Industrial Change and Classical Theory CHARLES E. RAMSEY ROY E. RICKSON The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, U. S.A. ALTHOUGH a long-standing distinction in community theory has been made between rural and urban types, in the more recent literature, rural- urban differences have been deemphasized. While some dimensions of these traditional opposites have come to be treated as continua, (Loomis and Beegle, 1950 and 1957), the original formulations were polarized ideal types. In many respects there was close correspondence between the various formulations such as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Toennies, 1957), mechanical and organic solidarity (Durkheim, 1893), folk and urban (Redfield, 1955), and sacred and secular (Martindale and Monachesi, 1951). While differences are found between the various formulations in underlying philosophy, in postulated types of relationships, and in method of analysis (Martindale, 1960), the conceptions of community types by the classical sociologists are sufficiently similar to be treated as variations on a single theme. Particular aspects of the classical community types are of potential impor- tance for understanding how change occurs. In modern industrial society, so runs the theory, the dominant social relationship is based upon rationality, ex- change, and highly specialized tasks assigned to various positions. Inter- dependence, because of specialization; is the binding tie. In the polar opposite type, the dominant social relationship of relevance in the present analysis is that of fellowship, neighborliness, and a "we-feeling" (Toennies, 1957). In Durkheim's formulation, people are bound together in a sense of collective consciousness in a common moral community (Durkheim, 1947:129-31). The integration of the community or society in the more modern industrialized and urban life is based upon a strong interdependence derived from the specialized * The work upon which this publication is based was supported in part by funds provided by the United States Department of the Interior as authorized under the Water Resources Research Act of 1964, Public Law 88-379, and by the Agricultural Experiment Station, Institute of Agriculture, University of Minnesota, St. Paul. We are grateful to Don Martindale, Bert Ellenbogen, and Frank Weed for their willingness to read and criticize the manuscript.