Urban-Rural Cultural Integration:its functional positioning and future paths

In the West’s modernity discourse,the cities and rural villages stand on opposite sides of a dichotomy.However,the notion of cultural integration in contemporary cultural geography and anthropology has provided new discursive framework for thinking about unified urban-rural development.Functions of identification,safeguard and overflow performed by the idea of cultural integration can greatly assist in overcoming the respective shortcomings of urban and rural cultures,respectively providing impetus for their sustainable development.As of today,China’s rural-urban integration is plagued by a host of problems,such as urban area’s excessive dominance over rural regions,the lack of interaction despite diversity in ways of integration,and more conflicts than assimilation.Some of these problems are structural in root cause;some are due to a general backwardness in public cultural service system and cultural poverty.There is a long way to go before unified integration of rural and urban cultures can be accomplished.The path of future will likely experience the four phases of interaction,reinforced commonality,absorption of differences,and self-conscious innovation.