Rural Sociology 

Definitions

“…… the prime objective of rural sociology should be to make a scientific, systematic and comprehensive study of the rural social organisation of its structure, functions and objective tendencies of development and on the basis of such study, to discover the laws of its development.” —A.R. Desai 

“Rural sociology is the sociology of life in the rural environment.” —Sanderson

“The sociology of rural life is a study of rural population, rural social organization and the rural social processes operative in rural society.” —F. S. Chapin 

“Such sociological facts and principles as are derived from the study of rural social relationships may be referred to as rural sociology.” —T. L. Smith

Rural sociology as a special Sociology

• The fundamental task of rural sociology is to describe the relatively constant and universal traits or relations of the rural social world as distinct from the non-rural or urban social universe.

• The second fundamental task of sociology is to explain the differences are the specific traits of rural social phenomena. This includes an explanation of any indications of the factors responsible for these differences, or in the establishment of the functional correlations between such and such specific defences and such and such independent or dependent variables.

Origin and development of rural sociology: US and India

The sociology of rural life in a systematic form originated in the US in the second quarter of the 20th century through the report of the Country Life Commission appointed by the American President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1907.

America at that time was under mass poverty and economic crisis and they thought if nothing was done to study how rural life was affected then they would not be able to understand how it affected modern life too. Social problems in the rural US had increased to a significant extent and the Country Life Commission was set to study these rural social problems and make recommendations for improvement of the rural life.

In this reference, the US Sociological Society motivated the sociologists to take up the Study of human society in a massive way. Consequently, use data poured in from research monographs and dissertations. All these provided the grounds for the emergence of rural sociology.

• John M. Gilet was a pioneer in writing a textbook on Rural sociology in 1960.
• A journal entitled RURAL SOCIOLOGY  was the first time launched in USA in 1935
• Reputed sociologists such as James Michael Williams, Warren H Wilson, and Newell. L.Sims Contributed substantially to the study of American rural society.
• The early rural sociologists used statistical and historical data. Along with this, they used the field of you to find out the empirical reality of the US country life.

In India, the beginning of the study of Rural society goes back to Sir Henry S. Maine who brought out books The Ancient law 1861 and Ancient Society 1877.

It is he who was the first time theorised that kinship was the mainstay of India’s rural society.

However, the systematic growth of the subject started in India after the promulgation of the Constitution of India.

Even during the days of the British East India Company efforts were made by the sociologist and a social anthropologist to find out the patterns of land tenure, customary laws and the functioning of peasants and artisans. For example, Ramkrishna Mukherjee in 1957 informed by scrutinising a source material on the nature of the village community from the British administrative report of the Punjab 1852.

Recurrent famines in India Lead to more studies on the face of rural life.

The report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture became monumental work dealing with the problems faced by the countryside.

A number of economists also started studying village communities where the University of Madras in 1916 started the idea of an economic survey of villages and hence the villages were very resurveyed in 1936 and 1961.

In its modern form the ICSSR an apex body of social scientists carried out surveys in India for a period of 10 years the preceding of which came out in 1970. In the first volume entitled A Survey of Research in Sociology and Social Anthropology volume one the sub-discipline or other sociology is discussed under the chapter ‘Rural Studies’.

Rural Sociology by its nature is interdisciplinary and draws freely from its sister disciplines of economics political science, sociology and social anthropology. A.R. Desai has readily done pioneering work in the field of rural sociology by editing rural sociology in India the work which was first published in 1969 and has now undergone more than half a dozen editions.

Scope of Rural Sociology

In its developments during the 18th and 19th centuries, it studied the society of aboriginals and primitive people. 

 The initial subject matter of sociology for social anthropology and in this respect rural sociology was to study the life of village people and Forest dwellers in fact the rural sociologist remained restricted to the small spaces of villages or clusters of neighbourhood.

Henry Maine, A British administrator was the first person to study Indian villages.

The subject matter of Rural Sociology during the colonial period remained confined to the study of hills and forest people the tribals the villages and a few traditional institutions such as family and castes.

But after Independence, there was a sudden shift and every person in the 

The subject matter of rural sociology the Constitution of India made it obligatory that the state shall spare no efforts for the development of villages because it was observed that villages were self-reliant and had their local rule.

The Constitution of India made it obligate tree that the state shall spare no efforts for the development of villages hence it was in the year 1950 that the Constitution of India was promulgated and in 1950 to the five-year plan was implemented along with community development and extension programmes.

The development programmes, the forces of technology, industrialisation, Urbanisation, market and a host of other factors brought about tremendous changes in the community and to the new set of subject matter available to the body of Rural Sociology.

It is the study of association among people living by or immediately dependent upon agriculture.

It studies people in village groupings and their group Behaviour  as distinguished from larger organ aggregates and their behaviours 

Method and Tools of Rural Sociology 

1. Structural functional method

2. systematic comparison

3. Fieldwork

Structural functional Method

Structural-functionalism emphasises the formal ordering of parts and their functional interrelations as contributing to the maintenance needs of a structured social system. The function of any institution (or ‘recurrent social activity’) was the part it played in the maintenance of the larger structural whole.  Structural-functional theory, sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that society. Functionalism grew out of the writings of English philosopher and biologist, Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), who saw similarities between society and the human body. He argued that just as the various organs of the body work together to keep the body functioning, the various parts of society work together to keep society functioning (Spencer 1898). The parts of society that Spencer referred to were the social institutions, or patterns of beliefs and behaviours focused on meeting social needs, government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy. The same approach can be used to study rural structures.

Systemic comparison

There has always been a need to study people in their local setting. The knowledge gained by the study of one village can hardly be a reliable guide to study the factors prevalent in a present village. It is in this context that MN Srinivas 1960 lays emphasis on systematic comparison. 
Several examples of the application of comparative method in rural studies includes 
            
    T.S. Epstein- Study on Economic Development and Social  Change 1962
- studied two villages of South India
- Did a comparative study of dry and wet communities.
- Her findings revealed that villagers belonging to wet villages that have irrigation from canal water were progressive and forward-looking compared to the villagers from dry villages.
   The concept of dominant caste Sanskritization  and great and little traditions have all stood the taste of comparative method

Fieldwork

Valuable theoretical formulations in social anthropology have been constructed out of fieldwork.

Malinowski- study among Trobriand Islanders

Malinowski’s - Argonauts of the Western Pacific in 1922 

Radcliffe Brown - Andaman Islanders 

Pierre Bourdieu - in Algeria

M. N Srinivas - Rampura village ( Book - The Remembered Village) and among the Coorg of South India