Wealth And Identity: The Research Of The Qusi-middle Class In Hua Village

Quasi-middle class in urbanizing the countryside is a unique phenomenon in the changes of social stratified structure. It has a special environment and mode of their growth. Its members are people with dissimilar occupation, status, income, level of education and so on as a heterogeneous group. They have something in common the idea of social status, life attitude, psychological states and social behavior as a distinct group with farmers or blue-collar workers one. They question closely: Who are we? What social stratum do we belong to? Where is our hope? What is our future?This paper attempts to answer questions above, and to analyze the causes of the formation and the pathway of quasi-middle class in the life of economy, politics, society and culture according to the case study of the quasi-middle class in Hua Village. The quasi-middle class in Hua Village is a theoretical hypothesis by the author's observed result and then to be structured really. The basic idea is that social stratum interact with the whole social construction; wealth, capital and identity is essential factors in the formation of quasi-middle class with urbanization; The quasi-middle class has been growing slowly because of the shortening of their identification both social stratum and their culture; the re-socialization is a key to the consolidation and the advanced for a quasi-middle class.On the whole, this paper falls into three parts, with the first part including the first and second chapters which sorts out the concept of middle class and puts forward a new concept of quasi-middle class on the basis of Hua Village except outlining research background, basic concepts, proposition and research limits; The second part probes into the pathway of the formation and growth of quasi-middle class, and analyzes the present condition of quasi-middle class in the life of economy, politics, society and culture with the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh chapters; As the research summary of the whole paper, the third part provides a brief key to many problems above-mentioned in the preface of the first chapter with the eighth one, and assesses the evolution of the quasi-middle class in the future.The research of quasi-middle class has academic significance for the social change in the contemporary era of China. It is not only an indispensable part of the study of middle class in China, but also an extension to multiple angles of view for the research of quasi-middle class because it can provide special style and case which a new generation of middle class grow in the urbanization.