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rfmcdonaldOne thing that my travelling companions and I noticed in Stouffville on Saturday was that the country fair is not now if it ever was representative of any kind of Ontarian rural culture. The GO train's northern terminus can be found in Stouffville, which seems to have been firmly assimilated into a basically Torontonian/suburban mindset. In several sociology classes that I took at UPEI under Dr. Satadal Dasgupta, the phenomenon of "cultural urbanization" was explored at greater length. Suffice it to say that throughout Canada--and I suspect the First and Second Worlds, and (I further predict) in the Third World within a generation or two after its initial massive rural-to-urban migration--the assimilation of rural areas to urban cultural norms is universal.
I, for one, heartily approve of this. My parents very consciously broke with rural culture on Prince Edward Island, moving from the vicinity of Souris in the rural far east of Prince Edward Island to the local equivalent of suburbia, taking care to limit their contact with agriculture to the maintenance of rather nice flower and vegetable gardens along with the lawn, finding work in the higher-end segment service sector of the Island economy. They broke with rural life, and substantially with rural culture, because they found it unrewarding and stultifying. At most, they read a David Weale book--some title that's an overly-glowing recounting of "them times," before the Island began to modernize--once in a while.
Yes, traditional rural cultures fit the Weberian definition of gemeineschaft quite nicely. That's probably why people try to break them down so often.
I, for one, heartily approve of this. My parents very consciously broke with rural culture on Prince Edward Island, moving from the vicinity of Souris in the rural far east of Prince Edward Island to the local equivalent of suburbia, taking care to limit their contact with agriculture to the maintenance of rather nice flower and vegetable gardens along with the lawn, finding work in the higher-end segment service sector of the Island economy. They broke with rural life, and substantially with rural culture, because they found it unrewarding and stultifying. At most, they read a David Weale book--some title that's an overly-glowing recounting of "them times," before the Island began to modernize--once in a while.
Yes, traditional rural cultures fit the Weberian definition of gemeineschaft quite nicely. That's probably why people try to break them down so often.
