so you might be wondering, "the rural have been moving to urban centers in droves for over a hundred years now ... how do these people cope with their immersion in differentiation"?

i believe that rural to urban migrants over the past century have been able to take advantage of three phenomena key to their prosperity in new urban settings: a massive growth in marginal productivity among the least skilled workers, enclaves of the "rural" world, and sometimes legacies of urban culture. (I must mention the notable, yet not exclusive, example of the Jews and Chinese who have successfully adapted to thousands of years of urban life and immigration. These groups have successfully engaged "rural" collective values towards urban needs such as creating mutual credit organizations. They have also famously sought education, the ultimate act of differentiation, in their attempts to integrate to the urban society)

the industrial revolution ensured that massive amounts of new tools were provided to the "bare handed" and usually these tools were adapted to the "bare handed" by the desire among capitalists to turn laborers into commodities. "rural" enclaves have taken the shape of actual places (in the US usually in flood prone areas where land is undesirable) where property rights are non-existent or nearly so. most of these physical rural enclaves were eliminated after the drive to build levies during the eisenhower (?) administration. yet "rural" rural enclaves also took social manifestation. this social manifestation cuts both ways: on the one hand ethnic differences such as language often binded immigrant communities together, such that livelihoods often improved collectively. on the other hand "rural" values often run counter to urban ones -- protecting rural-urban migrants but also setting them against their own best interests according to the urban society. where racial differences were perceived, urban societies have had a tendency to affix these differences to race.

when the "tools ran out" and rural places were no longer to be found in the city, the rural-urban migrants fell back on their rural values -- but in the city, community and family values became exclusionary in nature. looking out for one's family and community also meant fighting against those who were perceived as not being in that community.

african americans came to the northern cities in the largest numbers when the "tools" were dwindling and other rural-urban groups were already established. this set the stage for persistant racism towards (and among) Black people in the US.

the rural world can be a place of reconnaissance. just as the urban world usurps land it does too with ideas and creativity. in this urban world an idea must always have an "inventor" or "discoverer" or "author" or whatever -- the creative economy is a cloak for a larger problem: having been immersed in our differentiated culture for so long, we are actually beginning to believe that we (and all the people we know) are much different from the famous songwriter or inventor ... so are we similiar to the people on tv? maybe just a weak comparison? this is a pretty depressing identity for ourselves that our "creative economy" is constructing for us. the truth is that we are all relatively similiar, but with different ideas of who we are and then these ideas actually do shape "who we are" by influencing what we consume and what we produce (which is the lens through which those in this society view eachother).