Social change, conservative anxiety, and the Big City Life: Part 1

The sight of traffic jams caused by people trying to escape their large cities for a weekend or holiday break into the outer nature is nowadays a commonplace within the so-called developed countries. The necessity and appeal of such a retreat from the urban environments have been particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. The question, of course, remains over how many of us would actually be willing to permanently settle down into rural life. In any case, whether it is appealing or not, this rural life has been on a declining trajectory, even if only due to economic tendencies. At the same time, another commonplace is the notion that “those who live in towns and cities lead almost entirely different lives to those who live in the countryside”. As a consequence, the social perspectives and political positions also exhibit a very impressive tendency towards conflict between the residents of these two separate milieus.

Take Germany, for instance. There the far-right AfD is clearly “stronger in remote and rural areas and weaker in urban centres. There is less support in cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart.” Furthermore, “these patterns become more visible if you take the European election results in the state of Baden-Württemberg as an example. The AfD performs significantly worse in the more globalised, cosmopolitan and university-oriented urban areas and their suburbs than in the more remote and rural areas of Baden-Württemberg.” In neighbouring Poland, for example, the conservative party PiS also holds its main strongholds in the rural areas. In the local elections of 2024 “PiS party clearly won among villagers and farmers”.

And then, to be sure, we have MAGA and the USA. The relationship between rural America and the conservative political agendas is undisputed. In this sense, it appears that the natural historical death of the countryside - as caused by the global economic tendencies - could not come too soon. And while today the conservative individuals from the rural world might feel disgust towards the liberalism and radicalism of the larger cities, these urban centers are a relatively very recent and very modern phenomenon. But already back in the 19th century, when the rural-to-urban migration was giving birth to these modern metropolises, we can find numerous irrational fears among the contemporaries regarding those tectonic social changes.

“However, another factor was in place in conditioning antiurbanism - it is impossible to trace the emergence of urban fears without considering ‘pro-rural’ sentiment. Even though the Industrial Revolution transformed both urban and rural areas, the burgeoning system of capitalist accumulation in the nineteenth century and its manifestation in intense urbanisation was viewed with dismay by subscribers to traditional rural values (and it is important to note that, prior to the nineteenth century, the vast majority of humans lived in rural areas), who saw the cities as places which encouraged a rejection of the basic human values behind the formation of an inherently moral existence.”

“For example, in the United States, a negative discourse of the city, which began with the pastoral musings of Thomas Jefferson and was furthered significantly by the transcendental contemplations of Ralph Waldo Emerson, grew stronger and became embedded in social life through powerful representations of urban malaise in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American literature, art, and social theory. Far from being celebrated as signs of industrial and economic progress, American cities were often viewed as dirty and disease-ridden arenas of degenerate, immoral, and corrupt behavior, the exact and unruly opposites of small-town and rural America, and therefore places which middle-class Americans would be wise to avoid for their own wellbeing.”

And the US, of course, were not alone to exhibit such doubts over the emergence of modern cities. Urbanisation, in fact, was even more advanced at that time in the UK. Over there Charles Masterman believed that the urban society “divorced from nature and her ancient sanities”. “Richard Dennis has identified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ‘a widespread anti-urbanism in English-speaking society, a fear that the size, density and impersonality of big cities militated against civilized life’.” There was a “sense that an increasingly urban and industrial society was threatening certain human values and qualities of living”. From our contemporary perspective we might inquire over what those “ancient sanities” could have been? And how should “civilized life” be defined? Glorification of one’s lord? Arranged marriages? Subjugation of the wife to her husband? Or the enslavement of black people?

The fact that the rural economy would produce its own particular social norms is understandable. It would be somewhat inappropriate for us to denounce the bygone generations for believing in the hierarchical system of the three estates, or in the divine rights of the kings. But at the same time, it should also be easy to grasp that the industrial urban milieu creates different social relations as well as ideological conceptions. Now, the question must be asked over why should the former be considered as superior, as more civilised, and as the natural ones? Just because it had emerged earlier onto the historical scene? Well, in that case why not go even further back in history? Perhaps the slave-owning pagan Romans, or even earlier societies that believed in human-sacrifice should be taken as the standard for civilization and “ancient sanities”?

But let’s return to the rural nostalgia of the 19th century:

“Masterman wrote of the ‘New Town Type’: physically, mentally, and spiritually different from the type characteristic of Englishmen during the past two hundred years. The physical change is the result of the city up-bringing in twice-breathed air in the crowded quarters of the labouring classes. This as a substitute for the spacious places of the old, silent life of England; close to the ground, vibrating to the lengthy, unhurried processes of Nature […] the spiritual world, whether in Nature, in Art, or in definite Religion, has vanished, and the curtain of the horizon has descended round the material things and the pitiful duration of human life. In former time in England […] the things of the earth were shot with spiritual significance.”

Again, our social consciousness could discern the paradox of cherishing the “spiritual significance” of things during an epoch when the life of a simple land-working peasant was regarded as completely insignificant. Especially in relation to the nobility and the aristocrats. But of course, once one becomes attached to his social world in defence against social change, it might not be easy to judge this social world critically. The anti-urban views would “evoke a sense of loss at the disappearance of the acuteness of meaning of individual lives in mass society, suggesting that urban and demographic growth strained emotional ideologies of the individual, inherited from an earlier age.” But what was so acute about the meaning of the individual peasants’ lives before the 19th century urbanisation? And also, just because something is inherited “from an earlier age” does not necessarily mean that it should be safeguarded. It should arguably be considered as a positive development that child labour or racial segregation have not been safeguarded.

So whenever one encounters a conservative person lamenting about the decline of traditional family values, it is worth remembering that such anxieties over social change have been a constant companion throughout human history. As far as the 19th century urbanisation is concerned, “the writings of social commentators, urban planners and novelists are frequently pervaded by anxieties about disenchantment and meaninglessness in a society increasingly cut off from the beauty of nature and the influences of religion and spirituality.” And yet, here we are. Living happily in cities, everyone having his or her own purposes of life, and trying to fend off the reactionary movements that try to recreate their imaginary societies on the basis of the bygone eras. And the ultimate lesson here, of course, is that the future generations will likewise live as happily as we do today, without ever worrying about any traditional forms of family life.

Sources:
https://theconversation.com/these-maps-of-support-for-germanys-far-right-afd-lay-bare-the-depth-of-the-urban-rural-divide-248405
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/10/11/polands-countryside-is-changing-but-a-grudging-vote-for-pis-still-likely/
https://www.agroberichtenbuitenland.nl/actueel/nieuws/2024/04/12/local-elections-in-poland---how-rural-areas-and-farmers-voted
https://www.governing.com/now/how-rural-america-learned-to-love-the-republican-party
https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~tslater/assets/iehg_antiurbanism.pdf
https://files01.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/155787672.pdf

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