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Development and the Rural-Urban Divide
First published in 1984. It is widely acknowledged that rural-urban differences and interrelationships play an important role in the development process. Some theorists believe they are a primary cause of continuing poverty in poor nations. This volume of essays summarises and appraises theories of rural-urban relations and economic development and explores, mainly on the basis of country case studies, the conceptual and theoretical problems to which they give rise, and the extent to which they correspond to recent experiences in the Third World.
166 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 16, 2017
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March 26, 2026
Very promising intro chapter that taps into the main debate surrounding urban bias theory but the later chapters are very blunt in their critique and selectively beat the same horse to death. Not very useful but was nice to read glimpses of the political economy of regional disparities in Tanzania, Fiji, Sri Lanka and China, as it is one of my favourite topics.
Nice to see Lipton getting to have the final word too. I still do believe he unnecessarily defends some of his reductionist analyses (but still does appreciate genuine criticisms) but the corner he is painting himself into is still wider than the corner his ferocious critics sometimes paint themselves into by completely denying the sectoral categorization and any traces of antagonism between them.
Corbridge (1982 in J.Harriss' Rural Development) probably had the best good faith criticism on the debate surrounding urban bias theory - Lipton himself agrees with several of his points in the final chapter. If anybody is deeply interested in the debate, that essay would be my pick for essential reading.
Me also thinks the critics beat this horse to death too early too soon. The way Lipton theorised urban-rural politics may have been reductionist but instead of better analyses, more literature was focused on denying that the distinction itself. In the later 80s, there was much interesting literature on urban protests and organization politics (actually building upon a point that Lipton incidentally raised about the benefit that urbanites have wrt being more concentrated and organized). Literature on rural politics on the other hand haven't really progressed much, except once in a while it becomes electorally important. Marx provided a starting point in Eighteenth Brumaire while speaking about peasant politics on how their being dispersed had political implications for a modern democratic state. There was also later extremely rich literature and debate on peasant revolutions until 80s but petered out soon. It's not just an academic gap but had consequences politically. So much of grassroots organising has been left to separate interest groups instead of a conscious class-based organising which was quite active in both academia and politics in the 60s. What you mostly have now in progressive circles is near complete renunciation of the rural, ceding it to be a backward cesspool of local elites, and await the migration of rural poor into urban proletariat. Surely, a better alternative must be possible.
Anyways, back to the book and TLDR: Interesting premise to explore development and rural-urban divide but spends all of its breadth on only Lipton's urban bias thesis, and that too not in a very productive way.
Nice to see Lipton getting to have the final word too. I still do believe he unnecessarily defends some of his reductionist analyses (but still does appreciate genuine criticisms) but the corner he is painting himself into is still wider than the corner his ferocious critics sometimes paint themselves into by completely denying the sectoral categorization and any traces of antagonism between them.
Corbridge (1982 in J.Harriss' Rural Development) probably had the best good faith criticism on the debate surrounding urban bias theory - Lipton himself agrees with several of his points in the final chapter. If anybody is deeply interested in the debate, that essay would be my pick for essential reading.
Me also thinks the critics beat this horse to death too early too soon. The way Lipton theorised urban-rural politics may have been reductionist but instead of better analyses, more literature was focused on denying that the distinction itself. In the later 80s, there was much interesting literature on urban protests and organization politics (actually building upon a point that Lipton incidentally raised about the benefit that urbanites have wrt being more concentrated and organized). Literature on rural politics on the other hand haven't really progressed much, except once in a while it becomes electorally important. Marx provided a starting point in Eighteenth Brumaire while speaking about peasant politics on how their being dispersed had political implications for a modern democratic state. There was also later extremely rich literature and debate on peasant revolutions until 80s but petered out soon. It's not just an academic gap but had consequences politically. So much of grassroots organising has been left to separate interest groups instead of a conscious class-based organising which was quite active in both academia and politics in the 60s. What you mostly have now in progressive circles is near complete renunciation of the rural, ceding it to be a backward cesspool of local elites, and await the migration of rural poor into urban proletariat. Surely, a better alternative must be possible.
Anyways, back to the book and TLDR: Interesting premise to explore development and rural-urban divide but spends all of its breadth on only Lipton's urban bias thesis, and that too not in a very productive way.
Displaying 1 of 1 review