John Rapley FOR ALMOST all of their history on this planet, humans lived close to the land. Even in the industrial countries, as recently as a century ago, most people made their living either directly off the land, or in businesses that served farmers.
Nevertheless, over two centuries ago, as the industrial revolution gathered pace, there began a transformation that would prove epochal. This was the urbanisation of the planet. As industry and, later, services, consumed more and more of the economy's resources including, most importantly, labour resources a massive wave of migration to the cities got underway.
While this migration occurred over many generations, in the span of human history it would be a sharp break after millennia of continuity. It started first in the industrialising countries. However, as these integrated more and more of the planet into their economic orbit, the wave spread outwards.
Today, in the developed economies, less than five percent of the population lives off the land. That figure continues declining as the emergence of massive industrial farms leaves in its wake a landscape of empty villages in places like the USA and Canada (in more densely-populated European countries, those villages have often been transformed into quaint bedroom communities for harried urban professionals seeking a country life).
In the Third World as a whole, most people still live in rural areas; Jamaica thus stands at the extreme end of the spectrum for its degree of urbanisation. Nevertheless, the urbanisation wave is advancing most quickly in developing countries. Indeed, cities like Lagos, Nigeria or Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire were carved out of what was little more than swampland a mere half-century ago, and have since exploded at rates that are barely sustainable. By the middle of this century, most of the planet's inhabitants will live in cities.
DRAMATIC EFFECTS
This has had dramatic social effects. With their tremendous diversity, cities are hives of modernisation. On the one hand, urbanised people are exposed to a much wider variety of cultural influences, breaking the hold of tradition on their lives. On the other, the dislocation of the city leads many people to seek comfort in abandoned traditions, which they often re-invent to give themselves a sense of permanence in an unstable world. Tribalism, nativism, Islamic fundamentalism, movements that call themselves traditional, are anything but, having most often been born in cities.
Urbanisation has also fed a trend toward homogeneisation of consumption, whether of culture, clothing or food. The diet of mankind has become increasingly narrowed over the last century, as traditional staples give way to a more uniform diet. In particular, wheat-based food products are becoming more and more widespread across the world.
The reason is not hard to find. Noodles, bread and pasta take less time to prepare than rice, yam or cassava. Urban food-preparation, especially in Third-World cities, is often done by people who are also working in the formal economy. That, and the greater distances between residences and home places than was customary in rural settings, means that the people who prepare meals, usually women, must opt for the more-easily prepared products.
This tendency has been fed by the acceleration of time-space compression that is occurring in the world's economies. As globalisation fuels competition, workers find more of their time given over to work. The average time spent preparing and consuming meals thus goes down. Even the French, who have long prided themselves on their languid lunches, have slashed the time spent at table in half over the last two generations.
THE RURAL-URBAN DRIFT
Rural-urban drift and the trend toward a more uniform diet have thus weakened the power of rural constituencies almost everywhere. Even in Japan, whose farmers have long been considered a sacred cow in politics, urban consumers with little connection to the land are now clamouring for an end to agricultural protectionism so that they can import cheaper goods from abroad. The romantic idealisation of rural life is everywhere giving way to the practical expediency of cheap food.
Today, most of humanity occupies but a tiny share of the planet's surface. Separated from the land, and its attendant culture and practices, they are ushering in a new global age. With all its benefits and drawbacks, it is a dramatic time.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
