Temporal and spatial diversification of rural social structure: The case of Poland.

The article presents a temporal and spatial analysis of the social structure of rural Poland – currently a home to two‐fifths of the national population. In the first – temporal – dimension, the focus is on changes that have taken place since the post‐communist transformation. The aim of the analysis was to explain the mechanisms of change, that is, identify the processes that brought about those changes. We assumed that transitions in the rural social structure progressed differently than in the rest of society: they were deeper, followed different trajectories and resulted in fundamentally changed proportions between the rural structure's elements. In the other – spatial –dimension, we investigated the territorial diversity of the contemporary social structure. The social structure morphology was analysed on the basis of the proportions between three major social/occupational segments: farmers, workers and the middle class. Their distinction was determined by the trajectories of social structure change starting from the 1990s: depeasantisation, proletarianisation and gentrification. The study has revealed the complexity of the process of change as well as the unique character of the process of deagrarianisation, its depth/intensity being determined by the spatial diversity of types of rural social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]