| At the present stage, our country is undergoing the transition from the traditional agricultural society to the modernised industrial society. During this process, the traditional social structure constantly differentiated and formed new classes. The formation of new classes in rural areas is one of the most important phenomena that deserves attention. A correct understanding and a reasonable solution to the problem can directly affect on the new rural construction and even socialism building with Chinese characteristics. Therefore, research on the social stratum structure stratification in rural areas has an important significance theoretically and practically.In this paper, based on the research achievements in the academic field with regard to the theory on social stratification, taking the study on labor stratificaiton and differentiation as a specific case, the writer tried to reveal chinese comtemporary peasant classes’ formation causes, living conditions, members’self-identifications etc. by displaying social transition and analyzing those causes, status, and features of the labor stratification and differentiation in comtemporary rural areas. At the same time, the paper also inspects such issues as the development tendency of the changes in social class structure. On the basis of that, the author tries to illustrate the status of social class stratification and differentiation in Chinese comtemporary rural areas. This dissertation also proposes that how to accelerate social structure in rural areas transit in a reasonable way should be a problem deserved attention.With reference to the present distinguishing standards according to occupations and income, and in consideration of the changing situation of the dualistic social structure since the reform and opening up to the outside world, and based on the analysis of the different elements such as the farmers’ ownership of means of production and occupational skills, the sectors they work in, and their actual income, the paper divides the farmers at the time of the social transition into six classes, that is, the agricultural labourers’ class, the individual labourers’class, the rural migrant workers’class, the knowledge-based professionals’ class, the private-entrepreneurs’class, and the rural social administrative class.Under the circumstances of China’s social transition and class stratification, the social stratification also takes place in the rural labour force in southern Jiangsu. On the basis of a deep analysis of the stratification of social structure in the rural areas, the paper, with some rural areas in Wuxi as its example, inspects the stratification and changes of the rural social structure, so as to get a better understanding of the transition of rural society and the formation of different classes in the countryside, and to probe into the cultivation of the stratification of rural social structure and the stabilisation of the rural society, and finally put forward some suggestions with regard to the solution of the issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers and the political stability and economic prosperity of the rural society. |
