Essay Database

Chan Kom: A Maya Village: The Folk-Urban Continuum The "folk-urban continuum" model elaborated by Robert Redfield continues to reappear from time to time in various guises. The concept of the continuum has been attacked as being simplistic, and overgeneralized, not least because many geographers have detected village-type communities within large cities. Redfield's speculations about what he saw as the significant changes from the folk to the urban end of the continuum are based on studies …

…first step in a project funded by the Carnegie Institution to look at the question of culture change. The project was to begin by studying " a community where folk culture was complete". This is Chan Kom. Then, for comparison, the study was to go on to look at "communities where that culture is in disorganization or conversion into something else". Eventually, this project would encompass four towns and would place them in a "folk-urban continuum".