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South Asia A North Indian village in Rajasthan, India "The soul of India lives in its villages", declared M. K. Gandhi[2] at the beginning of 20th century. According to the 2011 census of India, 68.84% of Indians (around 833.1 million people) live in 640,867 different villages.[3] The size of these villages varies considerably. 236,004 Indian villages have a population less than 500, while 3,976 villages have a population of 10,000+. Most of the villages have their own temple, mosque or church depending on the local religious following. Central Asia Auyl (Kazakh: Ауыл) is a kazakh word meaning "village" in Kazakhstan.[4] According to the 2009 census of Kazakhstan, 42,7% of kazakhs (7.5 mln people) live in 8172 different villages.[5] East Asia Shirakawa-gō, Gifu Japan People's Republic of China Main article: Village (China) In mainland China, villages 村 are divisions under township Zh:乡 or town Zh:镇. Republic of China (Taiwan) In the Republic of China (Taiwan), villages are divisions under townships or county-controlled cities. The village is called a tsuen or cūn (村) under a rural township (鄉) and a li (里) under an urban township (鎮) or a county-controlled city. See also Li (unit). Japan Main article: Villages of Japan South Korea Main article: Villages of South Korea Southeast Asia Thailand Main article: Muban Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore The nagari of Pariangan, West Sumatra. In Indonesia, depending on the principles they are administered, villages are called desa or kelurahan. A desa (a term that derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "country" that is found in a name such as "Bangladesh") is administered according to traditions and customary law (adat), while a kelurahan is administered along more "modern" principles. Desa are generally located in rural areas while kelurahan are generally urban subdivisions. A village head is respectively called kepala desa or lurah. Both are elected by the local community. A desa or kelurahan is itself the subdivision of a kecamatan (district), in turn the subdivision of a kabupaten (regency). The same general concept applies all over Indonesia. However, there is some variation among the vast numbers of Austronesian ethnic groups. For instance, in Bali villages have been created by grouping traditional hamlets or banjar, which constitute the basis of Balinese social life. In the Minangkabau country in West Sumatra province traditional villages are called nagari (a term deriving from another Sanskrit word meaning "city", which can be found in a name like "Srinagar"). In some areas such as Tanah Toraja, elders take turns watching over the village at a command post.[citation needed] As a general rule, desa and kelurahan are groupings of hamlets (kampung in Indonesian, dusun in the Javanese language, banjar in Bali). In Malaysia, the term kampung (sometimes spelling kampong or kompong) in the English language has been defined specifically as "a Malay hamlet or village in a Malay-speaking country".[6] In other words, a kampung is defined today as a village in Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. In Malaysia, a kampung is determined as a locality with 10,000 or fewer people. Since historical times, every Malay village came under the leadership of a penghulu (village chief), who has the power to hear civil matters in his village (see Courts of Malaysia for more details). A Malay village typically contains a "masjid" (mosque) or "surau" (Muslim chapel), paddy fields and Malay houses on stilts. Malay and Indonesian villagers practice the culture of helping one another as a community, which is better known as "joint bearing of burdens" (gotong royong),[7] as well as being family-oriented (especially the concept of respecting one's family [particularly the parents and elders]), courtesy and believing in God ("Tuhan") as paramount to everything else. It is common to see a cemetery near the mosque, as all Muslims in the Malay or Indonesian village want to be prayed for, and to receive Allah's blessings in the afterlife. While in Sarawak and East Kalimantan, some villages are called 'long', primarily inhabited by the Orang Ulu. Singapore also follows the Malaysian kampung. However, there are only a few kampung villages remaining, mostly on islands surrounding Singapore such as Pulau Ubin. In the past, there were many kampung villages in Singapore but now there aren't many on the mainland. The term "kampung", sometimes spelled "kampong", is one of many Malay words to have entered common usage in Malaysia and Singapore. Locally, the term is frequently used to refer to either one's hometown or a rural village, depending on context. Philippines In urban areas of the Philippines, the term "village" most commonly refers to private subdivisions, especially gated communities. These villages emerged in the mid-20th century and were initially the domain of elite urban dwellers. Those are common in major cities in the country and their residents have a wide range of income levels. Such villages may or may not correspond to administrative units (usually barangays) and/or be privately administered. Barangays more correspond to the villages of old times, and the chairman (formerly a village datu) now settles administrative, intrapersonal, and political matters or polices the village, though with much less authority and respect than in Indonesia or Malaysia. Vietnam Village, or "làng", is a basis of Vietnam society. Vietnam's village is the typical symbol[citation needed] of Asian agricultural production. Vietnam's village typically contains: a village gate, "lũy tre" (bamboo hedges), "đình làng" (communal house) where "thành hoàng" (tutelary god) is worshiped, a common well, "đồng lúa" (rice field), "chùa" (temple) and houses of all families in the village. All the people in Vietnam's villages usually have a blood relationship. They are farmers who grow rice and have the same traditional handicraft. Vietnam's villages have an important role in society (Vietnamese saying: "Custom rules the law" -"Phép vua thua lệ làng" [literally: the king's law yields to village customs]). Everyone in Vietnam wants to be buried in their village when they die.[citation needed] Central and Eastern Europe Slavic countries Lug, village in northern Serbia Selo (Cyrillic: село; Polish: sioło) is a Slavic word meaning "village" in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine. For example there are numerous sela (plural of selo) called Novo Selo in Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro and others in Serbia, and Macedonia. Another Slavic word for a village is ves (Polish: wieś, Czech: ves, vesnice, Slovak: ves, Slovene: vas). In Slovenia, the word selo is used for very small villages (less than 100 people) and in dialects; the Slovene word vas is used all over Slovenia. Bulgaria Main article: List of villages in Bulgaria Kovachevitsa, a village in southern Bulgaria In Bulgaria, the different types of sela vary from a small selo of 5 to 30 families to one of several thousand people. According to a 2002 census, in that year there were 2,385,000 Bulgarian citizens living in settlements classified as villages.[8] A 2004 Human Settlement Profile on Bulgaria[9] conducted by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs stated that: The most intensive is the migration "city – city". Approximately 46% of all migrated people have changed their residence from one city to another. The share of the migration processes "village – city" is significantly less – 23% and "city – village" – 20%. The migration "village – village" in 2002 is 11%.[8] It also stated that the state of the environment in the small towns and villages is good apart from the low level of infrastructure.[8] In Bulgaria, it is becoming popular to visit villages for the atmosphere, culture, crafts, hospitality of the people and the surrounding nature. This is called selski turizam (Bulgarian: селски туризъм), meaning "village tourism".[citation needed] Russia Nook of a village near Lake Baikal, Siberia In Russia, as of the 2010 Census, 26.3% of the country's population lives in rural localities;[10] down from 26.7% recorded in the 2002 Census.[10] Multiple types of rural localities exist, but the two most common are derevnya (деревня) and selo (село). Historically, the formal indication of status was religious: a city (gorod) had a cathedral, a selo had a church, while a derevnya had neither. The lowest administrative unit of the Russian Empire, a volost, or its Soviet or modern Russian successor, a selsoviet, was typically headquartered in a selo and embraced a few neighboring villages. Between 1926 and 1989, Russia's rural population shrank from 76 million people to 39 million, due to urbanization, collectivization, dekulakization, and the World War II losses, but has nearly stabilized since.[citation needed] During 1930–1937, mass starvation in Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union lead to the death of at least 14.5 million peasants (including 5–7 million in the Holodomor).[11] Most Russian rural localities have populations of less than 200 people, and the smaller places take the brunt of depopulation: e.g., in 1959, about one half of Russia's rural population lived in villages of fewer than 500 people, while now less than one third does.[citation needed] In the 1960s–1970s, the depopulation of the smaller villages was driven by the central planners' drive to get the farm workers out of smaller, "prospect-less" hamlets and into the collective or state farms' main villages, with more amenities.[12] Most Russian rural residents are involved in agricultural work, and it is very common for villagers to produce their own food. As prosperous urbanites purchase village houses for their second homes, Russian villages sometimes are transformed into dacha settlements, used mostly for seasonal residence. The historically Cossack regions of Southern Russia and parts of Ukraine, with their fertile soil and absence of serfdom, had a rather different pattern of settlement from central and northern Russia. While peasants of central Russia lived in a village around the lord's manor, a Cossack family often lived on its own farm, called khutor. A number of such khutors plus a central village made up the administrative unit with a center in a stanitsa (Russian: стани́ца; Ukrainian: станиця, stanytsia). Such stanitsas often with a few thousand residents, were usually larger than a typical selo in central Russia. The term aul/aal is used to refer mostly Muslim-populated villages in Caucasus and Idel-Ural, without regard to the number of residents. Ukraine Mayaky Village, Donetsk, Ukraine The largest Ukrainian village ("selo") Kosmach In Ukraine, a village, known locally as a "selo" (село), is considered the lowest administrative unit. Villages may have an individual administration (silrada) or a joint administration, combining two or more villages. Villages may also be under the jurisdiction of a city council (miskrada) or town council (selyshchna rada) administration. There is, however, another smaller type of settlement which is designated in Ukrainian as a selysche (селище). This type of community is generally referred to in English as a "settlement". In comparison with an urban-type settlement, Ukrainian legislation does not have a concrete definition or a criterion to differentiate such settlements from villages. They represent a type of a small rural locality that might have once been a khutir, a fisherman's settlement, or a dacha. They are administered by a silrada (council) located in a nearby adjacent village. Sometimes the term "selysche" is also used in a more general way to refer to adjacent settlements near a bigger city, including urban-type settlements (selysche miskoho typu) and/or villages; however, ambiguity is often avoided in connection with urbanized settlements by referring to them using the three-letter abbreviation smt instead. The khutir (хутір) and stanytsia (станиця) are not part of the administrative division any longer, primarily due to collectivization. Khutirs were very small rural localities consisting of just few housing units and were sort of individual farms. They became really popular during the Stolypin reform in the early 20th century. During the collectivization, however, residents of such settlements were usually declared to be kulaks and had all their property confiscated and distributed to others (nationalized) without any compensation. The stanitsa likewise has not survived as an administrative term. The stanitsa was a type of a collective community that could include one or more settlements such as villages, khutirs, and others. Today, stanitsa-type formations have only survived in Kuban (Russian Federation) where Ukrainians were resettled during the time of the Russian Empire. |
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