Structure,Context And Construction: Rethink The Issue Of "Marginality"

"Marginality" has received extensive attention from scholars in a society with increasingly intense social differentiation."Marginal position" seems to be the code of "weak","poverty","voiceless" or even "negative" and marginal people seems to have become "underclass", helpless but only to wait for the policy support. Empirical research indicates that "marginality" is not fixed, but can flow and change. It has different meanings in intragroup and intergroup situations, and group member differs from each other due to their psychological traits. The structural marginal position is irreversible, however, social context and human agency make a difference to their real marginal situations. Marginal people are not totally constrained by the structural marginal position, and they can get rid of psychological marginality by reconstruct their social identity, thus adapt to new social category and reduce bad effects of marginal positions.The rural AIDS patients in east HuBei province are one case of the marginal groups. They got infected by selling bloods. Most of them exposed in the late1990s, and were rejected by the public after then. However after several years struggle and adaption, most of them gradually survived and adapted, and even strived to a normal life course. Nowadays, they are "danger" to the society,"other" to the village they live in, and "nothing serious" to their nuclear families. Some of them choose to expose their AIDS identity and struggle for social resources under the special identity; others cannot accept the reality, try to hide their disease identity and cut off from the social assistance system and then finally die lonely. Their construction of self identity contributes to their situations and the distinguishing consequences."Marginal" is not just a frozen negative concept. It has rich connotation under different social situations and also provides diverse living environment and resources operation space for people with different agencies. The structural marginal status is irreversible, but marginal levels differ due to social context and individual’s psychological traits. In conclusion, we can help marginal people return to the society by strengthening their positive context cognition and rebuilding their identity system.