The Social Class Structure of Occupational Mobility

(1981) - Ronald L. Breiger

Journal: American Journal of Sociology
Link:: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/227497
DOI:: 10.1086/227497
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialClass #Mobility
Cite Key:: [@Breiger1981]

Abstract

Thispaperprovidesan analyticalframework withinwhichhypotheses of classstructureare broughtto beardirectlyin theformulation of modelsfor theoccupationalmobilitytable. The properaggregation of rows and columns is portrayedas the fundamental theoretical issue inmobilitytableanalysis,ratherthanas an exogenous"given"to be decideduponpriorto the construction of explicitmodels.Homogeneityof mobilitywithinand betweenclasses,class hierarchy, and tangibleboundednessare the central themes.These themesare implemente i dnloglinearmodelsand appliedinthe analysis oflarge(17category)intergenerational mobilitytables. Four such tables from the studies of Blauand Duncan and ofFeathermanand Hauserare fittedacceptably.Seven falsifiable hypotheses about the socialclass structureof occupationalmobilityare identified and assessedcomparativelywithinthenewframework

Notes

"Homogeneity of mobility within and between classes, class hierarchy, and tangible boundedness are the central themes" (Breiger 1981:578)

"A "social class" makes up the totality of those class situations within which individual and generational mobility is easy and typical. [Weber (1922) 1978, p. 302]" (Breiger 1981:578)

"Occasionally critics seem content to castigate "increased methodological sophistication, [employed] to the detriment of sociological thought" (Bertaux 1976, p. 394; Coser 1975), thereby advancing neither activit" (Breiger 1981:579)

"The explicit goal here s a theoretically informed concept of social class structures, that is, "one [providing] for a reconstruction f data" (Merton 1968, p. 144), and not the construction or reconstruction of terminology" (Breiger 1981:579)

"My starting point s the recognition that "the problem of the existence of distinct class boundaries' . . . is not one which can be settled in abstracto" (Giddens 1973, p. 110" (Breiger 1981:579)

": There does not exist a model of the mobility table that takes the proper number and composition of occupational categories as an explicit theoretical decision" (Breiger 1981:580)

"notwithstanding, he proper number and composition of social classes, ranging from two classes to "an almost endless multiplicity of class situations" (see Giddens 1973, p. 48), is perhaps the most central problem to be addressed by any theory of social class" (Breiger 1981:580)

"Until the 1950s, sociological theories of the aggregation of mobility chances were nseparable from theories of social class. The attempt to pull these concerns apart has faltered (Goldthorpe 1980, p. 38)." (Breiger 1981:581)

"With reference to a mobility table, a social THE AGGREGATION THESIS:" (Breiger 1981:581)

"class structure s a single partition of occupational categories imposed simultaneously on origins (rows of the table) and destinations (columns" (Breiger 1981:582)

"Mobility from any occupation to INTERNAL HOMOGENEITY THESIS: any other is explained by the social class structure. Specifically: the dependence of destination on origin (the association of rows and columns) is always zero within the subtable formed by crossing the occupations in any class A and those in any class B (where A and B may also index the same class)." (Breiger 1981:582)

"Classes are ordered with respect to typical THE CLASS HIERARCHY THESIS: mobility chances. Interclass mobility is governed by a small number of parameters stating the dependence of class of destination on class of origin" (Breiger 1981:582)

". Many otherwise incompatible theories of class have as a goal the provision of claims about the aggregation of definite social collectivities, for example, Weber's postulation of four social classes, one of which-the propertyless intelligentsia-is composed of technicians, civil servants, and "various kinds of white-collar employees" (Weber [1922] 1978, p. 305)." (Breiger 1981:582)

"Sorokin [1927] 1959, pp. 439-40), for example, it appeared "natural that there are cleavages not so much between occupational groups in the narrow sense of the word, as between bigger social subdivisions going on along the lines of the affine' and 'non-affine' occupational subdivisions.... These differences, eing reinforced by differences in the economic status of such classes, create a basis for what is styled as the present class-differentiation, ith ts satellites in the form of .. class antagonism and class frictio" (Breiger 1981:583)

"The "affine" occupational subdivisions of Sorokin are the "social classes" of Max Weber ([1922] 1978, pp. 302-7, 926-39). Besides his well-known differentiation of "class" from "status" and "party," Weber also distinguished "social classes" from classes based on purely economic criteria. Social class is a distinctive concept for Weber because such classes can be defined only on the basis of an analytical aggregation of mobility chances" (Breiger 1981:583)

"A social class, in Weber's sense, is formed of a cluster of class situations which are inked together by virtue of the fact that they involve common mobility chances, either within the career of ndividuals or across the generations.... As Weber himself points out, the notion of social class' comes much closer to that of status group' than does the conception of purely economic class although as with economic class situations, ndividuals who are in the same social class are not necessarily conscious of the fact). The notion of social class is important because . . [without it] it s possible to distinguish an almost endless multiplicity of class situations. But a "social class" exists only when these class situations cluster together in such a way as to create a common nexus of social interchange . . [Giddens 1973, p. 48" (Breiger 1981:583)

"The thesis of nternal homogeneity.-The amgibuity of the last sentence quoted above reveals the nsufficiency of the aggregation thesis, if t is uncoupled from the other two theses, to account for social mobility" (Breiger 1981:583)

""A consistent pattern of disproportionately low movements between occupational groups is all that s meant by a class boundary here" (Blau and Duncan 1967, p. 60)." (Breiger 1981:584)

"Stated positively, the self-consistent elation of social classes and occupational mobility takes the following form, according to the nternal homogeneity thesis. Occupational destination depends on origin only when the partition of occupational categories into classes is ignor" (Breiger 1981:585)

"Or, stated negatively, the units of analysis for occupational mobility are social classes. The researcher who ignores these units confronts a rich and variegated tableau in which occupational mobility (and inheritance) is stronger with respect to certain pairs of occupations than others" (Breiger 1981:585)

""It must be emphasized that there is certainly never anything even approaching complete closure" of mobility chances in advanced capitalist societies (Giddens 1973, p. 107)." (Breiger 1981:585)

". Still missing is any stipulation of an ordering among the classes in their provision of mobility chances, so that "the picture . . . which emerges ... is one marked out by a hierarchy of broad occupational categories each" (Breiger 1981:585)

"representing a different position in the scale of material and nonmaterial benefits" (Parkin 1971, p. 24)." (Breiger 1981:586)

"Satisfaction of the criterion of internal homogeneity insures that mobility among is not confounded with mobility among classes occupations" (Breiger 1981:586)

"together, the three theses postulate a dual structure Duality.-Taken for the occupational mobility table. What is sought is a single partition of occupational categories, applied simultaneously to the rows and columns of a mobility table." (Breiger 1981:586)

"A model should fit its data" (Breiger 1981:586)

"Heretofore untested commitments bound as to the social class structure of occupational mobility, since non-Marxist theories (Horan 1978) as well as "Marxist theory . . . [have] direct implications for the relationship between occupations and classes as positions within the social structure" (Wright 1979, p. 117; see also Vanneman [1977] on the recasting of social class hypotheses as partitions of occupational categories)." (Breiger 1981:590)

"The conventional riad (H1).-Blau and Duncan (1967, p. 59) suggest the existence of three classes "partitioned by two semipermeable class boundaries that imit downward mobility between generations as well as within lifetime careers, though they permit upward mobility." These classes are the conventional triad: white collar, blue collar, and farm." (Breiger 1981:591)

"The proletarianization hypothesis H2).-Arguing that ower white-collar workers are coming increasingly to resemble manual workers with respect to their mobility chances, Vanneman (1977, pp. 793-98) suggests a threeclass partition differing from Blau and Duncan's n that clerical workers are grouped inside the working class, not with white-collar occupations" (Breiger 1981:591)

"The occupational elite hypothesis (H3).-Hope (1972, pp. 173-79) proposes a different modification of the Blau-Duncan partition. Hope's "overall picture is one of a three-class society topped by an elite" (1972, p. 178). Specifically, Hope separates self-employed professionals from the other occupations in Blau and Duncan's white-collar class." (Breiger 1981:593)

"Hypotheses of occupational strata (H4, H5, H6).-Several mobility table analysts combine categories of 17-category tables to produce smaller tables as a prelude to their explicit modeling efforts, and not due to an overt concern with social class structure" (Breiger 1981:593)

"I consider the five-category partition of Featherman and Hauser (1978, p. 28; designated as H4 here and in App. B); the ninecategory partition of Pullum (1975, p. 116; designated H5); and the 12- category partition of Featherman and Hauser 1978, p. 181; designated H6)." (Breiger 1981:593)

"The class-autonomy hypothesis (H7).-I now propose a modification of Hope's partition (H3). The additional distinctions I impose within two of the classes he identified reflect hypothesized variations in the occupational autonomy accorded to workers on the basis of their employment" (Breiger 1981:593)

"broad consensus on the insufficiency f the conventional whitecollar and blue-collar categories to account for mobility patterns" (Breiger 1981:593)

"necessary criterion for distinguishing patterns of mobility internal to these segments is referred to variously as the entrepreneurial/nonentrepreneurial distinction (Carlsson 1958, pp. 144-46), the bureaucratic/nonbureaucratic setting of obs and the attendant "possibilities for self-direction and selfemployment" (Featherman and Hauser 1978, p. 32; Laumann 1973, p. 81), the degree of role circumscription due to "rational principles explicitly formulated" (Blau and Duncan 1967, p. 73), and the relative control over the labor process exercised by workers in various class locations (Wright" (Breiger 1981:593)

THIS (note on p.593)

"With this criterion as the goal, propose a subdivision of Hope's whitecollar segment into three classes (II, III, IV), and I distinguish three classes (V, VI, VII) within his blue-collar segment. The resulting hypothesized partition is as follows (numbers in parentheses refer to the categories of table 1):" (Breiger 1981:594)

"Summary.-The major result of the data analysis of this paper is the demonstration of a duality with respect to interclass mobility and occupational mobility" (Breiger 1981:603)

"subtables defined by social class partition (Sk) (H7), occupational origins and destinations are independent (table 2" (Breiger 1981:603)

"Mobility between the classes table 4) is characterized by the differential dependence of destination class on origin class under the assumption that destination classes are ordered uniform" (Breiger 1981:603)

"The present paper arose from the recognition that sociologists have remained reluctant, throughout this historical period, to forge the texture of the material on which they set to work. They have not addressed explicitly the problem that "changes from a finer to a coarser classification (or vice versa) can affect all the measures of association of which we know" Goodman and Kruskal 1954, p. 737)" (Breiger 1981:604)

"This paper has offered a framework for aggregating occupational categories into affine (social) classes. The aggregation of rows and columns has been portrayed here as the fundamental theoretical issue n mobility table analysis, rather than as an exogenous "given" to be decided upon prior to the construction of explicit models." (Breiger 1981:604)

". Consider, for example, the partition of 55 industries into "core" and "periphery" sectors recently proposed by Tolbert, Horan, and Beck (1980)" (Breiger 1981:605)