Chief Editor: Dr. Chen Xin
Preface
Social stratification refers to a society’s categorization of its people into rankings of socio-economic tiers based on various factors, such as wealth, income, race, education, occupation and power. Society’s layers are made of people, and society’s resources are distributed unevenly throughout the layers. Thus, people who have more resources represent the top layer of the social structure of stratification while other people with fewer resources represent the lower layers of each society. More importantly, social stratification can present systematic inequalities based on group membership, classes and the like rather than individual inequalities. Thus, through stratification, people can see the larger social patterns. However, factors that may cause changes in social stratification vary in different societies. Therefore, it’s of great importance to view social stratification through case by case.
This book is providing a historical overview on the changing social stratification of the Central and Eastern European countries in the past three decades. Authors address the social stratification and its changes, through which the transformation of class structure in their countries can be observed. The book is a collection of 17 reports written by the associate researchers of China-CEE Institute. The reports are originally published as the February social issue of the 2021 Weekly Briefings. Weekly Briefing is a core product of China-CEE Institute. The views in the book are represented by the individual authors instead of China-CEE Institute.
China-CEE Institute, registered as a non-profit limited company in Budapest, Hungary, was established by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in April 2017. China-CEE Institute builds ties and strengthens partnerships with academic institutions and think tanks in Hungary, Central and Eastern European countries, as well as other parts of Europe. China-CEE Institute aims to encourage scholars and researchers to carry out joint research and field studies, to organize seminars and lecture series, to hold some training programs for younger students, and to publish academic results, etc.
I hope this book will be helpful to enrich the knowledge of how the social stratification has changed in CEE countries over the past three decade and how the transformation influences the social development in the countries.
Prof. Dr. CHEN Xin
Executive President and Managing Director, China-CEE Institute Deputy Director General, Institute of European Studies, CASS
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