to Bogardus, Rural
people are frank, open and genuine; they scorn the artificiality or
many phases of city life.

The city is ruled by impersonality of law and the caprice of fashion.

In a rural community the rural moral codes are fixed and strict. Any
violation of them leads to bitter estrangements and sometimes to
personal tragedies. In a rural community there is much mutual aid.
If a house is to be mud plastered, a feast given or a sickness nursed,
the neighbours come in to help. There is an atmosphere of
kindliness.

There is a good deal of visiting, several times daily, between the

people. In an urban community there is no strong we feeling. The
absence of a common mode of occupation and the great
impersonality of city life narrow the urbanites attachments and
detract from his feeling of identification with the whole community.

The secondary and voluntary character of urban association, the

multiplicity of opportunities, and the social mobility all force the
individual to make his own decisions and to plan his life as a career.
The city instead of suppressing the individuality emphasizes it.

The competitiveness of the city places the individual over against

everyone else he is not inexorably tied to any particular relationship
or cause. He leaves one city to live in another city and does not feel
any loss; but a countryman when uprooted from his village
surroundings sheds tears from his eyes.

(x) City a Home of Wealth:

Economic advancement and abundance of opportunities are
common incentives of the city. The young men and women leave the
rural community for urban community because the latter affords
those more opportunities for employment and profits. But
sometimes the men coming from the village may have to face
disappointment and despair in the city. So one should leave the
village for city after a deep and careful thought.
The above are then the features that distinguish rural from urban
life. In the city opposite conditions are found, aggregation ;instead
of physical isolation; associations of many kinds supplementing or
supplanting the functions of family or categorical relationships;
contacts with human beings and civilization diversity superseding
contacts with nature; differentiation of economic classes and
specialization of economic tasks, ranking and grading men in ways
often unknown in the country; limited and intensified work, with its
endless varieties and disparities of opportunity and of fortune
creating an intricate design of competitive living traditionally alien
to the rural sense. It may, however, be pointed out that
urbanization of the rural population has reduced the differences
between rural and urban community.
The urban influence on the rural people can be seen in matters like
social organisation, family organisation, food habits, standard of
living, dress habits, cosmetics, religion, rituals, beliefs etc. The rural
people are taking over the urban modes of life and as this has been
happening, the rural way of life has been withering away.

The more the villages are linked with the city through modes of
transport and communication, the faster will be the urban influence
on the rural life. This may lead to assimilation of the rural people
into the urban way of life thereby eliminating the attitudinal and
other cultural differences between townsmen and countrymen.