Rural life

How does the state get a handle on the society Here and in the next two chapters, I am especially concerned with the logic behind large-scale attempts to redesign rural life and production from above. Seen from the center, the royal court or the seat of state, this process has often been described as a civilizing process. I prefer to see it as an attempt at domestication, a kind of social gardening devised to make the countryside, its products, and its inhabitants more readily identifiable and accessible to the center. Certain elements of these efforts at domestication seem, if not universal, at least very common, and they may be termed "sedentarization, "concentration, and radical simplification of both settlement and cultivation. 

Everywhere on the planet, for people of similar socioeconomic class, urban life is more stressful than rural life. A rich family in Tokyo is certainly less stressed than a poor family in a Japanese mountain village, but a poor family in Tokyo is usually more stressed than a comparable rural family. Urban life stress is correlated with an increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders and also correlated with maternal stress during pregnancy. Women do not experience pregnancy disconnected from their surroundings, and as we ll see later, the impacts of maternal stress on the developing fetus can be dramatic. 

People have added substances to food since the earliest times. Ancient civilizations used salt to preserve meats, added herbs and spices to improve flavor, and preserved fruit with sugar and vegetables with vinegar. In recent times, the move from rural life to urban life has required that food be preserved, packaged, and shipped-sometimes thousands of miles-before it is consumed. Consequently, the number of food additives has increased. Current food additives are used to preserve food, enhance its flavor or color, and maintain its appearance or physical characteristics. 

When the residents want to leave the rural life and the agriculture, they tear themselves from the mral culture and turn to the open culture of the closest town, Cherbourg, which has housed a military port and an arsenal for almost 200 years. 

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