Social Imaginaries and Segmentation in the Mirror of Long Term Series (1920–2016)

The study brought into focus two major issues: the “social vision” of the researchers, i.e. how their vision of society can influence the interpretation of research outputs, while the other focused on the formation of middle strata as embedded into the long term development of social structure. As for the social vision of the researcher, we posit that their professional views on stratification are more or less based on values and methods derived from the European centrum. If we investigate the stratification of the East-Central European countries and Hungary based on this viewpoint, we can get an “external mirror”, which helps the better understanding of the processes of stratification. However, it is useful, if we simultaneously try to interpret data and trends among the East-Central European model, because only in this way we can get a more objective view of stratification processes. As for the formation of the middle strata, we can say, that serious business booms are hidden behind this which determine the quality of the middle strata. The relatively short economic cycles can provide only limited possibilities, therefore important part of those people couldn’t close up to the “organic part” of the middle strata, and they remained in circle of fragile part of middle strata, or even they drop out from there.