From Village To City: The Reconstruction Of Rural Economic Elites' Social Network

In every era, elites are always the minority of the society. However, thanks to their leading effects in social changes and development, elites are always the focus of social concern. With the gradual propulsion of rural reforms, a lot of rural elites, especially economic elites, arise as a new and important force in rural construction and development. They lead the developing direction of rural communities in China. By the impacts of the pace of urbanization and modernization, a group of rural economic elites with great ambitions moved to the city after accumulating enough capital. They became urban citizens successfully through changing their status. During this process, the rural economic elites'social network played an important role.Everyone is restricted by the specific macro social conditions during the process of establishing and maintaining his/her social network. However, people are not restricted mechanically by the social structure in their social network. They have considerable freedom and independence. The rural economic elites worked hard to break through the restriction of social structure in the process of establishing their own business, building up their family fortune, and moving to, adapting to and integrating into the city. They expanded and reconstructed their social network by all kinds of tactics, thus they achieved the goal of career development and capital appreciation.This thesis takes the social network as the main explanation framework. Through researching the process of their establishing business at village, accumulating capital, and then moving to, adapting to and integrating into the city, this thesis found the tactics which rural economic elites used in different stages of the process from rural elites to urban citizens. What's more important, this thesis found how the elites constructed and made use of their social network as an important resource at important turning points and in major events. The thesis is expected to study out a general system of rural elites'mobility and its impacts to rural urbanization, so as to provide some experience to the urbanization and modernization of vast rural areas in China.