The Changes Of The Rural Elderly Life Under The Background Of Individualization Of Rural Society

There are many great changes taken place in rural society since the reform and opening up. Inevitably, these reforms will cause the changes in people’s behaviors and values, which change the relationship between people, family members, even between people and the rural community. These changes place the rural old people in an extremely unfavorable position nowadays. Moreover, the rural old people take the disadvantage for the particular conditions themselves:their material life and spiritual life are faced with many difficulties, eventually they fail to be the social vulnerable groups who need attentions. By researching the life of them and reading some materials about it, the author try to seek the main reasons which trigger the changes of the rural old people’s life to understand the changes better in the rural society nearly40years.Because of the limited capacity of the author, it is not possible to enumerate all the changes of the rural old people’s life, so that the most obvious and severe four aspects will be observed in this paper according to the research and literature materials:the decline of authority of the rural elderly, the weakening of family endowment, the boom of religious belief and frequent suicide. But not all the rural elderly people have these problems, the rural elderly is divided into different levels according to different ages, daughters or not, and conflict of life concept and so on. This paper focuses on the the special rural elderly who is in trouble, and do not make further discussion about the other old people. This article firstly reviews the causes of the four aspects in academia and above this uses the individualization theory to interpret how they come into being. Then generally analyze the four aspects with the help of the individualization theory. Finally, summarize the correlation between the individualization and the changes in rural elderly’ s life. From what has been discussed, the rural elderly are facing many difficulties after the process of the individualization for the reason which is closely related to the change of relations between the state and the society.The conclusion is that the rural elderly people lost the support of family, the collective and other traditional "safety nets" since the reform and opening up because of the individualization process that promoted by the state. Furthermore, the public services provided by the state and the inadequate development of the society organizations endow the rural elderly with the lack of the safeguard from the policies and resources and the efficient supply of the organizations. As a result, their life turns to be difficult, and especially their living condition and quality of the life are extremely influenced.