Chapter 3The Rural-Urban Dichotomy Reexamined: Beyond the Ersatz Debate? (Page 47 to 67)BRUCE KOPPEL

Socioeconomic evolution in Asia during the last four decades has been extraordinary, both for what has changed and what has not. Certainly two major motifs in any summary of this evolution are urbanization and rural development -- two processes, commonly studied independently but tacitly recognized to be linked if not always correlated.

Conceptually, what the links are and how they actually function have been the subject of much debate. A cardinal characteristic of this debate that is not well recognized is the delusory alternative it has pressed upon its protagonists. On one path are the arguments about how the evolvements, interests, and destinies of one process (urbanization or rural development) constrain, liberate, or otherwise influence the evolvements, interests, and destinies of the other. The best-known example of this path is the urban bias debate. On what has unfolded as the "other" path are the arguments that neither urbanization nor rural development is as discriminating or incisive a force as others that not so much link but transcend rural-urban relations -- most notably class, but also, through vehicles such as area studies, themes of history, culture, and politics. 1

Thus, there are two paths: urban-rural relations as different forms of equilibrium and urban-rural relations as subordinate to other societal processes. Within the landscape bounded by these two paths, the arguments about urban-rural relations in Asia can be stratified according to a number of criteria, as any listing of disciplinary subfields in Asian development studies will attest. It has been acknowledged periodically that the conduct of the urban-rural relations argument is organized in such a way. However, it has been less readily acknowledged that the most serious cumulative consequence of the urban-rural relations debate has been its contribution not to the stratification but rather to the polarization of development studies. 2 In "urban" as well as propositions about linkages have all become increasingly elliptical, while dialogue between proponents of the concepts has been reduced to near ritualized exchanges of stereotypes.

The alternatives in the debate as it is understood are a deceptive dilemma because the choice is artificial. It is an ersatz debate. Between and perhaps alternative to the two alternatives, there is a middle ground that has never been adequately mapped. The middle ground consists of the linkages, which have by and large been consistently ignored as having any independent reality. Linkages in the urban-rural relations debate are presented either as fundamentally derivative of urban or rural realities (e.g., seasonal and circular migration, nonfarm labor markets, roads) or as illusory misspecifications altogether, better replaced by other kinds of articulation concerns (e.g., the conflicts between class formation and division of labor processes at local, regional, national, and global scales; between culture and resources; and between history and the state).

There are good reasons now to argue for the middle ground, for the reality of rural-urban linkages not as derivations or reflections, but as representative and indicative of

independent social facts -- taking form, evolving, and varying for reasons attributable to urbanization and rural development; to look at a number of other social, economic, and political processes; and to explore causes that are idiosyncratic to these linkages in specific cultural and historical circumstances. Once the conceptual inertia, institutionalized in both intellectual and political paradigms, is exposed and acknowledged, then numerous anomalies and issues arise where few have been seen. The anomalies and issues will be uncovered by exploring the question, "What is the future of rural Asia?"

OVERCOMING INERTIA: ANOMALIES IN ASIAAsia presents many fundamental social, cultural, political, and economic changes -- some underway for a considerable amount of time -- as well as some significant examples of preservation. These processes do not always dovetail with the concepts "urban" and "rural." Some people are now sensing that the scope and implications of change under way in Asia may be seriously misunderstood if strict adherence to older distinctions is maintained and question whether the rural-urban dichotomy (or is it a continuum?) offers the best foundation for understanding of these processes.

One can begin with a simple acknowledgment of the spatial connotations of "rural" and "urban" and then proceed to the complex understandings that have grown about and around the idea of "the urban"what amounts to a quarantining of conceptual development processes, concepts of "rural" and and "the rural" in Asia, ideas ranging from the political economy of the urban bias and the liberal economy of the expanding market to the geographic progression of urban culture and the urbanization of rural space. However, when these themes are "tested" against both historical and contemporary evidence of what has happened and is now happening within and between "urban" and "rural" Asia, what soon emerges bears little resemblance to the well-ordered landscape promised by the dichotomy.

The following antonymous pairs are striking: (1) converging material cultures coexisting with diverging ethical-religious cultures; (2) converging "commercialization" of economic relations coexisting with diverging social and political foundations of exchange; (3) converging patterns of social practice coexisting with diverging patterns of cultural interpretation; (4) converging patterns of class formation and political expression coexisting with diverging patterns of economic organization and social movement; and (5) converging patterns of human settlement and material culture coexisting with diverging patterns of social community and historical consciousness. The rural-urban dichotomy can certainly array the processes referenced in the pairs, but in doing so do "rural" and "urban" become metaphorically translucent lenses diffusing considerably more light than they focus?

For instance, despite rapid levels of Asian city growth in recent decades, it is still true and it is likely to remain true for some time to come that most people in Asia live in what are usually called "rural places." Similarly, rapid growth in the numbers of people living in very large metropolitan areas will undoubtedly continue. These are not unrelated or unimportant facts, but does intelligibility of these facts require the primacy of a rural-urban distinction to illuminate the processes these facts represent? Could the rural-urban distinction fix excessive attention on facts such as population densities and a particular view of their underlying processes, and divert attention from

other facts that may be indicators of concurrent processes of equal or superior importance? As settlements designated as urban (often only because of passing some threshold size) proliferate throughout the countryside, as agrarian modes of production are increasingly supplemented by nonagrarian modes in rural areas and industrial modes of production are supplemented by nonindustrial modes of production in urban areas, and as population densities in both agrarian and nonagrarian areas increase, does a rural-urban appellation offer the most incisive appreciation of what is going on?

What kinds of systemic understandings, spatially and temporally, do the rural-urban distinction yield? Two key contributions have been diffusion and urban hierarchies. Diffusion studies have been impressive in tracking the movement of items of material culture across space and time. However, diffusion research has been weak in comprehending and incorporating broader systemic processes from which material culture draws substance. Research on urban hierarchies has drawn attention to linkages between settlements, relying heavily on land use, transportation, and markets as both causes and products of a presumed evolutionary process. Nevertheless, urban hierarchy research has been stronger at documenting relationships within the hierarchy between primary and secondary cities than at documenting the significance of lower order associations or in offering a nontrivial view of what is excluded by the entire hierarchy.

As settlement hierarchies become more complex in Asia, an important stress is revealed: while "rural-urban" is often proclaimed as a continuum (permitting gradations, for example, of urban functions across space), it is almost always applied as a dichotomy. The dichotomy is implicit in the assumption that rural equals a peasant mode of production, whereas all market-oriented forms of agriculture are considered incipient expressions of urban functions. Is the problem one of measurement, or is rural-urban inadequate as a continuum vision? In terms of first-order differences, there are meaningful distinctions between primate cities and unsettled wastelands, but moving from these end points toward the middle, does urban-rural continue to discriminate the most important differences or identify the most important similarities? Has the concept of an urban hierarchy yielded a view of system definition and boundaries that cannot comfortably accommodate an overlap in urban-rural relations?

A PATH THROUGH THE MIDDLE GROUND: RURAL TRANSFORMATIONThroughout Asia, a fundamental change is under way in what rural societies are, what life in rural societies means, what relationships of rural societies to nations-at-large signify, and what rural societies are becoming. A transformation has been unfolding that encompasses agriculture and agrarian society within a broader set of social, economic, political, and cultural relationships. Within these broader relationships, traditional distinctions and meanings that have served so long to maintain the unique identities of rural societies are losing their legitimacy. The questions "what is rural society?" and "does rural society have a future?" are real.

For example, increasingly, visions of rural society's future in Asia are stylized, sometimes idealized, portraits, and their staunchest advocates cannot be certain whether they are valid or durable. Distinctions between rural and urban, agricultural

and industrial, socialist and capitalist, public and private, growth-oriented and equity-oriented, bottomup and top-down -- each of which formerly helped organize understandings of rural development processes and outcomes -- now appear dramatically less appropriate and compelling when set against the complexities of Asia's rural transformation. Cut loose from these anchors, how is one to understand where rural society is going and why? How is one to discern the difference between change that marks new direction and change that represents only a deviation from trend? Too many of the attempts to answer these questions are weakened by the failure to step outside prevailing dichotomies or to recognize that the dichotomies are part of the problem. And too many attempts have been obscured by broad debates pitting conviction of historical inevitability and global incorporation against faith in self-determination and managed interdependence.

Dimensions of TransformationSome of the broader dimensions of Asia's rural transformation are relatively well known and widely discussed. These dimensions include the relationships of social, cultural, political, and economic change in rural areas with processes of urbanization and industrialization. There are other relationships and processes, closely related to urbanization and industrialization, that are both distinct and significant. For example: (1) the increasing importance for national economic development of international trade in rural natural and human resources (primarily agriculture, forestry, and mineral products, as well as labor) is influencing organization, control, and content of rural resource valuation, allocation, and utilization; (2) the widening scope of rural participation in domestic trade relationships and the increasing importance of nonrural economic power in rural economic life are influencing the fundamental socioeconomic organization of rural systems; (3) the increasing complexities, capacities, and ambitions of contemporary national administration, communication, and political systems increase the susceptibility of rural areas and societies to tradeoffs and even reorganization defined (and sometimes imposed) by nonrural forces; and (4) agrarian vision -- a core component of long-held national policy premises and developmental visions about the fundamental distinctiveness of rural areas -- is undergoing reconsideration, conducted in a context that transcends traditional agrarian society. Clearly, the overall transformation is multidimensional and is taking different forms. These different forms illustrate at least three broad common characteristics of rural transformation processes.

First, Asia's rural transformation has historical momentum. Contemporary transformation processes are closely associated with urbanization and specifically industrialization, but it would be misleading to conclude that rural transformation is simply the underside of urbanization and industrialization. In many cases both processes are more closely associated with even broader changes in international and domestic development patterns, changes that have already had significant social, cultural, economic, and political consequences. The most notable examples are the experiences of colonialism, incorporation into national and global trading systems, the demographic transition, and the increasing mobility of population, technology, and information.

Second, the transformation process is uneven in terms of which individuals, groups, areas, structures, processes, and functional relationships are affected and when and how they are affected. Rural transformation occurs on two not entirely distinct scales.

On a scale internal to rural society, transformation is an evolution of the structure, composition, and functions of traditional social, political, and economic institutions. On a scale external to rural society, transformation is historically more discontinuous, characterized by the imposition of relationships, structures, and processes that can significantly modify and ultimately displace existing patterns of rural resource management, economic development, social mobility, and political determination. The transformation can occur on both scales simultaneously. Rural manifestations of religious and cultural fundamentalism often have both external and local origins. Similarly, while the technological change and institutional and policy supports associated with Asia's Green Revolution were "external," their agrarian effects were significantly shaped by patterns of rural organization and change that were "internal."

Third, although it is meaningful to speak of a transformation, it is more substantive in context to seek and recognize multiple processes, multiple transformations. The most subtle unevenness of the transformation of rural societies in the Asia-Pacific region is the coexistence, but not necessarily the correlation, of numerous transformations. Equating rural transformation with only one process, which is commonly done when a transformation is described as a nonmarket to market or capitalist transition or a rural to urban metamorphosis, ignores many other processes also occurring that may have very complex and possibly distant relationships. These numerous transformations might include processes of political assimilation, mobilization, dissolution, imposition, and cooptation; processes of social differentiation, interrelation, interdependence, insulation, and dependence; processes of cultural innovation, revitalization, suppression, and restoration -- multiple processes that can be expressed in multiple forms of human organization, activity, and belief and that can be interrelated in a wide range of tapestries.

Rural Transformation: Some Points on the Middle GroundA transformation perspective reaches beyond dichotomies and discontinuities to issues of interrelationships and continuities. This is not to suggest that transformation is a "theory" or otherwise an alternative to the rural-urban categorization but rather that transformation can be one perspective from which to assess when, to what degree, and under what circumstances a rural-urban understanding is appropriate. However, for a transformation perspective to play this role, the perspective cannot be bound to the assumption that there is a "middle" ground or that it is defined as lying between rural and urban.

Questions have to be asked that go beyond the lines of existing debates. For example,

If (and as) fundamental changes occur in what rural society is, what will happen to the other social, cultural, economic, and political forms that are the pillars of the contemporary Asian state? If (and as) the metaphor of the rural society "dies," can the allegory of a national society long "live"?

Agrarian development must move well beyond established and important concerns about the social organization of production to fundamental questions. What is agriculture becoming as a mode of production? How is the ecological, economic, political, and social significance of agriculture changing? How are the relationships of agriculture and agrarian society with other modes of production changing?

Employment generation must move well beyond the important concerns of wages and job tenure to more fundamental questions. What is work? How are the demographic, economic, political, psychological, and social meanings of work changing? With what implications for strategies that would "develop" employment?

Indeed, even rural development must move well beyond the important concerns of productivity and equity to more fundamental questions. What is rural society? How are the economic, moral, political, and social meanings of rural society changing? With what implications for strategies that would "develop" rural societies?

Such questions, even in very abbreviated form, can have significant implications for understanding rural Asia. To see these implications more clearly, it is useful to consider an illustrative agenda of rural transformation themes and to ask what types of questions might be raised in the course of understanding the meanings of such themes. An eightitem agenda will be considered. As a thematic agenda is considered, it is important to emphasize that the idea of transformation is not linked to any specific "theory" for organizing understanding of rural Asia nor is it intended as a fashionable code word to veil an inadequate understanding of rural Asia. The idea of transformation stands as a perspective from which to reassess what needs to be understood about rural Asia; indeed, the idea of transformation stands as a perspective from which to consider whether the very concept of rural Asia is everywhere and equally meaningful.

Rural Transformation: A Thematic AgendaThe Future of Agriculture. The transformation of agriculture in Asia is an ongoing story, but it is clearly a story that has unfolded at a more rapid pace during the last three decades. Since the early 1960s, production of major food grains in Asia has increased as a result primarily of technological innovation represented by higher-yielding varieties (the Green Revolution), infrastructure improvement represented by significant investments in roads and irrigation, and more intensive cultivation represented by double-cropping on newly irrigated fields and the opening of new agricultural areas. In many parts of Asia, meat products and processed foods have become more important parts of human diets, generating new types of agricultural and food enterprises in both rural and urban settings and new demands for agricultural and food imports. The organization of postharvest operations for major food grains, from milling and processing to reconstitution and marketing (especially in urban areas), has become a larger scale and more complex operation; involving a mix of state and private actors, mobilizing both domestic and foreign capital. Food policy -- the effort, in principle, to strike a balance between low consumer prices (consistent with reducing inflationary pressures on wages) and high producer prices (consistent with ensuring incentives for adequate domestic production and possibly reducing incentives for rural-urban migration) -- has had a mixed record and, in some countries, may even have resulted in suppressing both agricultural incomes and productivity without noticeably improving price stability or overall nutrition levels.

These and related research and policy concerns will remain important, but additional and potentially more important issues are emerging. It is increasingly apparent that what agriculture is today and what agriculture will become will not be purely or even predominantly the outcome of factors and relationships internal to agriculture. Instead, the future of agriculture is being increasingly mediated by processes that are

external to agriculture. Some of these processes, most notably the expansion of agriculture's relationships to broader product and factor markets and changing relations of production and exchange characteristics of agriculture, have been under way for some time. 3 Contemporary indicators of these processes include the increasing importance of purchased inputs "imported" into producing areas, the increasing share of production that is marketed outside producing areas (even when food needs in producing areas have not been met), the increasing proportion of farm household income that comes from off-farm sources, and the increasing share of disposable farm household income that goes to food purchases. On the horizon, however, are even more fundamental changes in the content and significance of agriculture.

In what currently still are viewed as "marginal" areas, population movements, accelerated patterns of natural resource exploitation, and the juxtaposition of "traditional" and "modern" agricultural systems together create the potential for altering the socioeconomic and ecological foundations of agricultural evolution. In question are what agriculture is becoming in many "secondary" agricultural regions, and what changing levels of contact with regional and domestic commodity and factor markets and increased accessibility to the national agricultural support system mean for the structure, content, and control of agriculture in marginal areas. 4

A technology transformation is also in progress. Science and technology are holding out the subtle but enticing prospect of substantially increased and less variable production in the framework of production systems that may be very different from those common today. What then will hybridization of basic food crop seeds mean for the relationships between Asia's small farmers and domestic agricultural support systems? For the vulnerability of small farmers to periodic food security episodes? For the ability of the state (and the market) to "enforce" grades and standards? Who will be the agents and the benefactors of the more proprietary technology dissemination systems likely to be facilitated? What will the increasing privatization of germplasm materials and germplasm-based research mean for the "publicly" supported agricultural support system? For the management of the specific natural systems where these germplasm materials currently exist in the wild? What will happen to land prices, tenure systems, and usufruct arrangements when variation in land quality can be overcome through relatively low private investment in the application of technology rather than relatively high private investment in land infrastructure?

Biotechnology and other forms of technology transformation and, more important, their political and economic correlates already show significant potential not simply to modify (or in some cases enhance) existing technological bases of agricultural production, food processing and animal husbandry, but also to be very compatible with a reorganization of the economic, institutional, and political foundations of agriculture. 5

Transforming the State's Rural Development Support System. In recent decades, the institutions constituting the public support system for rural (principally agricultural) development have been among the most visible and readily recognized features of rural transformation in Asia. For example, much of the discussion on how agricultural productivity has been increased focuses on the roles and performance of

the support system. Similarly, much of the contemporary discussion on participatory rural development strategies focuses on perceived needs for changes in these roles. The support system comprises the organizations that support, regulate, and manage production, processing, transport, storage, marketing, credit, and education as well as a range of agricultural and economic policy administration systems. Together, these institutions have served as mechanisms for bringing goods and services both to and from rural areas as well as influencing the allocation of land, labor, and capital within rural resource systems.

It is less frequently recognized, however, that these institutions also function as policy arenas within and through which social, economic, and political interests both within and outside the institutions operate to allocate scarce administrative resources. 6

Because of the roles the institutions have acquired in allocating goods and services, processes affecting the allocation of administrative resources can influence the management and distribution of rural resources and the social, economic, cultural, and political features of the rural landscape. In effect, the institutions and policy arenas are playing important linkage functions.

Relationships between the state and the rural sector reveal a complex web of relationships. 7 The state's relationships with rural society are multidimensional, employing policies, institutions, and the technology transformation noted earlier as instruments. Policy reform purportedly designed to reduce government's role in the rural economy (e.g., removing input subsidies) becomes a basis for increasing the role of the state in rural economic organization (e.g., through preventing wage inflation). The state is called upon to intervene selectively, sometimes to provide a safety net for those hurt by structural adjustment, sometimes to institutionalize "rent-seeking" behaviors by those standing to gain from structural adjustment.

In this context, is policy reform a strategy for reducing government's role in rural commodity markets, or is it actually a strategy for enhancing the state's role by depoliticizing important dimensions of the transformation process? If most economic policy regimes in Asia have discriminated against agriculture, does it follow that reforming these policies is for the benefit of agriculture or agrarian society? This is an important question in the rural-urban dichotomy because, as the debate around the urban bias argument has shown, it draws attention to possibly more complex webs of interests and state roles than would be normally permitted or recognized by a rural-urban perspective.

The rural development support system will be a prime example of where and how such questions are answered. What interests are influencing the support system's development? What are the relationships between issue definition and policy formation processes concerning rural resources within the support system and between the support system and other processes that define issues and form policy about rural resources? Similarly, what is the significance for the state's rural development support system of processes (e.g., sociocultural revitalization movements, political parties, lateral marketing networks) that build "horizontal" support linkages among rural communities? Are these alternatives or competitors to the state's support system? How far can these processes go without requiring fundamental accommodation from the state? These questions involve broad issues of relationships among processes of agrarian reorganization, social class development,

and changing roles of the state. Focusing on the rural development support system, the "formal" institutions that link the state and rural change, offers one possibility for understanding how these broader transformation processes are working.

The Reconstruction of Rural Politics. In many places rural politics were, and in a few cases they still are, a form of agricultural and agrarian politics. The political arenas, the normal participants in issue formation and resolution, and the issues themselves reflected commodity (normally agricultural) interests and parity (primarily agrarian) interests. National political coalitions required the support of these interests in order to acquire and hold power. National bureaucracies included agencies essentially under the control of rural interests.

However, as the basic rural (and national) context has changed, the status of rural politics has become problematic. Changes in traditional forms of specialization within national political arenas (e.g., from regional or ethnic interests to occupational or class interests) pose a fundamental challenge to the national dimensions of traditional rural politics. The processes here are not uniform, but in many places what can be seen is rural support of national coalitions being replaced by national control of rural coalitions. Illustrations include (1) the changing functions of political parties, from aggregating and projecting specific interests to centers of national power to mobilizing and reshaping those interests in support of national power; (2) the changing distributive dimensions of national political arenas, shifting from confirming locally based claims of power and privilege to rewarding acknowledgment of centrally based claims; and (3) the changing relationships between class formation and the evolving roles of the state, where rural-urban distinctions as bases of political organization are replaced by class-oriented foundations. For example, in the Philippines, the substitution of the president's Kilusang Bagong Lipunan party in the 1970s for the more traditional Nacionalista and Liberal parties replaced decentralized, "loose," and significantly landownership-based political coalitions with a much more centralized, directed, and state grant-based coalition with functions highly instrumental for the state. In the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Pakistan (among other countries) the mediation of the relationship of political parties with the state by the military can effectively modify the terms of political relationships between rural interests and "national" interests.

In some cases, conversely, rural and agricultural interests still appear able to effectively project and promote certain apparently rural and agricultural, interests in national political arenas (e. g., Japan's domestic rice subsidies, exemptions from land reform given landowners growing export crops in the Philippines, subsidization of agricultural input costs in most countries). If these are cases of "survival," how and why have they happened? Are they likely to continue? Are these, in fact, examples of the persistence of traditional rural and agrarian politics or indications of the decline or "capture" of that politics?

A reconstruction of rural politics is under way -- a reconstruction of what rural politics is about, of who participates, and of what "rules" politics follow. A reconstruction is also under way of what rural politics is not about, who does not participate, and what rules govern participation and interaction that no longer are dominant. 8 In some cases, the reconstruction is clearly characterized by a decline of traditional agricultural and agrarian interests and establishes a basis for stresses and

conflicts. Formerly "nonrural" issues (e.g., industrial siting, human settlement waste management, land-use restrictions) are now issues in a surprisingly large proportion of Asia's rural areas.

A widely recognized but often misinterpreted change is occurring: the significance of agriculture in the national economies of virtually all countries in the region is declining. The rural-urban dichotomy makes much of this decline, assuming frequently that it marks the advance of urban economic influences. Such a conclusion is, of course, possible but when carried too far or applied too simplistically it can miss more subtle and potentially more important dimensions of the process. As a case in point, the complex consequences of agriculture's declining relative share of gross domestic product for the organization and significance of rural and national politics have not been appreciated adequately. Consequences might include the decline of agrarian-based politics, possibly to be replaced by urban-based politics, but other candidates include region-based, ethnic-based, religious-based, and class-based politics. Further consequences might include efforts to "revive" agrarian politics (through steps varying from religious and cultural fundamentalism to collective organization and violence), and the cooptation of agrarian political symbols as a strategy for further manipulation of rural politics for national purposes.

An interesting illustration of these complex consequences in motion is provided by the events surrounding the construction and management of the New Tokyo International Airport at Narita. 9 The new airport, presented as a symbol of Japan's postwar rehabilitation and global industrial ascendance, provoked a domestic political reaction that challenged the scope of the state's role in economic development. This reaction began with a comparatively narrow appeal to environmental values at the Narita site but expanded to a much more broadly based manipulation of values associated with an older agrarian order. In other cases, some sections of traditional agricultural and agrarian interests (often larger landowners and export crop producers and millers) remain dominant, even though the social and economic context in which politics functions is less and less agricultural and agrarian. It is significant in such circumstances to ask, what is the future of rural politics? Of politics based on distinctly rural interests? Of the symbols of rural politics?

Transforming the Foundations of Rural Commerce. Two of the most important characteristics of the changing international economic order are (1) the increasing role of international trade in national economic development and (2) the expanding role of trade in services. Although these and other characteristics of the changing international economic order are receiving considerable attention in Asia, much less recognized is that these characteristics are intersecting with an ongoing change in rural market systems to produce a transformation in the foundations of rural commerce. 10 Certainly participation in international trade is not new to rural areas. Much of what has been traditionally described as developmental in rural areas has involved the export of primary natural mineral and biomass resources from rural areas to international markets. Contemporary developments, however, are adding new elements to this ongoing process. International trade affects rural areas not only through traditional resource-based exports from rural areas but also through effects on a range of other rural resource markets, especially land and labor. For example, labor migrations to the Middle East have altered female roles in farm management, influenced household formation timing, affected labor availability and costs, and

injected new income streams in rural Asia from Pakistan to Korea.

Expanded international linkages tie rural factor and product markets more firmly into international factor and product markets. These broader markets reflect cost and investment profiles distilled from a wide variety of economic, political, and technological conditions that are not restricted to the simple interplay of supply and demand. Trade conflict combined with discriminatory domestic economic policies can be associated with a range of "distortions" in market behavior for rural resources. Similarly, domestic economic adjustment strategies, adopted to redress international trading difficulties, can have significant effects -- both positive and negative -- on the status of rural resources. For example, many economic adjustment strategies include the introduction of floating foreign exchange rates to correct the distortions created by fixed and often overvalued rates. This adjustment is frequently associated with (temporarily) high domestic inflation rates. While smallholder food producers might not have benefited from fixed rates and attendant discriminatory domestic terms of trade, under floating rate regimes they may face rapid rises in (imported) input prices. However, government food policy objectives (which often emphasize low urban retail prices) may not permit commensurate increases in farm gate prices. Farmers are squeezed, leading to reduced productivity and, in some cases, sellouts. For similar reasons, real wages may decline, with serious welfare implications for rural households dependent on wage labor income.

The acceleration of state intervention to control rural commodity systems, purportedly for the purposes of stabilizing domestic prices and production in the face of volatile international markets, appears to be a pervasive phenomenon. Strategies such as vertical integration and risk shifting through alliances between market power and state action become important dimensions of change in the organization of rural commodity systems. Precisely against this background what are now commonly called "parastatal" organizations have arisen. These are quasi-state corporations that have been delegated government powers to regulate, allocate, and tax but are not routinely accountable to "normal" government staffing, financial management, and reporting conventions. Parastatals have acquired important roles as exclusive agents of the state for commodity trading in many countries of the region. What, it can be asked, are the implications of these kinds of changes for the organization and performance of affected commodity markets in rural areas? What are the implications of these kinds of changes for the emergence (and state endorsement) of monopsony power in rural resource marketing systems?

Similarly, the expanding role of trade in services is not a new process, but there are some important new elements. Services to rural areas are becoming considerably more than the traditional provision of production credit, transport, and storage to agricultural commodity systems. A broader range of financial services and infrastructure are required to support more diverse rural economies. Moreover, information -- about domestic and international factor and product markets, technology, policy trends and actions -- has become an increasingly important component of services to rural areas. However, the bigger change is in the redefining of services from rural areas. Many rural resources now have status as resources for the larger economy because, from the national perspective, they can fulfill service functions. Examples include national requirements to allocate and use rural land, rural water supplies, rural labor, rural capital, rural organizational resources, and even rural

"culture" and environment. Conventional economic accounting does not normally refer to most of these resources as "services," but, in fact, that is the functional role they increasingly play in economic transactions between rural areas and the rest of the economy.

Treating rural resources as services has implications for the types of markets and market processes that develop to allocate the control and use of rural resources. Perhaps the most significant of these implications is that rural resources, considered as service resources, derive attributions of value from terms of reference that may not be comprehensible to traditional rural resource valuation processes and criteria. Markets for services are increasingly international, and it is increasingly within an international frame of reference that rural resources as service resources are valued. This shifting market has already had consequences not only for the organization of rural commodity systems, but also for the relevance of traditional rural processes for determining what are resources, what resources are worth, and how resources should be managed. Are these changes continuous, or are there discontinuities in the changes and their consequences? How will basic patterns of organization and participation in rural commerce be influenced?

Work and Occupation. Occupational differentiation is a central dimension of rural transformation. 11 In this context, labor absorption in agriculture, off-farm employment, and sometimes occupational mobility receive attention. As important as these are, however, there is a deeper current that has not been adequately comprehended nor properly connected to the ongoing documentation of employment differentiation. This deeper current is a fundamental change in the cultural, economic, political, psychological, and social meanings of work and occupation.

Work and occupation derive their content from the division of labor in rural society generally. From this broader perspective, at least three important and closely related issues come into view. First, how are the content and significance of occupational differentiation related to changes in the organization and roles of rural households, local organizations, and communities? Second, how is occupational differentiation related to the distribution of access to those goods and services that permit rural households and communities to sustain acceptable life-styles? Third, how are patterns of occupational differentiation related to changes in the management, organization, and roles of rural resource systems? These broader issues lead to a number of questions that simply have not been sufficiently addressed beyond exploring employment consequences of technological change in agriculture associated with the Green Revolution and the periodic resurgence of interest in off-farm employment.

How is the meaning of "occupation" changing? Is a female landless laborer in Bangladesh principally a female, a laborer, or are more contextual categories needed? How are the evolving meanings of "occupation" related to the evolving meanings of "work"? What is occupation an attribute of, and how does this relationship relate to the social, economic, and cultural content of "work"? What are the connections, if any, between changing meanings of occupation and work and processes of class formation, social mobility, cultural assimilation, and demographic change?

We may further ask, how are the organization, allocation, and valuation of work related to the social, cultural, economic, and political processes that define, value, and

organize access to rural resources? How, if at all, is any of this changing? What are the systematic and systemic consequences in terms of particular groups, areas, and skills? How are individuals, groups, and areas perceiving the relationships between work, welfare, and rural resources? How, if at all, are they attempting to cope with, adjust to, defend against, or establish control over those changes that are most salient? How are these reactions and probable capacities and orientations toward reaction related to the distribution of social, cultural, economic, and political assets? 12

Community and Communities. Rural communities have been the primary objects of the more idealized pictures of rural Asia as well as the more denigrating. Moreover, the growth of some rural communities into market and administrative towns has been of keen interest for those who would extend notions of the urban hierarchy to the countryside. What has been missing, however, is comprehensive and comparative assessment, across different arrays of material indicators, of how the meanings of "community" are changing. Community finds meaning in three processes: cohesion, conflict, and collective action. Of particular importance are the relationships of the changes in meaning in these areas to each other and to the broader characteristics and consequences of transformation in social, cultural, economic, and political terms. Many of Asia's most significant social, economic, political, and cultural innovations and expressions have taken place through transformations in communities by means of rural protest, revitalization, rebellion, and revolution.

An additional and especially important question is whether patterns of conflict and collective action from other parts of society are increasingly being reproduced in rural areas as rural transformation proceeds. Similarly, are patterns of rural social conflict or collective action being extended to or absorbed by other parts of society? In either case, what processes and institutions would support the transmission and linkage of conflict, cohesion, and collective action patterns across different parts of society? How are these processes and institutions organized and controlled? What do the coexistence of forms of social cohesion, conflict, and collective action based on varied and possibly inconsistent forms of differentiation or mobilization imply for the meaning of community in the rural transformation?

One case in which such questions might be applied is in determining what a "disorganization" of rural areas might imply for the stability of natural resource management systems in rural areas and resource utilization systems in urban areas. Another example is the growing incidence of youth unemployment and cultural disaffection that is appearing throughout rural and urban Asia. It is not difficult to invoke explanations for this from a rural-urban perspective, in effect arguing that the phenomenon may not be the same in both settings. However, explanations can be invoked that transcend the rural-urban distinction. In either case, what such processes mean for community organization is frequently ignored.

Faced with changing dimensions of social conflict and changes in how such conflict is institutionalized, questions to be asked include how different rural groups are affected. Further, how do different rural groups attempt to maintain or overcome their exposures in institutionalized social conflict, and what are the meanings of the social, political, or moral action they may take? Such questions direct attention to the relationships among cohesion, conflict, and collective action. 13 What do answers to these questions mean for the politics of rural transformation? For the "governability"

of rural areas? For the incidence of conflict and the effectiveness of local conflict management processes? The Cultural Foundations of Rural Transformation. Rural transformation is a cultural phenomenon, a system of vision and values that identifies, interprets, legitimates, and appraises the "facts" of rural transformation for those living through it. But what is the significance of rural transformation as cultural expressions? Are these expressions extensions of agrarian culture or invasions of urban cosmopolitanism? Are they projections of ethnic identities or reproductions of class ideologies? Are they refinements of religion or the signposts of secularism? Is rural transformation really just a process of cultural convergence, reflecting increasing involvement in a common social division of labor; a process of cultural domination, reflecting increasing control over rural society by other interests; or a process of cultural divergence, reflecting the erosion of the insularity of rural culture but not the loss of rural culture's fundamental identity? Is the very term "rural culture" inappropriate or idealized, in which case it would be necessary to reconsider the appropriateness of the proposition that rural transformation is a cultural phenomenon?

Does the term "rural transformation" imply the substitution of a new or different social base for cultural expression, or is the essence of rural transformation the disjunctions between the cultural bases of a rural social order and the social basis of a rural cultural system? For any country, are the cultural implications of rural transformation the fate of a specific (rural) cultural system or common to changing relationships among many (rural and other) cultural systems? What are the implications of cultural pluralism for the status of social cohesion, conflict, and collective action in contemporary rural societies? For the role of politics as a vehicle for expressing cultural understandings? For the role of the state as a "manager" of cultural pluralism and assimilation? These are all very difficult questions, but fundamental to any understanding of what the transformation of rural society means is an understanding of the cultural dimensions of the transformation.

Managing Urban Places in an Era of Rural Transformation. That urban society depends for its existence on a broad number of economic, social, and political relationships with rural society is intuitively recognized. Yet, the thrust of research on the rural-urban dichotomy has been to give greater attention to the reverse proposition: the dependence of rural society on a broad number of relationships with urban society. But there is a dialectic in the relationship, a possible limit: how far can rural transformation proceed before the security of the future of urban society is jeopardized? 14

At a first level of analysis, this issue is really concerned with agrarian transformation and urban food security. A rural transformation that significantly reduces the viability of rural food production can create problems for an urban society that must "import" all its food supplies, either from within the rural areas of its own country or the rural areas of another country. But even at this level, the urban future is vulnerable to upper limits in agrarian change that go beyond food security. For example, agrarian transformation has often been associated with large-scale social dislocation and rural-urban migration. In some societies, contemporary urban infrastructure -- in physical, social, and political terms -- would have great difficulty supporting considerably larger numbers of low income and frequently unemployed people. Changes in rural land use can have significant effects on urban areas even when food production is not sacrificed. For example, extensive modifications in the hydrology of the central

Thailand delta to facilitate agricultural intensification is a major contributing factor to Bangkok's accelerated rate of sinking. In the Philippines, the dry season brings direct competition between the drinking water and hydroelectric requirements of Manila and the irrigation demands of the agricultural areas producing food for Manila.

However, rural transformation is more than agrarian transformation. Rural transformation as social, cultural, and political mobilization can introduce forms of rural cohesion, conflict, and collective action into urban places, potentially without the supporting social infrastructure. The results can be problematic, as for instance in a failure to "import" appropriate modes for conflict management. Conversely, when urban management attempts to insulate urban places from the effects of rural transformation (e.g., through regulating rural migration, forced relocation of urban squatters to sites outside a city, or urban zoning), the results often include an exacerbation of some of the conflict and welfare-loss dimensions of rural transformation. Poorer, lessskilled, less politically connected, and ethnically marginal persons are effectively excluded from a rural-to-urban migration stream, leaving greater proportions of such individuals in rural areas while an urban-torural stream of such individuals, effectively precipitated out of the urban milieu, is encouraged. 15

All eight areas discussed above suggest an important interactive process. Rural transformation affects life in urban places. Attempts to better manage the life and future of urban places inevitably affect life in rural places. The nature and intensity of the mutual impact will vary from place to place, but the effects are likely to be more pronounced and, over time perhaps, more significant within areas touched by the outreach of evolving metropolitan systems. This possibility is explored by several of the chapters in this volume. Whatever the relationship, managing rural transformation and managing the future of urban places need to be understood together. The challenge is to know whether they can be undertaken together in a manner that does not actually substitute the power of the state for the metaphor of urbanrural integration.

CONCLUSIONWhy Were Linkages Discounted?Is rural society in Asia dead? Is urban society in Asia a myth? Obviously, there are rural places and there are urban places, so what purposes are served by such questions? The answer is that development studies generally, and Asian studies in particular, have inherited and continue to employ specific metaphors to describe complex social, cultural, economic, and political realities and processes, whether or not these categories do now or have ever done their scientific jobs especially well.

To understand why the inertia has been sustained, it is important to recognize the functions of metaphors. At one level the job of the metaphor is to facilitate understanding by defining and organizing knowledge. The metaphor offers an internally logical picture. When the picture is colored with appropriate social facts, the metaphor can provide a compelling depiction of what these facts mean and how they interrelate. "Urban" and "rural" have proven to be exceptionally powerful in this function. At another level, however, the metaphor is a political instrument legitimating the socialization and assimilation of those who will practice under it as well as establishing the grounds for excluding those who do not share in that community. At this level metaphors serve an ideological rather than an

epistemological function.

Metaphors are maintained even when the price is an ersatz debate not only because the metaphors continue to satisfy methodological canons associated with the first (epistemological) function, but also because the metaphors are associated with specific patterns of control over crucial resources. 16 The crucial resources are arguably those of the state along with "ownership" of national development visions. To bestir a desultory debate, the metaphors in the debate have to be challenged by first demonstrating plausible falsification and then instigating delegitimation. From the intellectual and political anomalies a new debate is generated.

Beyond the ErsatzThe rural-urban dichotomy has been a pillar of development thinking. However, it is imperative in the case of Asia to move development studies beyond the most perverse aspects of the dichotomy: the inexorability of urbanization and the (imminent) obsolescence of rural organization. These expectations are undoubtedly accurate in some form in some cases, but that they have been applied so widely reveals both the strength of metaphors and the ultimate weaknesses of empiricism. Too often, when all is said and done, the rural-urban dichotomy boils down to issues of population density and particular configurations of material culture. There is no denying that there are large cities, just as there is no denying there are rural places. The dichotomy has fallen into trouble, however, by assuming that the social, economic, and political relations that accompany material culture in either the Primate City or agrarian setting will accompany facets of that culture wherever and whenever they are found. And it is the failure to seriously engage the middle ground that has yielded the most debilitating conceptualization: rural conceived as peasant agriculture unconnected to markets, media, or the urban masses; urban conceived as everything else.

The idea of a rural-urban continuum has been recognized, but applications have generally faltered because definitions of urban have been practically coterminous with development. The result is a continuum within the urban category, not between the rural and urban categories. One step that would move affairs forward would be to examine the continuum as both a conceptual and an empirical possibility, first by suspending the temptation to refer to the middle ground using hyphenated forms of "urban," such as "peri-urban." As pointed out throughout this volume, there exist areas (e.g., the Bandung-Bogor-Jakarta triangle in Indonesia, the Canton-Hong Kong-Macao triangle and the Sunan area in China, the Central Luzon Plains in the Philippines) where there is a significant incidence of unusual and intense land use mixtures. In these zones of interaction issues such as work, class, politics, and culture should be examined carefully. Do these areas exhibit inherently transient or unstable forms of socioeconomic organization? If so, what influences the rate, scope, and direction of their evolution? Or are these not really transient but rather distinct forms, evolving on trajectories that have significant degrees of autonomy from both urban and rural influences?

The questions are plentiful. What has been lacking is the conceptual and empirical innovation to address them.