The Fruit of Difference: The Rural‐Urban Continuum as a System of Identity1

Abstract Today sociologists tend to doubt the rural-urban continuum, the idea that community is more characteristic of country places than cities. Based on an ethnographic study of an English exurban village, I argue that the continuum remains an important source of identity for country residents, one from which they derive social-psychological and material benefits. They root this conception of themselves as country people in nature, making this identity a particularly secure one. These real social consequences suggest that sociology should no longer doubt the reality of the rural-urban continuum, at least at the level of the definition of the situation. It, therefore, should remain an important topic of sociological study.