Sociologie Românească, Vol. II, no. 4/2004, pp. 141-154.
Un punct de vedere asupra structurii de clasă actuale din România
A Point of View on the Present Class Structure in Romania
Laureana Urse
Abstract (Rezumat în limba engleză): In the beginning of the 90s, after clarifying the political and economical objectives, the postcommunist reforms were started in Romania. At the same time, the process of class restructuration began, and it is still in progress at present. This process consists in the transformation of the old social classes (peasantry and the workers), the consitution of new social classes (the upper class, the middle class and the lower class) and a new hierarchization of the social classes. To analyze the new class structure, its necessary to assess the communist inheritance from the point of view of the class structure and also to clarify the theoretical premises of approaching the class structure, adapted to the Romanian specificity. It is also necessary to analyze the postcommunist changes in general and the ones with a direct effect on the formation of the new class structure. I consider that now in Romania the class structure in formation is composed of the upper class, the middle class, the lower class, the peasantry and the workers. The new social classes (the upper class, the middle class and the lower class) are in different stages of constitution: the upper class is in the most advanced stage, while the lower class is the less developed because of the extended poverty as a result of the economic crisis in the Romanian society. The old social classes are gaining right now a new identity (the peasantry), or they are in an identity crisis (the workers). The detailed analysis of these problems is the subject of the present article.