Livelihood Material And Social Stratification

This essay is divided into two chapters. The first chapter is theoretical study and the second chapter is positive study. The former provide theoretical base for the latter, and the latter supply data support for the former.The title of the first chapter is "the theoretical discussion on livelihood material and social stratification". This part will be developed around two topics.Firstly, the paper will analyze the relationship between "social resources and social stratification" unitarily. In a broad sense, social resources reference some articles that are valuable but infrequent. While social stratification is based on social resources, that is to say, social member can be divided in different stratum according to social resources that they have possessed. However, as is concerned to social resources, the content of which is affluent and the format of which is multiple, then what kind of social resources is most important that it can directly influence the state of social member? To this question, the paper claims two issues: on one hand, different scholars based on their aim, keystone, visual angle and methodology in the process of study, they have their own opinion and then engender their own theories; on the other hand, in different social configuration or in different phase of social development, diversified social resources have different importance, which can influence the character of social stratification; moreover, this paper giving a example of China' society, discuss in different stages of the same country which specially attach importance to different kind of social resource (for meeting political, economic or cultural demands) can engender different social class structure.Secondly, the paper will analyze the relationship between "livelihood material and social stratification" concretely. On one hand, as livelihood material is an important kind of social resource, it can and it must be selected as the criterion of social stratification: the reason of "it can be the criterion" is that it is not only a kind of objective resource but also a purposive resource, that's to say, it is a simplest and most audio-visual index, so it can be operated easily; the reason of "it must be the criterion" is that: in the range of the world, livelihood material increasingly become the most important index for social stratification, in the range of China, livelihood material gradually become the most appropriate index for social stratification, so it can authentically and effectively reflect the stratum structure of today's China'ssociety. On the other hand, social stratification can also crucially influence social member's living condition, that's to say, people being in different estate has different living condition.The title of the second part is "the positive study on livelihood material and social stratification". This part will discuss three items.Firstly, the author deems, no matter what we use reference of the research experience of developed country or think about the realistic situation of today's China's society, lodging material is the most vital part of livelihood material, so the paper select lodging material as the main criterion of social stratification, and then make off five major social stratum: poverty class, dress warmly and ear one's fill class, middle class, well-off class and wealth class.Secondly, this paper figures, livelihood material as a abstract concept can be specified to four main variables, which is housing material, traffic material, communication material and entertainment material. Then this paper will see about whether it has significant difference of livelihood material possessed among that five social class.Thirdly, as we all know, on one hand, in the research of social stratification in west society, income, education and occupation are all the very important index for social stratification; on the other hand, in the process of New China's social development, the character of employment unit is also very important index for social stratification. So, this paper will...