From "Tuqiang" Peasants To The Citizens In A "Golden Collar Community"

Before urbanization, the villagers in the same community were mostly homogeneous. But following the transition from peasants to city residents, they were categorized into different groups with labels such as "the idlers" and "the rich people". How could these categorization and transition happen? Rather than objectively focusing on the class stratification in this community, what I am really interested here is the differentiation of social identity in different groups of residents in a changing community. The paper's concern is about some aspects of the social attitude or social psychology of the community residents in the background of urbanization. And identity is a good point of penetration. As a concept in social psychology, identity could reflect the current situation and transition of people's attitude. In the mean time this concept could effectively reflect the relationships of groups and individuals. Identity might be categorized into social identity and self identity, and could not only study the identity differentiation of different groups horizontally but also have the advantage of investigating the identity transition of the community residents longitudinally.The background of this study is urbanization, the transition and ending of the village and the transition from peasants to city residents. Current literature about urbanization in China is mostly empirical research with a macro perspective. And there are few if any research concerning individuals and groups' social psychology in the process of urbanization with a micro perspective. Other than that, the few studies in this area with a micro perspective are lack of historical insight and barely involve the transition of group identity. This study tries to understand the identity differentiation and transition of the local residents in this particular community. With an effort of investigating the micro interaction of local residents with a historical and cultural perspective, the author tries to connect the macro perspective with the micro perspective in the study of group identity in the background of urbanization.This paper employed a paradigm of social constructivism, using a qualitative research methodology of discourse analysis. Trying to explain what identity differentiation and transition of the local residents in this particular community was happening in the process of urbanization, this study focuses on the mechanism of cause of these identity differentiation and transition which could be the construction of the local mainstream discourse.