Socioeconomic Attainment - Stratification Sociology - Lecture Notes, Study notes of Sociology

Download Socioeconomic Attainment - Stratification Sociology - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Soci850-001 Social Stratification Fall 2012 Professor François Nielsen Module 7 – Socioeconomic Attainment & Comparative Social Mobility Discussion Questions Last modified August 29, 2012 Introduction to Module 7 Module 7 covers three categories of topics. a. Conceptualizing Occupational Status These are texts concerned with the conceptualization and measurement of social status, starting with one excerpt from the classic book The American Occupational Structure by Blau and Duncan (1967). An important thread in this literature is the debate involving different conceptions of social status: status as prestige (Treiman, Hodge), prestige as socioeconomic index combining typical education and income of an occupation (Blau and Duncan, Featherman and Hauser), or even status as re- flecting mainly educaiton and skills of an occupation (Hauser and Warren). (I find the Hauser and Warren reading not optimally condensed relative to the original article on which the chapter is based.) b. Socioeconomic Attainment & Mobility The Blau and Duncan (1967) book was profoundly influential in sociology. There are three substantive themes derived from the their “status attainment” model that will dominate, explicitly or implicitly, subsequent social mobility research. (1) The direct effect of family background, measured as the coefficients of FaEd (n.s.) and FaOcc (.115) are small, suggesting there was little direct reproduction of social sta- tus. (2) What reproduction of social status there is (measured as the indirect effect of FaOcc and FaEd) is largely through (i.e., mediated by) R’sEd and R’s First Job. (3) A rather subtle but crucial point: The effects of education and first occupa- tion on later occupation predominantly consist of indirect effects of the residuals of R’sEd and R’s First Occ, which are by definition independent from social origins. This suggests that individual idiosyncratic qualities (merit?) are more important determinants of individual success than social origins. One way to look at the other readings in this section is to view them as dif- ferent ways to address the issue of the relative impacts of family background and education on socioeconomic achievement. The reading by economist Gary Solon is difficult, but very important in herald- ing what I see as a future trend of research in both economics and sociology, which is the decomposition of genetic and environmental factors in socioeconomic achievement. The passage beginning “What are the roles of genetic and cultural 1 heritability? One intriguing line of research seeks clues from comparisons of rela- tives with varying degrees of genetic and environmental relatedness. . . . ” (p. 484) is particularly important. The passage in Footnote 1 p. 484, “family influences loom larger than neighborhood influences in accounting for the effects of origins on so- cioeconomic outcomes” can be related to Esping-Andersen’s conclusion about the overall conclusion of social mobility research that the principal factors of socioeco- nomic attainment relate to the family, rather than later stages in the individual’s career. Note that the “elasticity” β is simply the coefficient of the regression of the logarithm of son’s income on the logarithm of father’s income. Extensions of the Socioeconomic Attainment Model The readings in this section represent, broadly speaking, various ways of specifying the social process by which socioeconomic attainment takes place. These include the socio-psychological mechanisms that influence the individual (Sewell, Haller and Portes), “habitus” (Bourdieu), the surrounding culture and the issue of class versus ethnic culture (MacLeod), and the role of social networks in attainment (Granovetter; Lin; Burt). Note the very useful quick overview of the evolution of the literature on social mobility in the Lin reading, including the passage “[devel- opments in the field] have significantly amplified rather than altered the original Blau-Duncan conclusion concerning the relative merits of achieved versus ascribed personal resources in status attainment”. Synthetic Questions 1. There has been a substantial literature on the process of status attainment and social mobility in industrial society. What do we know (or don’t know) from this research about the following questions: (a) How industrial development affects the social mobility process; in partic- ular, how does industrial development affect the “openness” of the social structure in a society. (b) The veracity of the traditional belief that the United States is a “land of opportunity” that is distincly more open and rich in opportunities com- pared to European societies. (c) More generally, whether and in what ways the mobility process differs across advanced industrial societies. 2. In the field of comparative social mobility research it has become customary to distinguish several “generations” of stratification and social mobility re- search. Distinguish at least four such generations, and compare them with respect to: (a) The major substantive issues each generaition emphasizes. (b) The methodological approach/innovation that characterizes the genera- tion. (c) The major substantive findings of each generation. Detailed Questions a. Conceptualizing Occupational Status Blau and Duncan (B&D) – “Measuring the Status of Occupations.” (GRU2e Pp. 255–259) 2