RURAL HIERARCHY OF PROSPERITY: LIVELIHOOD DIVERSIFICATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON RURALITY

This study aimed to analyze the social changes in rural areas as a consequence of the shift of peasants to non-agrarian activities. Social change in the context of this paper is associated with livelihood diversification and its implications for rural restratification and its characteristic today.The research is conducted using qualitative method through community case study approach. Data collection is obtained through direct observation, face-to-face interviews and personal history. Respective perspective from three generations is used to track community history and changes that occur in the context of the village, community, and agricultural activities. The result shows that economic diversification has created a new rurality. New rurality or present-day rural characteristic are indicated by increasing prosperity, and agriculture that is no longer the dominant source of income. Livelihood diversification provides opportunities for vertical social mobility for the rural poors which are the offsprings of farm laborers and tenants who choose to become migrant workers in Korea. There has been a restratification characterized by the emergence of migrant groups as a new social class that shifts the upper class position previously occupied by landlords and their descendants. They are a new upper class in social stratification in the rural that manages to show their prosperity through the accumulation of capital from remittances they brought back to the village