Structure of Society From the Rugby to the Rubik’s Cube: A Stability Perspective on Social Structural Transformation

Abstract

The Rugby-shaped society is considered a nearly ideal type of social structure, becoming an essentially stereotyped elite theory in the global mainstream sociology, which is fundamentally based on the practice and theoretically repeated confirmation of the super-stability function of the Rugby-shaped society in developed capitalist countries. As a result, the Rugby-shaped society has become a theoretical goal of social transformation and a general social consensus. The feasibility of localized social groupings exhibiting a Rugby-shaped structure is not necessarily adequately replicable under the condition of closer global social linkages, and the occupation-based social class structure is not always hyper-stable. The more multidimensional Rubik’s cube society contains both uncertainty and hyper-stability, and the proposed Rugby-shaped society for China should take into account the more complex influencing factors in the systemic global social structure of a Rubik’s cube society. Non-occupational factors may also increase the risk of social instability.