Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rura -Urban Distinction

in Marx, Tonnies and Weber”

KIERAN BONNERAugustana University College

Dans cet article, on evalue la pertinence de diverses representations

du ruralisme et de l‘urbanisme chez Marx, Tonnies e t Weber, dans
la mesure ou elles se rapportent B la documentation actuelle sur la
question de la reflexivite en sciences sociales. Etant donne
l’influence linguistique dans la recherche en sciences humaines, le
nouvel examen de ce discours n’est pas fait dans le but de definir la
ruralite de faGon *essentialistes. L‘analyse porte plut8t s u r la
signification des tentatives que font Marx, Tonnies e t Weber pour
elaborer un concept de ruralite qui permet de d6m6ler la faGon dont
fonctionnent les negations et les oppositions dans leurs textes. On
pretend que le discours ruraYurbain est structure autour d‘une
modernite qui cherche a etablir un dialogue avec l’alterite e t a
questionner les limites. On montre aussi la difficulte qu’eprouve
l’esprit de la modernite devant la necessit6 de preserver un sens a
l’alterite tout en l’engageant dans un processus relationnel sans
pour autant se l’approprier. Plusieurs etudes canadiennes, qui font
appel B la distinction rurauurbain, sont citees pour illustrer la
dificulte conceptuelle du domaine. L’auteur affirme qu’un aspect de
cette difficulte face B l’alterite, dans ce cas-ci l’alterite du rural,
tient de l’objectivite scientifique, laquelle exclut la reflexivite du
processus de recherche. La reflexivite, inherente e t necessaire au
processus de recherche en sciences humaines, est donc ici a la fois
sujet e t ressource.

This paper assesses the relevance of various representations of

ruralisdurbanism in Marx, Tonnies, and Weber as these pertain t o
the current literature on the issue of reflexivity in social science.
Acknowledging the linguistic turn in human science inquiry, the re-
examination of this discourse does not attempt to develop an
* Kieran Bonner is Associate Professor of Sociology a t Augustana University College in Alberta,
Canada. He was recently Visiting Fellow in the Humanities a t University College Galway, Ireland.
He has completed a book for Macmillan Press Limited called Power and Parenting: A Herrneneutic
of the Human Condition and a book for McGill-Queen’s University Press (forthcoming) called “A
Great Place to Raise Kids: Interpretation, Science and the Urban-Rural Debate.”This article is based
on a section of the more extended discussion on the rural-urban discourse in the latter book. He is
also editor of Dianoia: A Liberal Arts Interdisciplinary Journal. The manuscript of this article was
submitted in February 1996 and accepted in February 1997. The author gratefully acknowledges the
help of Scott Grills and senior sociology students a t Augustana and the helpful suggestions given on
an earlier draft by Rosalind Sydie and the Review’s anonymous reviewers.
166 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

“essentialist” definition of rurality. Rather the analysis is concerned

with the meaning of the attempts by Marx, Tonnies, and Weber to
develop a concept of rurality which involves teasing out the way
negations and oppositions operate in their texts. The paper argues
that the rurallurban discourse is structured by a modernist interest
in engaging otherness and questioning limits. It also shows the
difficulty a modernist consciousness has with preserving a sense of
the very otherness it needs to engage. Several Canadian studies,
which draw on the rurallurban distinction are cited to illustrate the
field’s conceptual predicament. The paper argues that part of the
problem which modernity has with otherness (in this case the
otherness of the rural) lies in the scientific requirement that, by
virtue of a commitment to objectivity, reflexivity be excluded from
the process of inquiry. Reflexivity, as intrinsic and necessary to the
process of human science inquiry, is therefore both a topic and a
resource for the paper.
a . . . disquieting quality of modernism: its taste for appropriating or
redeeming otherness, for constituting non-Western arts in its own
image, for discovering universal, ahistorical “human” capacities.
(Clifford, 1988: 193)

AS WE READILY RECOGNIZE from media coverage, the urban-rural

distinction is alive in popular imagination. Television programs such as
North of 60, Picket Fences, NYPD Blue and E.R. display a contrast in ways
of living which rural and urban settings are said t o represent. The debate
in the Canadian parliament on the gun registration bill (1995) was said to
have been organized on rural-urban lines. Surveys (e.g.,Yerxa, 1992)and
popular radio programs (such the CBC’s Morningside) claim that a rural
setting is often preferred for the superior “quality of life” it offers and for
being a good place t o raise children.’
The urban-rural debate has long been addressed in sociology. Yet,
despite its place in popular culture, as a concept, the distinction is said to
be sociologically irrelevant, at least according t o Pahl (1968) and Gans
(1968).The globalization (Giddens, 1991)and the mediatization (Meyrowitz,
1985) of modern society seem to have made the distinctions developed by
the sociologists in the late nineteenth century irrelevant for the late
twentieth century. Is the urban-rural distinction a modernist
conceptualization whichnow has no relevance in these so-called postmodern
times?
In this paper I will show that by making use of contemporary develop-
ments in sociology (phenomenology,hermeneutics, poststructuralism and

1. Peter Gzowski’s popular radio program, Morningside (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation),broad-

cast an interview (July, 1990) with three “urbanrefugees,”three people who quit their “prestigious”
and high-paying careers in order to leave the city and live in the country. The tone of the interview
was of people who had the courage to “live the dream,” who gave time to themselves and their
personal fulfillment as against time given for the necessity of professional activity. In a similar
article in Mademoiselle (April, 1992), a reporter says that the “urban tide has turned, and it now
seems like no one can escape their concrete jungle fast enough” (88).
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Ru ra I-Urban Distinction 167

dialectical analysis),the classic contributions of Marx, Tonnies and Weber

can be analysed to show the way they participate in and foreshadow the
modern and post-modern debate. The paper also argues that the most
important contribution of contemporary theoretical developmentst o soci-
ology is the recognition of the importance of the need to include reflexivity
in the process of inquiry. This article, therefore, demonstrates how
contemporary theoretical developments can be used to help understand
the meaning that the urban-rural distinction had for Marx, Tonnies and
Weber. Though written from a standpoint of familiarity with interpretive
sociology(a familiarity shared by many Canadian sociologists),the subject
matter (the classical tradition and the urban-rural debate) and the point
(the need for reflexive sociology) are of concern for the whole tradition.2
While distinctions between city and country are almost as old as
Western culture itself (Williams, 19731, it is the rise of modernity in
general and of the Industrial Revolution in particular which generated the
sociologicaldebate about the positive and/or negative consequences of this
new development. As Sennett remarks, “up to the time of the Industrial
Revolution, the city was taken by most social thinkers to be the image of
society itself, and not some special, unique form of society”(1969: 3). The
country, whether in its pastoral (Theocritus) or agricultural (Hesiod)
representation, was synonymous with nature, i.e., the fertility of spring
and summer in contrast t o the barrenness and accident ofwinter (Williams,
1973: 13-34). The rapid changes in society brought on by the Industrial
Revolution focussed and organized the theorizing and research concerning
urban-rural differences. In particular, the drastic shift in population from
rural t o urban centres meant that within a period of 100 years, many
societies, that had been demographically rural for centuries, became
demographically urban.3In turn, this change challenged social theorists
t o reflect on the meaning and influence of urban and rural social organi-
zation. For social theorists who sought to understand the transformation
in urban and rural life initiated by the industrial revolution, the urban-
rural distinction no longer referenced the difference between corruptness
of society and the purity of nature (Rousseau)but rather presented social
theorists with two different kinds of social organization.

2. This paper is part of a larger work which addresses more thoroughly the historical literature in the
field (Bonner, 1997).
3. “The process of industrialization generated increasing urbanization-the movement of the popu-
lation into towns and cities, away from the life on the land. In 1800,well under 20 percent of the
British population lived in towns or cities having more than 10.000 inhabitants. By 1900,this
proportion had become 74 percent. The capital city, London, held about 1.1 million people in 1800;
it increased in size to a population of over seven million by the beginning of the twentieth century.
London was at that date by far the largest city ever seen in the world; it was a vast manufacturing,
commercial, and financial centre at the heart of a still-expanding British Empire.”
“The urbanization of most other European countries, and the United States, took place
somewhat later, but in some cases, once under way, accelerated even faster. In 1800,the United
States was more of a rural society than were the leading European countries at the same date. Less
than 10 percent of the population lived in communities with populations of more than 2,500 people.
Today, well over three-quarters of Americans are city dwellers. Between 1800 and 1900, a s
industrialization grew in the United States, the population of New York leapt from 60,000 people to
4.8 million” (Giddens, 1990:676).
168 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

This development in the understanding of the rural from what is

Other to human society (nature, beauty, the brutish, the mysterious) to
another kind of society, itself demonstrates what Clifford, in the essay
cited above (1988: 193),ironically calls “the healthy capacity of modernist
consciousness t o question its limits and engage otherness.” At the end of
this century, we are very much aware of the practical consequences of this
modernist impulse. Otherness is more often “appropriated or redeemed”
rather than truly engaged. And whether one looks to Arendt (1958) or
Foucault (1977), or Grant (1969),it seems that the disappearance of any
strong conception of otherness mirrors the disappearance of any relevant
sociological conception of rurality. The history of the sociologicalliterature
on the urban-rural difference is a story which begins with a conception of
its decisiveness for understanding ways of living (Wirth, 1938) to its
irrelevance as a sociological conception (Gans, 1968; Pahl, 1968). This
history begins with the opportunity the distinction raises for comparing
two different ways of living (the urban, the rural), and concludesthat “any
attempt t o tie particular patterns of social relationships to specific geo-
graphical milieux is a singularly fruitful exercise” (Pahl, 1969: 293).4
While the reason given to account for the discrepancy between the earlier
(ChicagoSchool)and later sociologists is the anti-urban ideological bias of
the former (e.g., Hutter, 1988: 41; Pahl, 1969: 85), I will argue that this
story reflects both “the capacityof the modernist consciousnessto question
its limits and engage otherness” and the difficulty a modernist conscious-
ness has with preserving a sense of the very otherness it needs t o engage.
Because I am also dealing with the inception of modern sociology, I will
argue that the sociological project, particularly in its more positivistic
expression, is bound up with this modernist problem; part of the problem
which modernity has with otherness (in this case the otherness of the
rural) lies in the scientific requirement that, by virtue of its commitment
to objectivity (Taylor, 1977: 103-311, reflexivity be excluded from the
process of inquiry. For the purposes of space,I will concentrate on the work
of three seminal nineteenth-century sociologists, Marx, Tonnies, and
Weber in order t o tease out the tensions built into their influentially
formative conceptions of the urban-rural distinction (see Appendix for a
more detailed description of the theoretic orientation of this article).
Initially the urban-rural discourse in sociology was organized on the
basis of seeking t o understand two types of society, the urban society and
the rural society. Otherness is now understood to represent not what is
other t o human understanding/society but rather an alternative way of
living. The implications of this discursive strategy means that the engage-
ment of otherness now raises the issues of freedom, evaluation, and
change. Modern social science discourse, by casting Other as another
social organization, rests on and asserts the claim that society represents
a particular way of living and that this way of living has to be understood,
4. For a summary of this literature as it pertains to Canada see Hale, (1990: 106-36) and as it pertains
to the United States and Britain see Hutter (1988:28-104). For global trends see Giddens (1990:673-
704).
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 169

evaluated and compared with another way of living. The sociological

distinction now has an implicit normative element-which is better? As we
will see, Marx and Tonnies are explicit in their answer to this question
while Weber recognizes the difficulty a scientific sociology has in address-
ing this question of value in the first place.

Marx and Engels:

The City/Country Progressive/Regressive Distinction
One of the earliest sociologists to address the differences between the city
and the country is Marx. He and Engels interpreted the rise of capitalism
as a simultaneous subjection
. . .of the country to the rule ofthe town. It has created enormouscities,
has greatly increased the urban populations as compared with the
rural, and has thus rescued a considerablepart of the population from
the idiocy of rural life (1965: 38).
Here and in The German Ideology (1970: 39-95), they argue that
rural life nurtured a subservience t o nature (68). They see this subservi-
ence as a primitive form of society because it is a primitive mode of
production. That is, rural life is not an other to the mode of production of
capitalism but rather an early stage in its development. The country is
organized by the relation between humans and nature, the labour of the
farmer for the product ofthe latter. At this stage of the mode of production,
humans have not yet grasped the productive possibilities inherent within
their own labour. They have not, according to Marx and Engels, because
“physical activity is as yet not separated from mental activity.” Thus
“[alverage human common sense is adequate” in relation to what life
demands. Moreover, “[tlhe antagonism between town and country begins
with the transition from barbarism to civilization, from tribe to state, from
locality t o nation, and runs through the whole.history of civilization to the
present day” (1970: 69). That is, the very tension between and
t n T r m

country is itself an instance of the rise of civilization as exemplified in the

form of the development of nation or state. The existence of the town
requires the ability to think independently of the natural task at hand,
because exchange and labour as modes of production are liberated from,
as against being dominated by, subservience to the land. The town makes
human independence recognizable as a possibility and actuality where the
country makes domination (ofhumans by nature, ofhumans by each other,
e.g., landlordherf) seem natural and necessary.
Marx and Engels argue that the feudal system of ownership promi-
nent in the Middle Ages “started out from the country” (1970: 45). In this
feudal system, people were tied to each other in a hierarchical and
patriarchal manner in a way which fettered the productive possibilities
inherent in human action (1965: 32-48). Rural life leads to idiocy because
the nascent productive vitality inherent to all social organization is
overwhelmed by the ideology of a deference to tradition which is antitheti-
170 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

cal to the material and productive possibilities in social organization.

Therefore, according t o this formulation, rural life is idiotic because it
endlessly and unimaginatively repeats the social patterns of previous
generations under the guise of a feudal ideology which legitimates patri-
archy, hierarchy, and the domination of people in general.
From this perspective, the ideology of family, community, and tradi-
tion associated with rurality is a mere “sentimental veil” that bound the
majority of people, particularly women and children, to a subordinate,
impoverished life, and encouraged a “slothful indolence.” By virtue of its
ideological antipathy to the novel possibilities in human action, rural life
therefore is antipathetic to the resources that the new, who in any society
are the young, could bring to the community. Arendt (1958) says that an
openness to the novel (inherent in the condition of natality) is the
requirement for developing the possibility ofhuman action. The possibility
of beginning something new is fundamental t o the human condition.
Humans are active agents who have the possibility of reacting in ways that
are unpredictable, making the unanticipated consequences of action a
fundamental topic for sociology (Merton, 1976).However, not every social
organization is receptive to and encouraging of this capacity, though there
is no social organization which can eliminate it. Rural life, and the feudal
society it nurtured, according t o Marx and Engels, came to stand for a
social organization which was explicitly organized around excluding an
openness t o the possibilities of human action.

Marx and Reflexivity as Single-MindedDevelopment

Marx and Engels interpreted the urban-rural difference within a frame

which celebrated the development of a society (in this case capitalist but
eventually communist) that would release the productive forces (and not
merely its economy as is often erroneously thought) inherent within the
relation between humans and the world. This development, in turn, was
to enhance the human liberation of all. We can see from Marx that the
concern with quality of life (e.g.,which is a better place to live), can not be
resolved by an opinion poll; rather, the real issue is which place best helps
us recognize our potential for freedom and the kind of social organization
that produces the wealth which, according t o Marx,6free human action
requires. Thus, what for many city dwellers appears to be the easy-going
life of a rural setting, is for Marx “a slothful indolence” that is socially
constructed by the way rural society excludes the novel (the enterprising,
the beginning of something new) in its midst.
What this formulation does is question the adequacy of empirical and
positivistic approaches t o understanding the otherness of rurality. Marx
5 . For Marx, freedom is understood in terms of emancipation from conditions which prevent humans
from realizing their full potential. That is, freedom is essentially understood as a liberation. For a
perspective which sees significant differencea between freedom and liberation in order to make room
for t he concept of action, see Hannah Arendt (1965, 29-33).
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 171

and Engels provide us with a paradigm which problematizes the self-

understanding of the rural actor as the true or best understanding of the
situation. The self-understanding of the rural actor, in this case, would
more than likely reflect a false consciousness-as the very possibilities
inherent in human action are automatically excluded from the under-
standing of the situation. For example, and t o put it crudely, if rural
respondents claim their quality of life is better, or that raising a family is
easier, is this a knowledge claim which is grounded in a life of “slothful
indolence” or urural idiocy”?That is, in formulating rural life in this way,
they simultaneously raise the issue of the standard we use to measure the
“truth value” of various claims of the other and suggest the limitations
built into positivistic science (see Blum and McHugh, 1984: 13-30).
Rather, the claims of the rural actor (the other) require what has come to
be called a “hermeneutics of suspicion;’’what is said t o be an easy-going
lifestyle rooted in the past may merely be an ideological gloss for the
preservation of static social relations (feudal society) which maintain
domination of peasants by landlords, of women by men, and children by
parents, and has the real consequence of slothful indolence.6 Rural life,
according to this formulation, represents another social organization but
one which is exemplary only in a negative sense; rurality encourages
rather than discourages the indisposition to exertion: it does not encour-
age true human enjoyment but rather the easy pleasure of avoiding the
pain of exertion.
It is often said that the phrase “rural idiocy” is part of the polemic
which pervades The Communist Manifesto. As a phrase, it is then excused
or downplayed rather than taken as a genuine conception of rurality. Yet,
if we give the formulation a strong reading it can be shown that the idea
of rural idiocy fits well with the overall Marxian framework. For Marx and
Engels, the fully aware experience of rurality would, of necessity, be an
experience of deprivation. The countryside is formulated in terms of a lack
(of civilization, state, nation). It is known in terms of what humans could
have but do not have (freedom, wealth, the power of the general, the ab-
stract, the universal). As not wanting what could be developed is unimagi-
nable (who would not want freedom, not want to develop their human
potential, not want to be civilized?), the lack of commitment to develop-
ment (of society) can only be seen as idiocy. Thus the Marxian conception
of the rural connotes an image of regressiveness, going back in time/devel-
opmentlcapacities, an image which is still part of the meaning associated
with rurality. Rural life, according t o the Marxian formulation, represents
an empirical but not an analytic p~ssibility.~ As an empirical possibility it
6. It is interesting that the two words with the same connotation of laziness are used. Marx and Engels
do not just say sloth but slothful indolence, not just indolence but a slothful indolence. It is as though
they wanted to convey through repetition, the dangerous nature of the ethos of rural life. The root
meaning of sloth is slow-O.E. slaeth-and the root meaning of indolence is not to feel pain
-L. in-, not; dolere, to feel pain.
7. This is a distinction developed within the “Analysis” tradition in sociology (a tradition called here
dialectical analysis to distinguish this perspective from similarly named perspectives in science and
philosophy). This distinction appears throughout in the works of Blum and McHugh, but is most
clearly developed in SelfReflection in the Arts and Sciences (1984).
172 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

is either not fully experienced for what it is (because of, for example, a false
consciousness) or it is experienced precisely as a regression (because of the
condition of, for example, exile). Rurality means either being stuck in a
deprived situation or it means not realizing that one is deprived. In either
case it is not a “chooseable”alternative.8Rurality is not a real other (in the
sense of one who challenges self-understanding),rather it is a reminder of
what we, as humans committed t o development of human potential, must
not be. Rurality, therefore, connotes a blindness or an indifference to
individual and collective possibility. The charms of its claims have to be
resisted because rurality exists only because of imposition (oppression) or
ignorance (idiocy).
In terms of the modernist/postmodernist distinction, the perspective
of Marx and Engels personify (Clifford’s understanding of) a modernist
orientation-“the healthy capacity of modernist consciousness to question
its limits”; at each stage of societal development the collective (that is, the
relevant class) is required to come to terms with, and transcend, the limits
inhibiting the mode of production. All other forms of otherness are
subsumed under the dominant concern with the mode of production. The
otherness of rurality is a limit which is t o be overcome as the collective
develops a true consciousness of its situation. The polyphony of voices and
experiences celebrated by postmodernism (Clifford,1988;Baumann, 1994)
are absent in this analysis. In particular, rural or urban experiences, as
unique and particular experiences, are not recognized as phenomena in
their own right, separate from the development of the productive forces of
society (Sennett, 1969: 3-19). Baumann’s (1994: 356) statement that
“modern designs of global perfection drew their animus from the horror of
difference and impatience with otherness” is mirrored in the Marxian
understanding of rurality. This understanding represents the confidence
modernity has in its own development and the certainty it has in its own
understanding. Marx’s optimism concerning the future is based on this
confidence in his theoretic orientation. As Arendt (Canovan, 1992: 63-98)
has argued, the capacity of human agents to react in unpredictable ways
does not have a strong place in his theoretic focus.
Marx and Engels did not seek t o understand the rural or urban
experience in its own right. The significant collective for them was the one
which sought to develop the productive forces of society: the various stages
through which society was transformed (ancient, feudal, capitalist, com-
munist) all reflect an analysis of a collective committed t o developing its
productive forces which, in turn, makes human liberation from the pain of
endless labor and poverty possible. The standard by which a society is t o
be judged is the social organization which has developed its productive
forces t o their highest realization, which, in turn, maximizes the possibili-
ties of human liberation. Reflexivity is an intrinsic part ofpraxis but only
in regard to the single-minded interest in developing the productive forces
of society.
8. It is ironic to note that, as both the sociological literature and as modern society develop, the “rural”
becomes less possible t o conceptualize as even a mere empirical possibility.
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 173

This formulation, in turn, has generated the criticism that the focus
on historical materialism led to a one-sided (Weber, 1958) and “nomologi-
cal” (Habermas, 1988) understanding of history and society. Marx’s
perspective, by itself, does not make room for the complexity of experience
as it privileges a singular theoretical development over an understanding
of the particularity of experience. As stated above, there is no real need for
the Marxian actor to consider the interpretive possibilities in hisher
situation, because, analytically speaking there is no real choice. Rather
the actor now has t o do what s h e knows needs t o be done, that is, in Marx’s
own terminology, not interpret but change the world. Yet, for Weber, it is
precisely by virtue of the subjective orientation of humans that action is
social; this means theory has t o make a place for meaning and experience.
Weber developed the concept of ideal type (Weber, 1947) as his method t o
account for social actiodorganization in a way which preserves the
particularity of historical experience and in doing this he was influenced
by the Gemeinschaft I Gesellschaft concepts of Ferdinand Tonnies.

Ferdinand Tonnies:
The UrbadRural GemeinschafZIGesellschafZDistinction

Ferdinand Tonnies is a sociologist who was influenced by Marx and who,

in turn, influenced Weber (1947: 88). In 1888, Tonnies published his
classic text Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, terms which have now become
standard in the discipline of sociology. While Marx addressed the urban-
rural difference in terms of a collective committed to actualizing the
potential for human liberation, Tonnies, (influenced by Nietzsche’s
Apolloniaflionysiac polarity) through the terms gemeinschaft (commu-
nity) and gesellschaft (association), recasts the difference in terms of a
more fundamental dichotomy and opposition.
With Tonnies, we have neither evolutionary (Darwin)nor revolution-
ary (Marx) development, but two sharply opposed social systems based on
sharply opposing ways of life. The city, by virtue of the primacy given to
commerce, encourages gesellschaftlich relations; the country, the village,
and the town, by virtue of the primacy given to family and history, give rise
to gemeinschaftlich relations. For Tonnies, the town is not an example of
the rise of the division of labour (Marx), but an example of a community
where the social and the natural are kept in balance. With Tonnies,
therefore, the rural begins to take on the character of other, an other whose
relationship t o modernity is fundamental and oppositional. This rural
other finds its highest expression in the town and thus begins the
association of rurality with town life. Many Canadian sociologists (e.g.
Sim, 1988) now argue that this conception of rurality is more viable than
that sustained by Statistics Canada. Yet, what is the nature of this other
named as gemeinschaft?
By gemeinschuft Tonnies means a “social order bounded togeth-
er by a unity of wills. Family and social institutions naturally created
174 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

co-operation in a gemeinschaft prior t o its members voluntary choice”

(Liebersohn, 1988: 7). Gemeinschaft is pre-voluntary but nonetheless co-
operative, a community which is built on a familial orientation, i.e., one
does not choose one’s parents (social background, gender, etc.) but one co-
operates with that “givenness.”
The basic unit of the traditional community was the house. . . . Bonds
of blood relation, place and friendship tied individuals to one another
and drew houses into larger units of clan, ethnic groups and people, of
village, country and province. The traditional town, no less than the
countryside, was organized on communal lines, its guilds regulating
production in harmony with the general needs of collective life
(Liebersohn, 1988: 28-29; see Tonnies: 151-69).

Although in the literature gemeinschaft is often associated with a

rural setting, Tonnies was not using it to describe the influence of place per
se; rather, gemeinschuft references a social order “which-being based on
a consensus of wills-rests on harmony and is developed and enabled by
pathways, mores, and religion” (Tonnies, 1960: 223). In this community,
parents and children were not seen t o be separate actors with individual-
istic interests but rather were a unity (family) with a shared interest, as
this interest has been articulated by figures of a u t h ~ r i t yThese
. ~ relations
were invested with a sense of sacredness which made reason subordinate
t o the activities of the whole and the common good t o which they were
directed. The otherness of gemeinschuft referenced a community where
rationality was subordinate rather than superordinate, similar to the
recognition of the essential limitedness of reason which, according to
Nietzsche (19561, is crucial t o the discovery of tragedy.
Tonnies’ conception of gesellschaft, on the other hand, was strongly
influenced by his readings of both Marx and Hobbes (Liebersohn, 1988: 1-
39). It refers as much t o modern capitalist society as it does to city life,
though (as we already know from Marx) modernity, capitalism, and
urbanization are greatly intertwined. However, unlike Marx (and perhaps
becau’se of Tonnies’ own isolated rural town upbringing), gesellschaft was
not celebrated as an important step on the way to liberation (communism).
Rather, with Tonnies, we have the beginning of the recognition of the dark
side of modernity (a recognition which Weber was to later name as the
“iron cage”). Gesellschaft, as a social order, is constituted by commodity
exchange and rests “on a union of rational wills.”Whereas thegerneinschuft
has “its roots in family life,” gesellschaft “derives from the conventional
order of trade’’ (Tonnies, 1960: 223; Loomis, 1960: 3-11). Here, the
relations between people are regulated by contracts and exchange which,
in turn, are governed by the rational means-end attitude, i.e., in terms of
an evaluation “of the advantages that people expect to get from others”
9. Though Tonnies’ perspective is closer to a political economy than a functionalist perspective (Hale,
1990: 136),it is not completely accurate, as this section goes on to show, to see him (as Hale does) as
a spokesperson for liberation. As Liebersohn (1988:32) remarks, Tonnies “did not restrain his
disgust toward the liberties permitted in a gesellschaft.”
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 175

(Hale, 1990: 107). Because of this orientation, people are mobile, both
socially and geographically, and competition rather than co-operation is
the dominant ethos. On a theme later developed by Weber and Habermas,
Tonnies saw that the dominance of the rational will would ultimately lead
t o undermining a genuine attachment between people and to community.
Tonnies was ambiguous as t o whether gemeinschuft referred t o
historical precedent or ideal type (Liebersohn, 1988: 7). Using Nietzsche’s
ApollonianDionysian polarity (Liebersohn, 1988: 23-31), he wanted to
present the two kinds of social organization in not merely an evolutionary
fashion (where one evolves out of the other) but as social organizations
rootedin different orientations toward the world and life. His “method was
supposed t o be hermeneutic, describing each type from its own perspec-
tive” (Liebersohn, 1988: 30). What this famous distinction actually initi-
ates is the associatign of rurality with community. On the whole, rural life
was seen t o sustain gemeinschuftlich relations between people because of
its focus on establishing and nurturing common bonds, while the city
tended to nurture gesellschuftlich relations because of its emphasis on
competition and individual advantage (Tonnies, 1960: 223-59).
Sociologically,historically, and in terms of our narrative, the referent
for the sign “rural” has changed from Marx’s image of “backwardness,” an
obstacle to progress which must be overcome, to a competing social
organization and way of life. For Tonnies what is significant about rural
life is not its landscape, nor its comparative primitiveness, but the kind of
social organization it nurtures. Gemeinschuftlich relations received their
highest social expression not on the farm but in the town: the “town is the
highest . . . form of social life” (Tonnies, 1960: 227). This means that rural
comes t o reference a particular way of relating to people rather than being
a way of relating to nature. Thus, under Tonnies’influence (and despite his
explicit critique of capitalism), rural came to reference a community which
was an extension of the “natural”source of community, the family (Tonnies,
1960: 176-77). “Marriage was organized not around individuals, as in
modern society, but around the house whose members received a fixed
place within their own house and related to outsiders as members of other
houses” (Liebersohn, 1988: 32). Tonnies was convinced
“that all true morality was rooted in the settled folkways ofgemeinschaft,
[and] he did not restrain his disgust toward the liberties permitted in
a gesellschaft. Women, delicate creatures of feeling, belonged in the
home; a society t h a t let them leave it and diminished the differences
between the sexes could only be a decadent society. Intellectuals
tended to deny the pious beliefs of their fathers and to replace them
with the arbitrary products of their own reason. . . . The merchant, the
most complete embodiment ofgesellschaft, was a n enemy ofthe people:
homeless, a traveller versed in foreign ways without piety toward his
own, adept at using any means to achieve his goals, in all these
respects the opposite ofthe farmer and the artisan” (Liebersohn, 1988:
32-33; see Tonnies, 1960: 151-69).
176 CRSNRCSA, 3 5 . 2 1998

Tonnies, Science and the Need for Reflexive Inquiry

As already noted, Tonnies’ categories were ambiguous with regard t o their

status as ideal types or historical experiences. His own aim was to write
in a spirit of scientific objectivity, to show the same dispassion toward
society as toward any other object of study (Liebersohn, 1988:27). Thus the
fact that the town was destined t o be taken over by commercial interests
and thus evolve into a gesellschaft was a fated event which Tonnies, the
sociologistin pursuit of the objectivetruth, had t o acknowledge, in the way
the laws of physics force the physicist to recognize that the earth is not the
centre of the universe. Yet, as Liebersohn argues, Tonnies was
“unable to resist the opportunity to describegesellschaft from the point
ofview ofgemeinschaft, as if the communal world ofthe past, defeated
by history, at last had a champion to accuse the modern way oflife that
had vanquished it. . . . In the form he presented them, the book’s
categories were not neutral instruments of empirical analysis. In-
stead, they embodied a denunciation of one way of life, defence of
another” (30-3 1).

Gemeinschaft is a concept meant to reference not just another kind

of society but rather reference what is other to modernity itself. While the
otherness is constructed in a defensively binary fashion, it is clear that
there is a reflexive accusation built into its construction.
Because Tonnies’ description lacks neutrality it left him vulnerable
t o the charge of idealism because gemeinschaft represents as much the
romantic dream of a conflict-free community rather than the faithful
depiction of an actual community. More importantly, the concept of
gemeinschaft is flawed because of psychological reductionism; gesellschaft
(according t o Durkheim, 1972: 146-47) is no less natural or no more
artificial than is gemeinschaft, just because it is apparently organized on
rational grounds. Gemeinschaft and gesellschaft constitute a conceptual
opposition, organized by the opposition between organism and machine
(Liebersohn, 1988: 1361, rather than an opposition of world views emerg-
ing from the basis of different lived experiences. Thus, from the scientific
perspective, Tonnies’ conceptualization does not easily translate into
empirical research and does not adequately measure up to standards of
neutral objectivity. In Weber’s terms, the concep-tualization is value-
laden rather than value-free. Yet, with the issue of the relation between
reflexivity and science in mind, this scientific critique can itself be
criticized.
A significant aspect of the distinction betweengemeinschaftlich and
gesellschaftlich relations is the different wills 6 e . , natural will as opposed
to rational will)which each social organization (i.e.,community as opposed
t o association) strengthens. In the move from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft
(a move which Tonnies saw happening with the increasing dominance of
modernity), “a complete reversal of intellectual life takes place . . . the
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 177

intellectual attitude of the individual becomes gradually less and less

influenced by religion and more and more influenced by science”(Tonnies,
1960: 226). This means, according to Tonnies, that usefulness, efficiency,
and the learning derived from the impersonal observation of the laws of
social life, become the dominant way of relating to others and to the world.
In gesellschaft, modern calculating reason is not subordinate to, but is
independent of, community spirit. In everyday action, the rational self-
interest of the merchant now comes t o predominate: in intellectual life,
science and impersonal learning predominate. As noted above, Tonnies
undertook a scientific analysis of the nature of human society. Yet,
according to Tonnies, scientific thinking predominates in a society where
personal human relations have deteriorated.’O
This brings us to a paradoxical dilemma in Tonnies’ analysis. While
Tonnies’ conceptualization of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft failed in its
attempt t o be an objective and empirically verifiable analysis of the way
human society works, he still “aspired t o make his book scientific in the
strongest nineteenth-century sense of the w o r d (Liebersohn, 1988: 27).
The very categories ofgemeinschaft andgesellschaft are categories gener-
ated by an intellectual orientation grounded in the purpose of scientific
objectivity, itself a modern orientation. That is, they are the categories of
agesellschaft rather thangemeinschaft worldview. Thus, if as Liebersohn
says, Tonnies’ analysis defendedgemeinschaftby condemninggesellschaft,
this is understood as a failure to realize the aim of scientific objectivity
rather than as a challenge and critique of scientific objectivity as an aim
in itself. His defence ofgemeinschaft is a defence which emerges from one
who sought to understand the world from the intellectual orientation of
gesellschaft. While condemning “modernity”and defending “tradition,” he
simultaneously shows, t o recall Clifford’s quotation, the “disquieting
quality of modernism: its taste . . . for discovering universal, ahistorical
“human” capacities” (e.g., natural wilVrationa1 will). This raises impor-
tant theoretical and methodological issues, not the least of which is the
question of the way one’s presuppositions about the nature of adequate
inquiry necessarily influence what we are able t o recognize. Scientific
objectivity is merely one solution to this problem. Perhaps Tonnies’
reflexive inconsistency points t o a fundamental flaw in the scientific
orientation itself. Is the enterprise of science, despite its celebrated
procedures for verification, a solipsistic enterprise? If science is moderni-
ty’s pre-eminent mode of self-understanding, then perhaps the victory of
modern societies over traditional societies (e.g., Arendt, 1958; Foucault,
1977; Grant, 1969)is not only a practical issue but also an epistemological
and ontological issue.
The very categories ofgemeinschaft lgesellschaft are grounded in the
assumption that an adequate inquiry aims for scientific objectivity, itself

10. Gesellschaft moves toward decadence and thus is itself ultimately doomed to collapse. Unlike Marx,
Tonnies saw the potential for self-destruction, rather than self-transformation, inherent in the
modem moment.
178 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

according to Tonnies, an assumption of agesellschaft frame of mind. That

is, the distinction itself is subject to the very same critique as Tonnies’
critique ofgesellschaft; it is mechanical and impersonal. The question that
emerges from this is whether the objectivity claimed by the human
sciences can adequately understand and analyse the community that
privileges emotions, sees attachments to people as being infused with a
moral and sacred character, and is organized on the principle of time
rather than space (Tonnies, 1960:232-23), if that objectivity takes modern
science as its model. If science is a mode of inquiry which itself privileges
space rather than time, detachment rather than attachment, and instru-
mental rationality rather than understanding, is there a mode of inquiry
which privileges time in such a way that the social organization based on
the principle of time (gemeinschaft) can be more adequately taken into
account? (Gadamer developed his hermeneutic approach t o social inquiry
in response t o this principle of temporality.) In seeking to describe human
society and history as though he were outside of it, Tonnies ended up
unquestioningly speaking from gesellschaft principles precisely at the
moment he was condemning those self-same principles. In other words,
Tonnies uses scientific reason to condemn the social organization which
allows scientific reason to dominate community spirit.
This issue (of theoretical orientation), as we shall see, is of critical
decisiveness not only for the way the urban-rural discourse is conceptual-
ized, but also for the way much of the very enterprise of sociology is
grounded in an understanding of the tradition-modern divide. Tonnies
understands from within the parameters of a modernist consciousness
(Berger et. al., 1974) and simultaneously struggles against the tendencies
of that consciousness; he condemns the intellectual’s tendency t o rely on
reason alone and proceeds to be rational in a universalist way; he displays
the modernist tendency to develop ahistorical concepts and condemns the
decadence inherent in that very inclination.
While Weber is much more consistent in his theoretical orientation,
these paradoxes need also to be understood as expressions of the modernist
consciousness (“to question its limits and engage otherness”).The otherness
ofgemeinschaft is both oppositional and competitive. It represents the self-
condemnation of modernity without acknowledgement of the modern
orientation that makes the articulation of such a condemnation possible.
At the weakest level of interpretation, Tonnies’ work is an early repre-
sentative of the kind of inconsistent self-condemnation seen in more recent
post-modernist studies; a stronger reading of Tonnies also recognizes the
inclination, inherent in modernity, to develop a positive relation to
resistance. That is, thegemeinschaft lgesellschaft distinction is a solution
to theproblem of the need to develop self-resistance. Is the issue of engaging
otherness not merely an interest of a modernist consciousness but now,
more importantly, a need? Does modern society need to develop a way of
resisting its own modernist tendencies?
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 179

My argument here is that the need t o develop the capacity to be open

to resistance (otherness) is a problem for a society and a world in which
calculation and impersonality are increasingly dominant and a problem
for sociological inquiry in which a positivist epistemology is dominant. If
this argument is persuasive, then it needs to be engaged (and resisted) by
Canadian sociologists in general and not just those interested in theory.
The gemeinschaft lgesellschaft distinction can now be understood both as
instancing the need to “question limits and engage otherness” and as a
display of the difficulty modern social science has in realizing this need. Is
modern social science,despite and perhaps because of its self-understand-
ing as objective, tied to the historical characteristic of modernity, that is,
tied t o “its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness”(Clifford,1988:
193).When we turn to a more reflexively consistent colleague of Tonnies,
Max Weber, we see that consistency deepens rather than resolves the
problem.

Max Weber: The UrbadRural Moderml’raditional Distinction

Max Weber, like his colleagues and acquaintances Simmel and Tonnies,
studied the connection between modernity, capitalism, and urbanization.
Like Simmel, but unlike Tonnies, he is more influential in urban rather
than rural sociology. He is credited by Wirth as coming closest to develop-
ing a systematic theory of urbanism in his “penetrating essay” The City
(Wirth, 1938: 8). Yet, in an early essay Capitalism and Rural Society in
Germany (Weber, 1946a: 363-85), Weber is the first of the classical
sociologists to acknowledge the difference between a European and an
American rural society” and, in the process, the first to recognize the
disappearance of the sociologicalrelevance of the urban-rural distinction.
The growth of the nation-state, the development of capitalism as an
international order, and the bureaucratic rationalization of more and
more areas of social life all mean that the distinctiveness of “urban” and
“rural,” as referencing different communities is gradually disappearing
(Madindale and Neuwirth, 1958: 56-67). In the essay concerned, Weber
noted that “a rural society separate from the urban social community does
not exist at the present time in a great part of the modern civilized world.”
(1946a: 363) This situation is particularly true of the United States
because the American farmer is really an “entrepreneur like any other”
and not an “agriculturist” who seeks t o conserve a tradition.12 In an
analysis which foreshadows the recent dispute over subsidies between the
E.U. and the United States, Weber, in 1904, argued that “if anything is
11. He says this is necessary because, “of all communities, the social constitution of rural districts are
the most individual and the most closely connected with particular historical developments.” (363)
12. Dasgupta in his book, Rural Canada: Structure and Change (1988: 12), describes the modern farmer
in this way: “A farmer in an industrial society is a commercially oriented rural villager who produces
food and other articles of consumption by his family but to make a profit. His productive activities
respond to supply and demand, and fluctuating prices in the marketplace.” To Weber, this very
definition itself means t hat the qualifier “rural villager” is not sociologically relevant a s it does not
indicate an alternative “society.”
1a0 CRSAIRCSA, 35.2 1998

characteristic of the rural conditions of the great wheat-producing states

of America, it is . . . the absolute economic individualism of the farmer, the
quality of the farmer as a mere businessman” (364).This situation is seen
t o be in contrast to Europe in general, and Germany in particular, where
the “power of tradition inevitably predominates in agriculture.” This
tradition rested on an old economic order which, in Weber’s terms (1946a:
367) took the view:
How can I give, on this piece of land, work and sustenance to the
greatest possible number of men? Capitalism asks: From this given
piece of land, how can I produce as many crops as possible for the
market with as few men as possible?

Weber knew that the old economic order, even in Europe at that time,
was under siege. In this essay he saw rural society as possibly providing
an alternative to capitalism because, through the monopolization of the
land and hereditary preservation of possession, a nobility (not in form but
in fact) would arise. This nobility in turn would provide a political alter-
native to the professional politician (who must live off politics) by nurtur-
ing people who are able t o live for politics and the state. This rural society
could bring a more permanent sense of what is valuable (i.e., a sense of
value that is not dependent on the shifts of the market) and a sense of
authority which respects tradition. Such a rural society could resist, in a
practical way, the capitalistic pursuit of ‘%eedless gain.” Weber, like
Tonnies, saw the otherness of the rural as a need, but unlike Tonnies, he
saw that modernity itself was making this need increasingly impossible to
fulfill. He thus foreshadows the claims by Gans (1968) and Pahl (1968)
that, empirically speaking, the rural-urban difference does not make any
difference; it exists only “in the thoughts of dreamers” (Weber, 1946a: 363).
As would be expected, Weber is more self-consciously sociological
when he addresses the urbadrural distinction. What makes the country
or the city relevant sociologically speaking, is neither geography nor
demography, but rather their capacity t o socialize a unique character and
community. Thus, even though the industrial cities were where most
people had come to live, for Weber, this was understood as a decline of the
special mark of the city because the people who lived there could not be said
to have a special character as city people (Sennett, 1969: 18).City dwellers
are more likely to get their identity from more general social forces like
class, occupation, status, even religious conviction (forces which are
societal, national, and international) than forces tied to living in a specific
city.13Similarly, the sociological significance of a rural society for Weber
lies in its ability t o sustain an alternative culture to a capitalism, which
found a home in the city. Thus, the existence of farmers, towns, and
villages does not necessarily lead to a distinct way of life which challenges

13. Conversely, an urban sociology which sought to resist this hegemonic development would need to
focus and developthespecificityofthecity. i.e.,notjust class, race, and gender inToronto, but rather,
what (if anything) makes the Torontonian (Edmontonian, New Yorker) a Torontonian.
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 181

the capitalistic ethos of modern urban life. On this basis, he says “rural
society”does not exist in the western United States: there is no meaningful
social difference between the farmer and the businessman, or the farm
labourer and the proletariat. The disappearance of a “genuine rural
society” means the disappearance of a resistance to the dominance of
capitalism. If farming is driven by the profit motif, if people identify with
their class or occupation rather than a traditional way of living, then there
is no sociological relevance t o the referent of rural.
Weber’s sociological conception of rurality addresses a common
conflation in sociociology. Many texts often confuse sociological and
demographic conceptions of rurality. For example, Dasgupt acknowledges
that contemporary Canadian rural society
“increasingly resembles the urban population in sex and dependency
ratios, rate of divorce, level of educational attainment, and ethnic
composition. . . . The contemporary rural life in Canada thus has
attained many features which are typical of an urban society. Its
structure is increasingly gesellschaft with the use in the number of
secondary groups” (1988: 189-90; 192-93).

Yet he goes on to say that rural society is not in the process of ex-tinction
because the population is no longer declining, thus (from Weber’s perspec-
tive) confusing a technical point (demographic trends) with a sociological
point (social action).
Weber helps us recognize that the urbadrural difference might now
need to be understood within the context of modernity. In contemporary
society, rural may no longer reference either backwardness (Marx) or
community (Tonnies).Rather the underlying phenomenon which needs t o
be understood is modernity’s need for and, simultaneously, its difficulty
with otherness. It is the argument of this essay that the depth of the
difficulty is tied t o the modernity’s pre-eminent mode of self-understand-
ing, scientific inquiry.

Weber, Modernity, and the Possibility of a Reflexive Sociology

Weber’s later work set out to show the tight grip that capitalism had on
modern life (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) and the
interconnection between modernity and the calculating rationality of
science (“Science as a Vocation”).While he was certainly not happy with
these developments, the acknowledgement of the truth, an acknowledge-
ment required of him by virtue of his scientific perspective and commit-
ment, demanded that the force of modern life be recognized. The potential
of an alternative rural life was no longer seen to be realistic. Yet, his initial
conception of the term rural was motivated by his lifelong interest in
coming to terms with the reality (“the iron cage”) of the modern socio-
economic order and the possibilities of realistic resistance to this force
(Liebersohn, 1988: 78-125). His work, whether early or late, always had
that particular combination of qualities-stating (“calling”) that we (as
scholars and politicians) must “bear the fate of the times” (1946b: 155)
while, at the same time, acknowledging (sometimes sympathetically,
sometimes impatiently) the “unrealistic” impulse to resist such a fate
(194613: 77-156).
I noted above the inconsistencies in the way Tonnies formulated the
problem, because of a limited relation to reflexivity: he used t h e scientific
approach to condemn the kind of social organization (gesellschuft)which
privileges the scientific mode of inquiry. Weber too recognized the “disen-
chantment of the w o r l d which accompanies the rise of modern science but,
in distinction from Tonnies, he also reflectively acknowledged (194613) that
the scientific orientation to the study of social life is part of the same
development. As Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982: 165) state,
“Weber saw that rationality, in the form of bureaucratization and
calculative thinking, was becoming the dominant way of understand-
ing reality in our time, and he set out to give a rational objective
account of how this form of thinking had come to dominate our
practices and self-understanding. He was led, through this scientific
analysis, to see that the “disenchantmentofthe world”that calculative
thinking brings about had enormous costs. He even saw that his own
theorizing was part of the same development he deplored, but, as so
many commentatorshave pointed out, there was absolutelyno way his
scientific method couldjustify his sense that the cost of rationality was
greater than any possible benefit it could bring. Given Weber’s start-
ing point, all he could do was point out the paradoxical results of his
analysis and the increasingperils to our culture”(Dreyfusand Rabinow,
1982: 165).14

What have been the consequences of the intertwining of these

intellectual and socio-economic developments? According to the Canadian
sociologist R. Alex Sim (1988: 13-46), the rural community is “battered”
and the concept of rurality has disappeared.
The disappearance or misuse of the word “rural”deprives a large and
important element of the country of a name. Ingenious efforts have
been made to avoid the world rural-for example, non-metropolitan,
non-urban, regional city, and even micropolis. Statistics Canada still
uses rural as a category with two sub-groupings,farm and non-farm,
and the absurd cut-off point of 1000, or a density of 400 persons per
square kilometre. Thus, about one out of three Canadians are non-
farm, non-metropolitan residents” (1988: 22).

Sim goes on to say (22) that “the disappearance of the word “rural”is
a case of urban imperialism.”

14.Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982:166) go on to argue that Foucault’s “genealogical analytics” avoid such
paradoxical dillemmas by “taking the best” of the positions of Weber, Heidegger, Adorno, and
Merleau-Ponty in a “way which enables him to overcome some of their difficulties.”
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 183

Esoteric intellectual concerns (regarding the meaning of the concept

of rurality) and broad socio-cultural developments are, it seems, intrinsi-
cally interconnected. The “battered rural community’’ of Canada and the
difficulty sociologists have in reflexively recognizing the embeddedness of
a mode of inquiry in a culture (modernity) are very much intertwined.
With the acknowledgement of the hegemony of the moderdscientific
“life-world,”we are now beginning to recognize the difficulty modernity
has in preserving a sense of otherness (in this case, rurality) which would
truly allow it t o question its limits. Modern scientific methods are not cul-
turally neutral instruments of social inquiry. As Foucault (1977; Dreyfus
and Rabinow, 1982) shows in unescapable detail, the rise of the social
sciences is tied t o the very modernity they claim to study. The problem is
therefore, that the social sciences, by the very constitution of their episte-
mological orientation, are so tied to the modern life-world that they are in
danger of seeing in the other (gerneinschaft/ruraVtown/community) a
failed version of itself. Modern consciousness thus may only appear to be
engaging otherness and questioning its limits; what it ends up actually
doing is affirming its own orientation and is thus blind to its limits: in the
process a strong sense of alteritas is rendered invisible. The urbadrural
discourse in the sociological tradition can now be understood to be strug-
gling with this very problem of the need for, but difficulty of, achieving a
good relation to resistance. The disappearance of a viable conception of
rurality, noted by Pahl above, is not just a mere empirical fact but an ex-
pression of this modern problem.
The problem which animates both Tonnies and Weber is some
inarticulate awareness of the potential for self-destructiveness inherent
within the modern project. Without “questioning otherness and engaging
resistance,” it may be that the self-destructive potential of modernity will
go unchecked. From the perspective of our contemporary awareness of the
environmental crisis, not to mention the twentieth-century experience of
fascism and Stalinism, it now seems that this inarticulate worry (on the
part-of Weber and Tonnies in particular) is prophetic. The point of the
paper, however, is that this problem is not just an empirical fact (of the
environment, the economy, or even of urbanization), but is first and
foremost epistemological and ontological. Questioning limits and engag-
ing otherness requires that reflexivity be truly integrated into the process
of inquiry. Weber’s reflexivity is merely consistent, where what is needed
is an openness to the finite nature of human understanding (Gadamer,
1975) and an awareness of the way all inquiry is a process of recommend-
ing “principles for acceptance’’(Blum and McHugh, 1984),not as external
acknowledgements but as intrinsic to very process of inquiry.

Conclusion

If the interest which structures the urban-rural discourse in sociology is

the evaluation of different kinds of communities with their attendant ways
184 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

of thinking and ways of living, then, in so far as this is the interest of a

modernist consciousness, we need t o be aware of the ways this discourse
could end up leading to the silencing of the sense of otherness which could
really challenge that interest. For Marx, the otherness of the rural
referenced a limit which could be overcome through self-consciousness.
Reflexivity,at this stage of the narrative, is needed in order for the actor/
collective to recognize the necessity to develop the means of production.
What is not reflected on, what is not made subject to dialogue, is the
commitment t o developing the means of production as the principle and
the enlightenment rationality built into this principle. The value of the
principle and the procedure used to make the principle recognizable
(rationality) are taken for granted. Thus, he is optimistic about the possi-
bility of an alternative society (communism) emerging in the future
because of the theoretical single-minded nature of his analysis. Though
this is still a matter of debate, Arendt (Canovan, 1992: 63-98) has shown
the way Marx’s theorizing participates in (rather than reflects on) the
totalitarian tendency of m~dernity.’~
Tonnies and Weber are more sensitive to the totalitarian element in
the modern moment and thus more apprehensive about modernity. They
both acknowledge that the dominance of instrumental reasoning is dan-
gerous. While Weber saw this dominance operating in science as well as
capitalism and thus operating in his own analysis as well as in the society
his work addressed, Tonnies only saw the latter. Though both were
strongly influenced by Marx, both were also more reflective about the
modernity which Marx’s analysis expresses.
For Tonnies, the other for a society that privileges relations based on
calculation (capitalism, gesellschaft) is community, a community that
finds its highest expression in the town. Though rural life in modern
society no longer resembles agemeinschuft,pockets of traditional commu-
nities (e.g., the Hutterites in Western Canada, closely-knit working class
or ethnic neighbourhoods in the city) give us life-world images of an
alternative to gesellschaft. Yet the problem of the superiority of commu-
nity over association is not just a problem for social relations, it is also a
problem of the way we analyze and study these relations. Instrumental
reasoning is not just central to capitalism, it is also central t o scientific
inquiry.
In Tonnies’view, reflexivity requires an other (gemeinschaft)that is
qualitively different which, in turn, enables a more radical evaluation of
self (gesellschuft). In this case, the principle of instrumental rationality
has been revealed and its potential for destructiveness of community is
highlighted. In Tonnies’ work this condemnation is self-contradictory
because it relies on the same kind of reasoning it condemns.Weber is more
15. ‘The tyranny of logicality” is “the compulsion with which we can compel ourselves,“allowing our
thoughts and decisions to be dictated by what we have already accepted instead of exercising the
human capacity to start afresh, to have new ideas, to look at things again, to learn from experience”
(Arendt, as summarized by Canovan: 91).
Reflexivity, Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction 185

reflectively consistent in so far as he recognizes the interrelation between

science, rationality and modernity and thus the way his own work not only
addresses but is part of the problem. Yet all that his consistency enables
him to do is acknowledge the problem (disenchantment) and its depth. For
Weber (1946b1, otherness is acknowledged but only as an “irrational
alternative,” the engaging of which requires an “intellectual sacrifice.”
This otherness cannot challenge modernity itself. There is no rural
alternative: all one can do is retreat from modernity (into the arms of the
“old churches”), a retreat which, if it is t o have dignity, requires the explicit
acknowledgement that one is renouncing intellectual and political in-
volvement in the world. Weber’s work forces us to acknowledge that the
theoretical problem and the way we recognize the problem in the world are
intertwined. It is my argument throughout that a more reflexive sociology
is the solution to this intellectual problem.
In this paper, I have argued that the difficulty in engaging otherness
lies in the way that modernity privileges a certain kind of rationality. The
Hegelianism of Marx confidently expresses this rationality, the
Nietzscheism of Tonnies displays a contradictory self-condemnation of it,
and the consistency of Weber acknowledges its power. In order for moder-
nity t o develop a strong self-resistance, on the other hand, reflexivity is
required in order to limit the claims to understanding made on behalf of
a modern rationality. The point of the paper is that this self-resistance
needs first of all t o be embodied in the process of inquiry itself. The paper
makes the claim that reflexivity is a substantive concern and, simultane-
ously, the paper seeks to be an exemplification of what a reflexive inquiry
looks like. Reflexivity says and shows that truly engaging otherness
necessarily involves self-questioning (in this case, questioning of the
standards of rationality used to generate knowledge). In the work of the
early seminal sociologists, this need for reflexivity is both acknowledged
and denied. As sociology develops in the twentieth century, the dominance
of scientific rationality a t t a i n s a hegemonic s t a t u s u n t i l t h e
phenomenological, hermeneutic and dialectical analytic developments in
the 1970s. Simultaneously, as the urban-rural discourse develops, the
otherness of rurality disappears and the recognition of a sense of moder-
nity’s need for otherness becomes more repressed.
With the aid of contemporary developments in sociological theory
and research, it is now possible to address and resist the dominance of the
instrumental life-world (both in practice and in theory). Such an address
and examination requires, first of all, an acknowledgement ofthe problem.
This is the task I set myself in this paper. As any strong recognition of the
problem also points to ways that the problem can and needs to be
responded to, the irrelevance of rurality (as a sociological conception) no
longer needs t o be accepted or lamented; rurality as a concept and as a
distinct experience can be rehabilitated. This is the task of another work
(Bonner, 1997).
186 CRSNRCSA, 35.2 1998

Appendix

Acknowledging the poststructuralist critique of modern thinking (Scott,

1990:134-481,this re-examination of the rural-urban discourse in sociol-
ogy will not attempt to develop an “essentialist” definition of rurality.
Rather my analysis is concerned with the meaning of the attempts t o
develop a unitary concept of rurality which involves teasing out the way
the negations and oppositions, suppressed in the concept, operate in the
texts of Marx, Tonnies, and Weber. Using a configuration of phenomenol-
ogy (Berger et. al., 1974;Garfinkel, 19671,hermeneutics (Gadamer, 19751,
and dialectical analysis (Blum and McHugh, 1974;19841,my approach
draws on the theories and methods which acknowledge “the linguistic
turn” (Dallmayer and McCarthy, 1977)in human science inquiry; this is
t o say that the materials (language,beliefs, reasons, statements, evidence,
etc.) used to understand and represent conceptions of the ruraVurban are
linguistic, public and shared by both the inquirer and the subject ofinquiry
(Habermas, 1988:89-170). This interpretive orientation is radical in the
sense that it explicitly acknowledges the “rootedness”of all inquiry in
interpretation. Because of this “rootedness,”self-reflectionis understood
t o be an essential component of this process of inquiry (Blum and McHugh,
1984).That is, reflexivity is not just an everyday capacity; it also needs t o
be intrinsic to the process of inquiry in the human sciences. Procedurally
speaking, reflexivity means that as the inquirer takes into account
reflections on the issue of the urban-rural difference, he or she must also
be able t o take into account the inquirer’s own reflections on these
reflections. For example, as I take into account Weber’s reflections on the
rural-urban difference, I also need t o take into account Weber’s relation to
reflexivity. In Gadamer’s terms, the inquiry must be able to comprehend
the way it comprehends its subject matter (1975: 333-41). This paper
therefore seeks to show that these recent developments in human science
inquiry (configured by the name of radical interpretive sociology), can
show the way a particular historical and cultural interest (engaging
otherness and questioning limits) structures the rural-urban discourse,
thus demonstrating the way the principle of “effectivehistory” (Gadamer,
1975:267-74) operates in all understanding.

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