The Citizens' Consumption Stratification Study A Case Study In Wuhan City

In the era of mass consumption, it would be theoretically valuable to study consumption in sociological perspective in contemporary china. The study means to contribute to the development of Chinese sociology of consumption empirically by examining consumption as an important social structure-reproduction mechanism in modern society. And it also means to introduce a new empirical angle, the consumption stratification, to social stratification study in China.The thesis mainly is compsed of three chapters.Chapter one includes also three parts. Firstly, it illustrates the value of the study, both theoretical and empirical, and the purpose that this research wants to gain. Secondly, it is about the introduction and synthesis of what concerned have been done before by other researchers in the field. Thirdly, it describes the course of survey briefly and represents some general descriptive analysis results of the survey data.Chapter two consists of three parts, too.The first part argues the rationality and the maneuverability of the research, which are rooted in the social background and the international theoretical development of sociology. In this part, firstly, the author argues theoretically that it is of more rationality and advantages that studying social stratification from some valuable angle than from a so-called detailed indicator system. Then, it represents the three principles in choosing indicators to study social stratification. The first one is that what the indicators chosen measure must be related with distinctive values of the society. The second one is that they must be something that according to which a most-wide-range people in society can be distinguished. The third one is that they must be fathomable and come from the specific research project. Thirdly, it represents the social background of which that consumption stratification comes out; and analyzes why traditional stratification indicators, such as vocational class, educational degree, income indicator et al., have been out of date, or exactly to say, not so adequate for social stratification research in China, basing on which results in the conclusion that it would be advantageous to apply some consumptive indicators to social stratification.In the second part, it discusses firstly the unfitness that use Engel's coefficient asa consumptive indicator in social stratification study. Secondly, it argues theoretically the rationality and maneuverability as to substitute the Engel's coefficient with indicators concerned with clothes consumption. Lastly, it represents in detail how to combine two indicators concerned with clothes consumption, "where do you buy your clothes usually" and "which class are your most clothes", to differentiate people in five classes in social status ranks: top stratum, top-mid-between stratum, moderate stratum, mid-bottom-between stratum, bottom stratum.In the third part, Correlation analyses between social stratum, which is reached according to consumption differentia, and family yearly income, educational grade and occupation show that the family yearly income has the strongest ties to citizens' social status, and then occupation, the last educational degree. Then it explores separately in cross tables the distributions of different educational degrees and the various vocations in social strata. Lastly, based on the assumption that people's social-stratum consciousness is always cline to reflect the objective social stratum situation properly, through comparing the coefficients separately between citizens' social-stratum consciousness and consumptive strata, educational degrees, and vocational strata, it reaches the conclusion that consumptive indicators work better as the standard to identify people's social-stratum identities.In chapter three, the researcher compares citizens' consumption styles of the five classes in two basic aspects: objective aspect, includh g the situation of consumptive resources ownership, the expenditure on various consumption items, the consumptive behaviors, and the subj...