Local Responses to Global Integration by Charlambos Kasimis Apostolos G. Papadopoulos

Author:Charlambos Kasimis, Apostolos G. Papadopoulos [Charlambos Kasimis, Apostolos G. Papadopoulos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138333857
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 40981274
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Part III

Communities and Households

7 Social Identification with Local Communities and the Globalization Process in Rural Areas of Eastern Europe

PAWEL STAROSTA AND MARIANA DRAGANOVA

Introduction

The findings of community studies focused on the question of social bonds can be summarized in the form of different hypotheses, with the community-lost hypothesis being the best known (Kornhauser, 1960; Hunter, 1975; Wellman, 1979; Wellman et al., 1988). It assumes an almost complete disintegration of primary bonds and the disappearance of territory as a basis for the development of social bonds, a process, which can be observed in the contemporary world. According to the supporters of this hypothesis: 1) the non-territorial basis for the grouping of people is more important than the territorial (Wellman et al., 1988); 2) the vertical pattern of a community including ‘the structural and functional relations of its various social units and subsystems to extra-community systems’ (Warren, 1973, p. 242) is stronger than the horizontal pattern to be found in ‘the structural and functional relations of its various social units and systems to each other’ (Warren, 1973, p. 242); and 3) interrelationships between people both within the community and with the community tend to weaken and become impersonal (Jatowiecki, 1989).

Three causes are underlined in contemporary discussion of the factors determining the process of local community decay with their sources deeply rooted in the modernization process characteristic for advanced industrial societies. The first of them is the process of population growthconnected with industrialization and urbanization. According to Simmel (1975) and Wirth (1964), the growth of population and population density leads to the weakening of interpersonal contacts. The development of technology and means of transport leads to a greater spatial mobility and the diminishing significance of the territorial foundations of interpersonal bonds. Thus, the development of a mass consumption society leads to social atomization and the collapse of the role hitherto played by local communities as the basis for social integration. These industrialization and urbanization processes were carried out in Eastern European countries mainly in the 1950s (Musil, 1984). They were, however, not so deep as in Western societies, because of the shortage of capital and the shortcomings of applied technologies. Moreover, the rapid industrialization and urbanization processes in Eastern Europe were concentrated in time and not based on the internalization of industrial society’s system of cultural values (Robertson, 1992). Its ultimate effect was not only urbanization but also sub-urbanization with all its social and cultural consequences.

The urbanization process in CEECs was progressing in a horizontal and extensive way with some negative effects on rural regions and their population. By turning private farming and land ownership into public (in Russia, for example, land was nationalized and in Bulgaria collectivized), farmers lost their links with the land and there was an increase in alienation from their place of dwelling. This intensified the migration process of large groups of villagers towards the industrial centres and weakened the affiliations of at least two generations with their places of birth. This process was a little different in Poland, where most agriculture remained private but rural areas did not escape the urbanization process.

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