Rural-urban residence and modernism: A study of Ankara Province, Turkey

Abstract

Data from the Ankara Family Study, in which 1138 married women living in Ankara city and four selected villages in Ankara Province were interviewed in 1965–66, are used to study the impact of the amount and timing of urban residential experience on six dimensions of modernism in attitudes and behavior. Scores on the modernism indexes consistently are higher for the women with urban residential experience. The proportions of variance in the study population accounted for by the urbanism factor are: nearly three-fifths on the mass media index; nearly two-fifths on the nuclear family role structure index; three-tenths on the home production or consumption index; two-tenths on the religiosity and extra-local orientation indexes; and a seventh on the extended family ties index. The place of residence prior to marriage, the period when decisions about schooling are made and socialization into adult roles occurs, appears to be of special importance. Women who migrated from villages to the city at any stage of the life-cycle, however, report attitudes and behavior more modern than those of women with no urban residential experience (though less modern than those of women who have always lived in a city). Such micro-social analyses may help to illuminate the relation between urbanization and modernization in developing nations and to account for the coexistence of modern and traditional patterns in transitional societies.