Criteria to Classify Village

Eminent sociologists have put forward many criteria to classify village communities. Some of these are:

(A) According to one criterion the village aggregates have been classified according to the types which evolved during the period of the transition from man’s nomadic existence to settled village life. Thus villages have been divided into three groups: 

• The Migratory agricultural villages where the people live in fixed abodes only for a few months;
• The semi-permanent agricultural villages where the population resides for a few years and then migrates due to the exhaustion of the soil; and
• The permanent agricultural villages where the settled human aggregates live for generations and even centuries.

(B) According to the second criterion villages have been classified into grouped (or nucleated) villages and dispersed villages. In grouped villages, the farmers dwell in the village proper in a cluster. They work on the fields which lie outside the village site. Since they dwell together in a single habitat, they develop a compact life. In the case of the non-nucleated dispersed village type, the farmers live separately on their respective farms. Their habitats are thus dispersed, and their social life assumes a different form.

(C) Village arrogates have been also classified according to a third criterion, that of social differentiation, stratification, mobility, and land, ownership.

Thus criterion group village aggregates into six broad types viz.

• That composed of peasant's joint owns;
• That composed of peasant joint tenants;
• That composed of farmers who are mostly individual owners, but also include some tenants and laborers;
• That composed of individual farmer tenants;
• That composed of employees of a great private landowner; and
• That is composed of laborers and employees of the state, the church, the city, or the public landowner.

Reference

Rural Sociology by Dr. G. Das

Settlement Pattern of Rural People

The settlement pattern of rural people is based on two aspects and fundamental types. These are grouped or cluster-dwelling forms. There exist different combinations of patterns of settlement exist between them.

According to Karve there are three types of villages: 

1. Tightly Nucleated villages.
2. Villages on two sides of a road.
3. Clustered villages.

According to Tyagi the villages are of the following categories:

1. Shapeless cluster.
2. Linear cluster.
3. Square of the rectangular cluster.
4. Villages formed of isolated homesteads.

According to A.R.Desai, ‘In the history of different people lives in different parts of the world and different types of villages emerged with the rise and spread of agriculture’. This was mainly due to differences in the geographical environments in which those people lived. Further, the early village of a people also underwent changes in time due to its subsequent technical, economic, and social evolution as well as due to the impact of other societies on it.                                

This history of the village, in time and space, reveals such diverse village types as the Saxon village, the German Mark, the Russian Mir, the self-sufficient Indian Gram, the village of feudal Europe which was an integral part of the manor; and finally the modern village, which is an integral part of national and world economic systems, with its variants such as the U.S.A. village, the typical West European village, the village of the backward modern countries of Asia, the village of the Soviet Union based on collectivized agricultural economy and others.

Hence the student of rural society should study the village, the basic unit of rural society as it originated and underwent a constant state of development and change due to the action of its own developing internal forces as also due to its interaction with other societies.’

Pattern of Settlement 

The patterns of settlement identified are as given below:       

1. Isolated Farmstead: In this form, the individual lives on his farm with his farmland surrounding him. “His neighbor may be a few miles from him depending on the size of their respective farms. Adjacent to his dwelling he keeps his livestock, bar, farm equipment, harvested produce, and other parts commodities.”
2. Village: This pattern of settlement comprises dwellings of rural people “concentrated together with their farmland outlying their cluster dwelling of the village. The number of dwellings will vary and will indicate the size of the village. Examples, of the village pattern of settlement due to be found in most of the countries of the East, where such predominates.” 
3. Line Village: In such a type of village houses are located along a road, a waterway, or an artery of transportation, each with adjoining strips of farmland belonging in shape extending away from the road. Residences are thus close and easily accessible to one another and at the same time are located on their respective farms. This pattern of human settlement may be witnessed along canals in “Thailand, in certain parts of Canada along the St. Lawrance River, in French Canadian settlement in Maine and Louisiana in the U.S.A. and is characteristic of the French land tenure pattern, many villages in France and Germany are also of this type.”
4. Round Village or Circular Pattern: In this type “houses are arranged in a circle enclosing a central area with the houses and yard at the apex of the triangular plot. In this way, houses are closer together without creating a corresponding greater length in the tract of farmland.” Such a pattern can easily be seen in some villages in Israel where irrigated land is very limited.”
5. Cross-Roads and Market Center Settlements: This pattern of settlement is common in various places trough out the world. It is “based on economic factors of location for simply and distribution of goods, this settlement provides needed products and commodities, such as prepared foodstuffs, refreshments services such as petrol station, repair shop, etc. market center settlement, therefore, are predominantly is habited by Merchants who handle agricultural products, bankers, shopkeepers and other.” In such centers, farmers usually do not reside unless their farmland is adjacent. Generally, it consists of shops along the line of the road.    
6. Hamlets: Small villages located away from villages or on the fringes of larger villages are called hamlets and they do not possess adequate supplies usually and services that may be more available in the larger village.
7. Other Patterns: In addition to these other types of settlements exist to serve a specific function. For, instance, in India at points of religious pilgrimage or a church is usually built along with dwelling places for those who visit and worship. Similarly, there are historical and other places of tourist interest around which settlements have come to exist.

Reference

Rural Sociology by Dr. G. Das

Origin and Development of Village

A village is the most ancient form of human life togetherness. According to Desai “The village is the unit of the rural society. It is the theater wherein the quantum of rural life unfolds itself and functions.’ 

He further adds that “Like every social phenomenon the village is a certain stage in the evolution of the life of man, its further growth and development in subsequent periods of human history, the varied structural changes it experienced during thousands of years of its existence, the rapid and basic transformation it has undergone during the last hundred and fifty years since the Industrial Revolution all these constitute a very fascinating and challenging study.”

Rise of Villages

Historically, the rise of the village is linked with the rise of the agricultural economy. The emergence of the village revealed that man passed from the nomadic mode of collective life to the life of settled individuals, basically due to the ‘improvement of tools of production which made agriculture easy and hence settled life on a fixed territorial zone possible and necessary”.

It has been one of the most complex problems of social research to find out “How humanity, in different parts of the world, passed from the nomadic hunting and food gathering stage to that based on roving hoe agriculture and thereafter on settled plow agriculture carried on by means of draft animals.”

The invention of the plough and its use led man to develop stable agriculture, the basic source of assured food supply, and man’s nomadic mode of life disappeared. No longer had men roamed in herds from place to place in search of means of subsistence on the contrary they settled on a definite territory and organized villages based on the agricultural economy. There emerged the agrarian communities with villages as their fixed habitation and agriculture as their main occupation and these developments marked a landmark in the history of mankind, inaugurating a higher phase of social existence. Agriculture assured the community, for the first time, a relatively stable food supply in contrast to previous stages of social life. While food supply derived from such sources as hunting, fishing, fruit gathering, and migratory hoe agriculture had always been insufficient and precarious, grain and other types of food products derived from plough agriculture could be counted upon and also be stored for use in periods of emergencies, thereby assuring relative food security for the future.

The development in the field of agriculture brought the struggle for existence to a relatively low level. Consequently at a certain stage of the development of the agricultural economy, due to the greater productivity of agriculture, a section of the community could be liberated from the necessity of participating in food production and could therefore concentrate on the secondary industrial or ideological activity. This gave momentum to the growth of technology, art, sciences, and philosophy, it also brought about, though slowly, the significant transition in the social organization of humanity, from an organization funded on kinship and clan to that based on territorial ties. With the development of agriculture at a certain level, mankind took a leap from optimistic collectivist clan society to territory civil society with its distinct multi-class social structure and the resultant institution of the state.”

This is how Civilization began with the development of agriculture and the village which is the first settled form of

 ‘collective human habitation and the product of the growth of agricultural economy’ pared the way for the rural society, and  from the surplus of its food resources, nourished the town which subsequently came into existence.’

Reference

Rural sociology by Dr. G. Das

Difference between Rural World and Urban World

P. A. Sorokin and C. C. Zimmerman in their “Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology” have given the following decisive differences between rural and urban words:

Topic	Rural World	Urban World
Occupation	The totality of cultivators and their families. In the community are usually a few representatives of several non-agricultural pursuits.	The totality of people engaged principally in manufacturing, mechanical pursuits, trade, commerce, professions, governing, and other non-agricultural occupations.
Environment	The predominance of nature over the anthropic-social environment. Direct relationship to nature.	Greater isolation from nature. The predominance of the man-made environment over natural, poorer aid, stone, and iron.
Size of community	Open farms or small communities, “Agricultural” and size of the community are negatively correlated	As a rule in the same country and in the same period, the size of the urban community is much larger than the rural community. In other words, urbanity and the size of the community are positively correlated.
Density of population	In the same country and at the same period the duty is lower than in the urban community. Generally density and rural are negatively correlated.	Greater than in rural communities. Urbanity and density are positively correlated.
Heterogeneity and homogeneity of the population	Compare with urban populations, rural communities are more homogeneous in racial and psychological traits (Negative correlation with heterogeneity).	More heterogeneous than rural communities (in the same country and at the same time). Urbanity and heterogeneity are positively correlated.
Social differentiation and stratification	Rural differentiation and stratification are less than urban	Differentiation and stratification show a positive correlation with urbanity.
Mobility	Territorial, occupation and other forms of social mobility of the population are comparatively less intensive. Normally the migration current carries more individuals from the country to the city.	More intensive. Urbanity and mobility are positively correlated. Only in periods of social catastrophe is the migration from the city to the country greater than from the country to the city.
System of interaction	Less numerous contacts per man. Narrower area of the interaction system of its members and the whole aggregate. More prominent part is occupied by primary contacts. The predominance of personal and relatively durable relations. Comparative simplicity and sincerity of relations, “man has interacted as a human person”.	More numerous contacts. The wider area of interaction system per aggregate. The predominance of secondary contacts. The predominance of impersonal casual and short live relations. Greater complexity, manifolds, superficiality, and standardized formality of relations. Man has interacted as a “number” and “address”

Various Aspects of Rural Population

One of the foremost tasks of the rural sociologist is to define the rural people and distinguish them from the urban population. Various approaches have been put forward for that purpose by eminent thinkers. The classification adopted by government Census Departments in various countries is, however, generally accepted as the most convenient. However, item classification may vary from one country to another.

Composition of Rural-Urban Population: Ratios

One of the important steps after the identification of the rural populations is to determine the ratio of rural and urban populations. In many countries, this ratio in a great measure points out the level of living of the people as a whole as it reveals the relative ‘proportion of industry and agriculture and hence the total wealth of the people. The ration, further, considerably influences the apportionment of social amenities with the country.’ It thereby works as a guide for evolving a correct program for social progress. One of the great mistakes writes A.R.Desai, committed by a number of reformers and social engineers is to transplant mechanically the techniques adopted for reform in a country inhabited by a small agrarian population and with a vast area of land to a country inhabited by an overwhelmingly agrarian population and with scarce land resources. The effort to introduce steps adopted to improve the farm sector of the U.S. which is overwhelmingly industrial to predominantly agrarian backward countries of Asia is an instance of such an error. Even within the same country, a detailed study of the ratios of rural and urban populations in different regions is essential because these differences considerably alter the nature of problems relating to those regions. The problems vary from state to state in India as the problems of Gujarat and those Bihar are different because there is a difference in the proportion of the ‘rural-urban population’ of these two states. Similar situations arise when we extend our study to other states.

The Density of Rural People

The density of people varies from state to state in India. “Sociologists after adequate investigation have reached the conclusion that the average density beyond a particular limit indicates an undesirable overconcentration of the people in that area. This is because the density of the population affects production and distribution and also generates various social reactions which greatly influence the total life of a society. The density of the population further affects the level the standard of living of the people. A systematic study of the density of the population in different regions and districts in India and also of the proportion of various groups belonging to diverse castes, religions, and vocations which comprise the population, will unfold the variegated picture of the complex social life of the Indian people with all its multiple tensions, antagonisms as well as mutual adjustments among these groups.

Birth and Death Rate-Mortality Factor

Another important aspect of the study of the demography of the rural sector is the study of birth rates, death rates, rates of suicides, specific bodily diseases, and other matters. This study reveals ‘the quantitative and qualitative growth or decline of the rural people. Further, when this study is correlated to that of the social, economic, and religious life processes of various social groups, it provides intelligent and correct criteria for evaluating the norms of those groups.

General Health and Longevity

Besides a study of the ‘death and survival rates’ existing among the rural people, there are also other techniques to determine their vitality such as a study of their ‘general health and longevity.’ Further, ‘estimates of mortality prevailing among separate groups such as infants, females, and old people; upper, lower and middle social strata, and land laborers, farmers, artisans, and other social categories, will give a detailed picture of the vitality of various section of the rural people.’

Age and Sex groups

Age and sex groups are other important aspect of the life of a population that requires a close sty in their distribution. The analysis of the age group gives us a correct understanding of the proportion of the people who belong to the productive age group and those who are to be looked after by society. The greater number of children and the aged over the working class people would considerably influence their economic and social life. In the same way, the analysis of the ‘sex composition is also important because it is generally recognized by sociologists that “sex mores, social codes, social ritual, and social institutions are all likely to be affected where extremely unbalanced sex rations are found”

There are still other aspects of the rural population such as ‘Caster, race nationality and religious composition” and thus has a great social significance. “it gives rise to a rich, complex, diversity of social life and varied patterns of culture. More often it breeds animosities, antagonisms, and conflicts. We know how in India in recent years the multi-religious composition of the Indian people endangered ghastly communal Hindu-Muslim riots. We know how both nationality conflicts are steadily corroding the body politic of India. A very particular type of social grouping is found in caste grouping. A student of Indian society who fails to study closely and carefully this variety of social grouping will miss the very essence of that society.

There is an urgent need to adopt a systematic, coordinated, and internal stated study of the rural people from various angles to achieve social progress.

Reference

Rural sociology by Dr. G. Das