Suchergebnisse

I. Einleitung -- Die Analyse sozialer Ungleichheit als wissenschaftlicher Prozeß -- II. Kontinuität -- Soziale Ungleichheit und Selektion im Erziehungssystem. Ergebnisse und Implikationen der sozialstrukturellen Sozialisationsforschung -- Politische Ideologie und Berufsprestige. Eine vergleichende Analyse -- Soziale Ungleichheit und technischer Wandel. Angestellte zwischen Beruf und Betrieb -- Das Ende der Arbeiterklasse? Oder: Die Gefahren der Gelehrsamkeit -- Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, Beruf und soziale Mobilität. Zum Strukturwandel nachindustrieller Gesellschaften -- Was Theorien der sozialen Ungleichheit wirklich erklären -- III. Erneuerung -- Soziale Mobilität und Klassenbildung. Zur Erneuerung einer Tradition soziologischer Forschung -- Die unerfüllten Systemfunktionen sozialer Mobilität in einer sozialistischen Gesellschaft -- Was bedeutet neo und was heißt marxistisch in der neomarxistischen Klassenanalyse? -- Soziale Ungleichheit aus feldtheoretischer Perspektive -- IV. Innovation -- Zur Konstitution sozialer Ungleichheit durch die gesellschaftliche Organisation von Arbeit und Bildung -- Zentrum und Peripherie. "Alte" und "neue" Ungleichheiten in weltgesellschaftlicher Perspektive -- Klassen, soziale Bewegungen und soziale Schichtung in einer nachindustriellen Gesellschaft -- Über die Autoren.

AbstractThe Social Mobility Commission's most recent annual report is entitled State of the Nation 2022: A Fresh Approach to Social Mobility. We examine what in the report is new, whether explicitly or implicitly, and how far the newness serves to enhance our understanding of social mobility in Britain today and is of relevance to problems and policy issues that arise. We find that the supposed greater attention to the findings of academic research is selective and, overall, quite limited; that the proposed new focus on 'small steps upwards' shifts attention away from what are the most serious and enduring instances of inequality of opportunity in British society; that the emphasis on individual agency as a means of overcoming disadvantaged social origins neglects the role of agency in maintaining inequality in mobility chances; and that the determinedly upbeat tone of the report raises questions of the independence of the Social Mobility Commission, under its present leadership, as a body charged with holding governments to account in their efforts to ensure that 'the circumstances of birth do not determine outcomes in life'.

AbstractAfter a period of declining interest in elites among social scientists, elite studies are now reviving. But it is important to understand why the decline occurred. We examine the largely contradictory explanations put forward by John Scott and Mike Savage and their related proposals for new research. We suggest an alternative approach that, we believe, would prove more rewarding. This entails treating elites as 'small‐N' entities, clearly distinct from social classes. On this basis, elites can be characterised through 'prosopographical' methods—the construction of collective biographies of their members. More reliable accounts can thus be produced of the social composition of different elites and, in turn, questions can be addressed as to how far their skewed recruitment results from the processes through which they are formally constituted as well as from the composition of the 'pools' from which their recruitment primarily occurs. Further questions follow about the implications for both equality of opportunity also also for the waste of talent and loss of diversity in elite memberships and for the neglected issue of the quality and the effectiveness of elites in whatever field they exist.

We present analyses of intergenerational social class mobility based on data from representative samples of the British population from 1972 to 2005. We distinguish throughout between absolute and relative rates of mobility. As regards absolute rates, we find little or no change in total mobility rates over the period covered. In the case of men, there is also little change in rates of upward and downward mobility — in contrast with the middle decades of the twentieth century when upward mobility steadily increased while downward mobility fell. This latter pattern does, however, prevail in the case of women. As regards relative rates, we again find, for men and women alike, an essential constancy over time. This, then, indicates that such changes as are apparent in absolute rates derive from shifts in class distributions rather than from any significant increase or decrease in social fluidity. Our results are contrary to the prevailing view in political and media circles that in Britain today the level of social mobility is in decline, although for men the pattern of mobility has become less favourable. We end with some remarks on policy implications.

Class analysis has recently been criticised from a variety of standpoints. In this paper we argue that much of this criticism is misplaced and that, as a research programme, the promise of class analysis is far from exhausted. The first part of the paper clarifies the nature and purpose of class analysis, as we would understand it, and in particular distinguishes it from the class analysis of Marxist sociology. The second part then makes the case for the continuing relevance of class analysis, in our conception of it, by reviewing findings from three central areas of current research.

Data on the class mobility of women in modern Britain are analysed following the `conventional', `individual' and `dominance' approaches to the problem of determining women's class location. Results obtained via these three approaches and the different substantive problems to which they lead are examined, and the further issue is considered of how far, in the light of the analyses presented, studies of class mobility that have focused on the experience of men could be regarded as misleading.

Results on trends in intergenerational class mobility in England and Wales obtained from the Nuffield inquiry of 1972 are updated to 1983 on the basis of material derived from the British General Election Study of that year. Overall, a marked continuity in trends in absolute mobility rates and in associated patterns of social fluidity and structural change is revelaed. The most important new development in the context of far more adverse economic conditions is for the mobility chances of men of working-class origins to polarise - a continuing improvement in opportunities for upward mobility into service-class positions going together with increasing risks of downward mobility via unemployment. The results reported are shown to be ones that do not readily accord with current theories, whether Marxist or liberal, of the development of the class structures of modern western societies.

In recent analyses of the class structure of Britain and other modern western societies, arguments have been advanced relating mobility patterns to class formation and modes of class action. Three specific theses-those of `closure' at the higher levels of the class structure, of a `buffer-zone' around the division between manual and non-manual occupations, and of `counter-balance' in rates of inter- and intragenerational mobility-are critically examined on the basis of a survey inquiry into occupational mobility carried out in England and Wales in 1972. The sources of the various discrepancies which emerge between the three theses and the results of the enquiry are discussed, and major importance is attached in this respect to the evolution of the occupational division of labour in Britain over recent decades.