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SOCIAL MOBILITY: CURRENT THRUSTS (AND NON-THRUSTS)
A CRITICAL APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF MOBILITY

Jan Mayer

"...the most important thing. ..that we can know about
a man is what he takes for granted, and the most
elemental and important facts about a society are
those that are seldom debated and generally regarded
as settled."

(Louis V.'irth, preface to Karl Mannheim's IDEOLOGY
AND UTOPIA, 1936, xxii, cited in Pease, Form
and Rytina, 1970: 127)

In the sections which follow, various aspects of mobility research
will be examined, beginning in Section II with a orief summary of
various approaches which have been taken. The discussion of the
sources and functions of social mooility in industrial societies
leads to a discussion of the relationship between mobility and
industrialization trends, including changes in the occupational
structure. The paper ends with a critique of some of the dominant
assumptions and lacks of attention in mobility research. The
title of the paper indicates a certain skepticism with regard
to any progression to date towards shedding light on the "taken
for grantedness" of the mobility researcher's world, which
encourages a narrow focus on some elements to the exclusion of
others. Some reasons why this is so are suggested in the concluding
section.

I INTRODUCTION: THE MEANING OF MOBILITY

The theory of social mobility, Goldhaner informs us in the INTER-
NATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 0? THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, attempts to account
for the frequencies in movements of individuals, families and
groups from one social position to another. As Moore (1966: 19?)
notes, such movements may he in terms of location, relative pos-
ition, sector or industry, in terms of lateral or occupational
moves, or in terms of employer. Movements may be intra-generational
(career mobility) or inter- generational (change from father's to
offspring's status). Clearly, some types of mobility will be of
more importance than others when such questions as degrees of
opportunity or social inequality are raised.

The subject of social mobility is an element in the more general
study of "social selection"--the distribution of people into
positions in social structures, with positions in turn varying
in terms of three major "scarce and desirable" social rewards:
income (or material goods), prestige, and power. Thus, there is
a relationship between the stratification system of a society and
mobility within it--an "open" class system produces a certain kind
and degree of mobility distinct from more closed "estate" systems
or nearly rigid caste systems. Different mechanisms or processes



88

are said to operate in each type, and these types have a relation-
ship to the type of society—agrarian or industrial, and within
industrial, whether "market" (capitalist) or "command" (Soviet-
type) systems.

Industrialism and its impact on the stratification system and
implications for mobility will be examined in Section IV. At
this point, however, it is important to note a number of general
features of social structures which determine forms mobility will
take in different societies. Smelser and Lipset (1966: £-11)
identify three such features: (1) "ascription" or "achievement"
as the institutionalized basis of legitimation for movement,
implying collective and individualistic bases respectively; (2) the
degree to which differentiation in the kinship, religious, economic,
and political institutions makes for differential status of
individuals among the dimensions of wealth, power and prestige
(a high degree of formal segregation existing in highly institu-
tionally differentiated social structures making it easier for
individuals to move on the basis of a single role); and (3) the
locus of control of sanctions ( rewards) --and if in the hands of a
few, the degree to which these concentrations coincide in various
institutional orders.

Smelser and Lipset (:2) also make the point that economic develop-
ment (specifically, industrialization) requires more movement,
or at least different forms of movement, and that the ease or
difficulty of such moveients will depend on the social structure
of that society—there is an "emerging tension" between the
"demands" of the developing structure and the characteristics
of traditional structures. Social systems, in their view, have
certain "directional tendencies" and certain resources, which are
linked by social structure in terms of basic units: roles and
social organization (clusters of roles). Systems have "functional
imperatives" which must be met if systems are to survive: the
economic, political, and "integrative" (norms, values, culture)
are basic. These imperatives are interrelated, both in terms of
interdependence and also in terms of the way in which sanctions
produced in one may be used or involved in complex interchanges
in another context, to produce other sanctions (e.g. wealth
transformed as power, or education as inforration) . Thus the
stratification system must be seen in terms of roles characterized
by different (and differential) receipts of sanctions; roles,
organizations, individuals or classes may oe seen as stratified
on the basis of these distributions ( :2-7) . To the functionalist,
stratification (and hence inequality) is both necessary and in-
evitable if efficiency and survival of the social system are to
be assured. Historical and empirical data have at least confirmed
the ubiquitousness of stratification.

Parkin (1973: 49) states that "as a rough general estimate, between
a quarter and a third of those born into tne manual working class
in modern Western countries will move into the ranks of the middle
class." —and for most of these, as Blau and Duncan (ls>67) have
found, mobility will involve only short-range changes, such as to
low white-collar positions, with the less usual cases, Parkin
notes, becoming mobile by entry into middle-class professions.



89

McRoberts' (1975) survey of the literature shows that mobility,
whether up or down, occurs in sin£le "steps" (i.e. to adjacent
categories) ( :7)

.

Lipset and Zetterberg (1966: 566; first published 1956), using
only the statistically crude comparative tools available at the
time, concluded that most western industrial societies revealed
roughly the sane "high" rate as the U.S., but perhaps it would
be preferable to say "low" (for ooviously, what one regards as
evidence of an acceptable rate of mobility will be a normative
judgment). (Rates of mobility, however, were not related to
differences in income inequality^

These findings have been confirmed by more recent comparisons
which show that there is little difference in mobility between
countries at different levels of economic development, having
different normative orientations or class structures (KcRoberts,
1975: 7; from Muller and kayer, 1973). As for the United States
over time, for example, Duncan (196?) concludes that the data
to the 19oO's tell a "monotonously repetitive story"--no regular
increases or decreases in the magnitudes of correlations to be
expected if stratification were becoming less rigid since about
World War I, that is. no trend either towards increasing or
decreasing mobility ( :711) . Moreover, HLau an i Duncan's (1967: 424)
findings indicate that manual workers are less likely than others
to achieve an occupational status different from that of their
fathers. They identify the three major class divisions in terms
of manual/non-raanual and blue-collar/farm as manifested in inter-
generational and intragenerational mobility matrices; the lowest
white-collar and lowest blue-coliar categories, located just above
the class boundaries, apparently serve as channels for upward
mobility, while self-employed groups are largely "self-contained"
(:422).

II APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF MOBILITY

Perhaps the most striking aspect of mobility research over the
decades is how little it has progressed. Duncan, as cited in the
introductory section, concluded that the results of his research
were "monotonously repetitive" ; the same could be said about
mobility research in general. Research has been dominated by the
questions "V.'hat factors affect mobility?" and "How 'open' a society
is this?" (or more often, "V.'hat is the rate of mobility?"). Some
different kinds of questions have recently been raised, but as will
be shovm in the concluding section, even these have fallen short
of the mark in terms of a contriuution to a more encompassing
understanding of the mechanisms, consequences, and structural -
causal roots of lack of mobility, the other side of the coin which
comes closer to the heart of questions of inequality, "relative
deprivation," and the like.

Goldhamer highlights one objection to the mobility-measurement
enterprise:

"...moral and political critiques of society must rest not
on distributions of children's status by parents' status.,
but on the nature of the processes that produce these
distributions." (INTER! ATIOKAL ENCYCLOPEDIA..; :430)



90

Obviously, such questions are not contained within the limits of
statistical inference—they r.ust be placed there through theory
which guides data-gathering and interpretation, and what is
included in theory as relevant depends upon the researcher's bias
and the bias of the dominant mode of thinking he accepts. What
is absent in the theory will not magically appear in the statistics.

Duncan (1962) dates the methodological emphasis on measurement
from the 1940's with the publication of an article by Sibley (1942).
Up to that time only Cooley and Sorokin had made some contribution
to an understanding of mobility. But even Sibley's work had no
data on vertical mobility per se , only on net shifts in the
occupational structure as presumed evidence for past mobility.

Sibley's focus was on structural factors—demography, in terms of
immigration and differential fertility, and on the educational
system as a mechanism facilitating selection of talent and merit.
Between that time and about 1952, most writers were concerned
with the "rigidification" thesis--that the opportunity structure
of America had rigidified or that people had "lost the belief"
in the possibility of mobility. It was not until Natalie Kogoff's
1953 study, with its "methodological elegance," that any signifi-
cant data was brought forward, according to Duncan; her finding
was that there had been no significant changes in mobility rates
between 1910 and 1940.

McRoberts (1975: 2-6) defines three main approaches to the study
of mobility. These are all approaches at the "macro," societal
level, as distinguished from much rarer "micro" approaches such
as that of Harrison White in CHAINS OF OFFOhTUI.'ITY (1970), in
which a mathematically sophisticated "systems" analysis is applied
to the mechanisms of mobility within organizational settings
involving populations within them. All three "macro" models,
the "matrix," "status-attainment," and "life-history" approaches,
are essentially mathematical models, relating variables together
and searching out statistical associations.

The. earlier approach uses a matrix of father's occupation and
son's current occupation (father's occupation represented at
approximately mid-career by specifying his occupation at the point
when the son was 16) ; the matrix describes the amount of mobility
in a society intergenerationally.

The status-attainment approach goes further. Initially developed
by Blau and Duncan (1967), the model introduces the variables
of father's education, respondent's education, and respondent's
first job on completion of education. It attempts to account for
factors which contribute to the transformation of son's origin
status into son's present status, but also allows for an examination
of the relationship between educational attainment and status
attainment independent of origin, through the statistical method
of path analysis, which also allows the introduction of other
factors thought to be relevant (McRoberts :2-6) . As Duncan (1966:
681) explains it:



91

"The rigidity of stratification, in this sense L i.e.
intertemporal predictability greater than chance] ,
is measured by the intergenerational correlation or
coefficient of association. . .to be distinguished from
the degree of inequality, which refers to the extent
of differentiation on a relevant scale of rewards...".

The analysis "places" the present generation on an occupational
scale relative to placement of the father, but little more.

Aside from the limitations of the model, a number of methodological
problems come to mind: first, the impact of structural change on
occupational categories (this is addressed in section IV) ; second,
the question of scaling of positions in terms of whether a "step"
from one occupation to another always has the same significance
(a point raised by Goldhamer :430 and also by Smelser and Lipset,
1966: IB, particularly in terms of the autonomy and social rela-
tions connected with jobs) . The Elau and Duncan model appears to
be able to deal with the first but not the second objection.

The life-history approach (which KcRoberts thinks of not as
distinct from but as an extension of the status-attainment model)
places its emphasis not so much on inter-generational movement
but on the process of intra-generational (career mobility) move-
ments and factors in the opportunity structure (1975: 7). As
developed in the later work of hatalie Rogoff (now Ramsey) in the
Norwegian occupational life-history study (1974), the focus is
on "the socio-economic life cycle of a cohort" and on the distances
between groupings in terms not only of societal goods but "bads"
(the distribution of negative rewards such as unemployment,
illness, work discomforts, and factors usually labelled "quality
of life").

Ramsey questions "how effective the occupational system is as a
transmitter of the rewards involved in the stratification system."
(:14), noting that occupational status has been found to account
for "relatively little of the variance in income in the United
States." ( :15) . The Norwegian study found it accounted for only
22$ of the variance in income (:1£). Education and occupational
status correlated .70 (slightly less than half of the variance),
the highest correlation obtained (:19). Ramsey also pointed to
the possibility in there being a trend towards education bringing
a lower monetary return than it did in the past (:22). Although
she did not raise the question, a relevant concern of research
would seem to be the variance unaccounted for—what is there in the
structure of industrial (specifically, capitalist) societies which
perpetuates inequality and lack of mobility?

Ill SOURCES AND FUNCTION S OF MOBILITY

As mentioned in section I, Sibley's (1942) analysis of mobility
focussed on structural conditions, including the demographic
"clues" of immigration, which aided mobility of native Americans
by injecting a large number of unskilled workers into the bottom
end of the labour force, and fertility differentials between the



92

lower and higher occupational clas.-es, which created a surplus
at the lower end who could r.ove up the social ladder to fill
places left vacant there due to lower rates of reproduction. Two
other sources of upward mobility Sibley identified were continuing
technological progress, and the ability of the educational system
to outfit people for positions of skill and responsilility. As
Sibley suspected immigration and differential fertility might
eventually be "dwindling sources of upward mobility," he placed
great erphasis on the educational system rather than on the
effects of technology for upgrading the labour force, since he also
noted the appearance of the offsetting effects of unemployment.
He saw the future of technological progress as depending on the
"ability of the nation's leaders to readjust political-economic
institutions so as to produce a genuine 'economy of plenty.'"
( :32 5 ) , thus preventing political unrest and polarization into
distinct classes.

An important mechanism of stratification is intergenerational
transmission of status including not only those parental statuses
which influence offsprings' opportunities and orientations, such
as parental occupational status ana educational attainment, but
also, as Duncan (l$t>8: 683) points out, such ascribed statuses as
racial, ethnic, cultural, or religious group membership. Other
factors which affect nobility are inheritance of property, wealth
or "intangibles," genetics, socialization, access to opportunities,
advantages or handicaps of environment, and something which Duncan
calls "differential association," which includes items such as
assortive mating, which place constraints on the socialization
field or act as limits on access to opportunity ( :685)

.

Causes of mobility identified in the literature may be divided
into two types—those whicn are structural in nature such as
demographic factors and occupational structure as related to
industrial development, the creation of vacancies; and those
which are "individual" in nature: genetic (intelligence, native
ability) conditioned by environment, education, training, moti-
vational factors (aspirations to achieve and to oe mobile), and
variational (cultural orientations and belief in mobility as a
good end) (see Lipset and Bendix, 1959; Goldhamer; Lipset and
Zetterberg, 1966; Blau and Duncan, 1967).

It can be argued that much of the latter concern constitutes an
"individualistic bias" in the literature, inasmuch as it places
a great deal of responsibility for success or failure on tne
individual rather than on social conditions (as, for example,
Lipset and bendix' s 1959: 286-7 statement that "the cumulation of
disadvantages at th» bottom of the social scale is in large part
the result of a lack of interest in educational and occupational
achievenents" which cannot be attributed solely to the environment
but to individuals' defence mechanisms against psychological burdens
of mobility) . By focussing undue attention only on the character-
istics of mobile versus non-mobile individuals qua individuals,
attention is drawn away from characteristics of social structures
and of social groupinrs relative to one another--that is, from the
relationship between existing social arrangements and social
classes, in the V/eberian and Marxian senses.



93

Smelser and Lipset (1966) argue that "status values" —a "strong
concern for social mobility in a society"—will contribute to
economic growth because those desiring mobility success "will
seek ways to maximize resources" ( :2U). Their distinction, cited
earlier, between ascription- and achievement-oriented societies
is important here—in societies where enphasis is on ascribed
status of people based on kin groupings, "particularistic" rather
than "universalistic" standards will tend to prevail, and so
impede the workings of meritocratic principles to seek out and
elevate talent--principles which are applicable to individuals and
not to like groupings. Thus, according to these theorists, "This
phenomenon of increasing individual nobility appears to be one of
the universal consequences of industrialization" ( :12) . Blau and
Duncan (1967: 430) also express a belief that "expanding universal-
ism" (the prevailing of objective criteria of evaluation of

individuals over particularistic and subjective bases of evalua-
tions) are causes of mobility, since such criteria become tied to
a concern of individuals with materialistic values and hence to
an interest in achievement and efficiency. For technological
progress and efficiency to continue, the social system has to be
such that "The great potential of society's human resources can
be more fully exploited in a fluid class structure with a high
degree of mobility" ( :43D . Hence class lines which restrict
mobility are a waste of human talent.

The assertion of the democratizing and politically stabilizing
effects of industrialization and hence mobility has been expressed
by many writers, among them Blau and Duncan (1967: 439), and also
by Lipset and Bendix (1959) , although the latter also remark that
it is a strong belief in mobility, aside from the actual rate,
which has the stabilizing influence (:260). Lipset and Zetterberg
(1966: 571) observe that it is strains introduced by thwarted
mobility aspirations which predispose individuals towards more
extreme political views. They see a consequence of economic
development being a potential tension in contradictions between
the aristocratic and egalitarian sentiments, where egalitarianism
is a characteristic of mature industrial societies.

The functions of mobility are also taken up by Lipset and Bendix
(1959: 260-265) in connection with the impact of rapid industriali-
zation creating structural instabilities and disrupting orderly

political processes through such factors as conflicts between
individual aspirations and kin loyalties, or between emphasis on
personal achievement and the management of failure; they speak of
the "social and psychic costs" of high rates of mobility. This
concern is also expressed by Tumin (1970), who views the enphasis
of mass societies on mobility strivings and the success ethic as
creating: (1) fragmentation of the social order into status-
competing groups each striving to emulate higher groups and shut
out lower ones, (2) a move away from the belief in the dignity of
work and work for its own sake to a cynical instrumental use of
work as a means to the ends of social and financial success, and
(3) a "cult of gratitude" among those who are mobile, blunting
social criticism and reinforcing an acceptance of the ''status quo"
( :335-33#) • Tumin's overriding concern, however, does not appear
to be for individuals or for social classes, but rather for social



9*

stability and cohesion of society. Tumin's functionalist (and
conservative) concern for the social system makes of individuals
merely means for the ends of "system needs," it would seem.

Although Blau and Duncan (1967: 40?) identified social origins,
career preparation, and first job as important conditions for
occupational success, they also argued that it is the "basic
structural features" of industrial society which are the source
of high rates of occupational nobility, and expressed a faith that
technological progress would continue to improve chances for
upward mobility by making possible the shift from primary and
secondary to tertiary industry (especially in professional and
semi-professional services) , thus expanding the occupations at the
top of the hierarchy, contracting the bottom, and acting as a
vehicle for upward mobility ( :426-429) . This is the thesis of the
general upgrading of the labour force which many writers have
seen as basic to the process of industrialization, and these
remarks will thus serve as a suitable introduction to the critical
issues raised in the next section.

IV INDUSTRIALIZATION. SOCIAL STRUCTURE. AMD MOBILITY

The assertion of the occupational upgrading of the labour force
as a result of advanced industrialism^ and the assertion of the
increasing homogenization of class groupings arise from two
kinds of social structural analysis which are closely related:
the "logic of industrialism" model as exemplified by Clark Kerr
(see Goldthorpe, 1966: 649; see Ossowski's statement cited in
Lipset and Bendix, 19^9: 281), and the "post-industrial society"
thesis as exemplified by Daniel Bell (see Rinehart, 1975: 83-88).
Both of these approaches have been much criticized for their lack
of accord with empirical facts, and they will not be dealt with
here. However, they both share the "upgrading" thesis in common
and it is this aspect which has important implications for
mobility theory.

Although Goldthorpe (1966: 651-3) agrees that in general, in-
dustrial societies appear to have higher rates of mobility than
non-industrial societies, it does not follow that industrial
society is in essence "open" or "meritocratic" or that high rates
of mobility are inevitable consequences of technology, increasing
specialization and the need for talent expressed in the division
of labour. He cites two sources of counter-argument: after Kolko
and Myrdal, Goldthorpe argues that levelling in some ranges of the
income distribution (as, for example, a swelling of the middle
ranks) does not mean more equality, since other trends may be
operating—the gap between top and bottom may have remained the
same or have widened (indeed there is evidence that in some nations,
this latter appears to be the case). Moreover, Goldthorpe points
out, increased inter-generational mobility as indicated by the data
may be associated with an actual limitation on intra-gene rational,
or career, mobility.

Lipset and Zetterberg (1966: 567) argue that the expansion in white-
collar positions at the expense of manual creates a "surge of upward
occupational mobility to the extent that new industrial labour is



95

drawn from farm areas." Although they cite a study by Bendix
which shows a parallel trend in a number of western industrial
countries towards an increase in adninistrative employees per
100 production workers since the beginning of this century, they
give no evidence to support the argunent that i_n general white-
collar work represents upgrading, or that a move from farm work
to industrial manual work represents upward mobility.

Far from representing upgrading, Rinehart {1975: 86) argues that
the swelling of white-collar ranks has not occurred at the expense
of manual work but at the expense of farm, and that in 1971 the
over-whelming majority of white-collar workers (six out of ten
in clerical and sales) were engaged in low-level white-collar
work, and that within the category "professional and technical,"
70$ were semi-professional or technical workers not involved in
the complex and challenging "knowledge-work" attributed to them by
post-industrial society theorists. Moreover, he indicates there
is evidence that people are becoming over-educated for their
jobs (:#7). An extended argument is made by Braverman (1974) for
the increasing "deskilling" of much work which previously demanded
higher amounts of skill and thought, through the process of sub-
division of tasks and the separation of conceptualization from
execution of tasks, with control of conceptualization and execution
in the hands of high-ranking members of hierarchies or their agents.
Thus, in effect, much of what may appear to resemble mobility from
blue-collar to low-level white-collar and the proliferation of
low-level technicians is in actuality a process of "proletariani-
zation" of increasing proportions of the labour force. These
arguments would point to a form of downward mobility as more
blockages are introduced into the occupational structure, or at
minimum, that relative position in terms of class distribution
has remained the same despite changes in the nature of work.

Despite the fond hopes of some of the structural theorists cited
here, attempts at measuring structural (occupational) trends
also lend support to the interp retation that the progression of
industrialism has not resulted in increased mobility—as for
example is shown by Natalie Rogoff's 1953 finding that when
changes in the occupational structure were "standardized out", a
major factor in mobility changes between 1910 and 1940 was accounted
for (cited in Koore, 19o6: 1^0). Although Moore recognizes that
skill dilution rather than upgrading is a possibility of structural
change ( :197) and that it is not clear why seme white-collar
occupations are termed "head" work (such as typists) while some blue-
collar' jobs are "hand" work (such as linotypists) (:206), he argues
that "it is generally true that occupations commonly classified as
non-manual require somewhat higher educational levels and... yield
higher incomes." ( :206) . The question of certification through
education will be addressed shortly.

Arguments for upgrading (and hence, sources of mobility) tend to
take on a curiously circular cast. Occupations which require more
education often do so as a result of decisions by employers and
may have nothing to do with job content. A listing of occupations
in some kind of rank-order says little about differences in authority
or job-content between two adjacent categories and may in fact be



96

a reflection of other factors, such as income differentials
which may be the result of unionization or its absence. Status
rankings on which objective rankings are in part based have exper-
ienced little change in consensus over the years or from country
to country because they are part of the dominant definition of
reality. The last point refers to Parkin's insight that through
socialization into or by dominant-class ideologies, people learn
not the placement of every occupation in the scale but rather,
"the criteria by which positions are to be ranked. . .certain
criteria become institutionalized as 'relevant' fcr ranking
purposes, while other criteria are excluded or defined as 'irrele-
vant'." so that technical expertise, skill, or responsibility
are accepted by subordinate classes as relevant fur high prestige,
and not physical effort, danger, or dirtiness (1973: 42). If
the assertion of occupational upgrading is based upon upgrading
in status, and status is a subjective dimension, then a serious
point of confusion is introduced into what is purported to be
an attempt to measure objective phenomena.

Since Blau and Duncan's task was to measure the extent to which a
man's occupational achievements depended on occupational status of
his father, the question of occupational changes was a crucial one.
The issue, as Duncan sees it, is "whether occupational status...
is sufficiently stable over time as to permit meaningful inter-
temporal comparisons..." (196?: 70}). Duncan's "strong presumptive
evidence" of stability was based on income positions and on
prestige rankings, and he concluded that the occupational status
structure is subject to such snail "random shocks" that changes
cumulate- very slowly and have thus not affected the statistics to
an appreciable degree ( :709) . It could be argued equally as well,
following Parkin, that after all, there has been no major over-
turning of the criteria by which the dominant view accords status,
and no major questioning of its legitimacy. The question of
whether or not an occupational structure has been "upgraded"
cannot be answered by reference to a scale but involves other
criteria and other kinds of observations. If upgrading cannot
be shown, then one is left only with data which indicates there
has at best been no change in the occupational structure, however
much it may have changed in other ways, to make any difference to
mobility.

Before proceeding to some general critical comments, it will be
in order to discuss one other aspect of the industrialization
arguments which pertains to what night be described as "the myth
of increasing rationality" and "the myth of increasing universal-
ism." Since a highly sophisticated industrial society needs
efficiency and rational means for allocating ability, so Blau and
Duncan's argument went, "Objective criteria of evaluation that are
universally accepted increasingly pervade all spheres of life and
displace particularistic standards of diverse ingroups, intuitive
judgments, and humanistic values not susceptible to empirical
verification." (1967: 429).

However, in "Strategies of Social Closure in Class Formation,"
Parkin (1974) puts forward a different interpretation of the use
of universalistic criteria. He distinguishes between two his-
torically distinct ways in which dominant groups exclude others



97

from claims to social rewards: "classes of nomination" are the
product of rules of exclusion "that single out the specific
attributes of individuals rather than the generalized attributes
of social collectivities" (:o) which are the historically older
"classes of reproduction." He points out that individualistic
rules of exclusion operate within societies dominated by the
"liberal ideal." The establishing of universal criteria for
evaluating individuals in the form of "credent ialism" is a way of
controlling entry to valued positions to those qualified, using
eeemingly impersonal means, but universalism is distorted when the
"means of credentialism" are monopolized by one social group, and
by the transmission of "cultural capital" which introduce "socially
inherited handicaps and easements" that are de facto types of
collectivist exclusion ana class reproduction ( :7-8)

.

Certain desired social qualities (that is, desired by groups in
control of occupational recruitment and selection) come to be more
predominant in some groups than others—the nebulous quality of
"character" is one such that is sufficiently loose to be used by
dominant groups subject to their own definition. There are many
such "intangibles"which go into the selection process of potential
new elites, for example, by established elites, such that through
the recruitment of people "like" tnemselves and through co-optation,
existing social arrangements are perpetuated.

V CRITIQUES OF THE KCEILITY-MEASUREMENT ENTERPRISE

What follows is not a critique of measurement per se , but of the
way it has been used, particularly its lack of including any other
methods of data-collection. The attempt at making statistical
connections usually begins or ends with a nod to social structure
and accepts the dominant theories and assumptions about industrial
societies as put forward by structuralists who are often function-
alists in one guise or another. The fact remains that statistics
do not tell a story in ther.selves—they are subject to interpre-
tation and they are only as reliable as the operationalization of
variables that went into them. The selection of variables in turn
is only-as good as the theory behind them. A number of reasons
will be suggested for why this theory may be found lacking.

The study of mobility over the years has been largely an enterprise
based on variations of the same themes; it has utilized mathematical
models of increasing sophistication which have nevertheless been
premised on an oversimplified view of the social system, one aspect
of which they purport to account for. Their variables have been
few, their assumptions lacking in tneoretical inclusiveness—many
have fallen easily into the "individualistic" trap and have hence
been overly psychologistic in their explanations of the sources and
mechanisms of mobility; many, often the same, have also fallen
into the "logic of industrialism" trap. It is perhaps no accident
that the two types of explanation are not unrelated in their
minds: that is, the belief in the overriding effect of meritocratic
and universalistic principles operating impersonally in the
selection system means that the burden of responsibility for
mobility is upon the indiviuual, and that if there are any



98

imperfections in the system, "tinkering" with the system to
increase equality of opportunity will make the race more fairly
run. Duncan (196?: 6£>) notes that "from a normative standpoint"
one could be concerned with whether the race is fairly run,
given the rules, or whether changes should be made in the rules—
but the problem with mobility studies is that they rarely get
around to explicating the implications of their findings in even
the first instance, let alone the second.

Although some studies (particularly the work of Blau and Duncan)
have noted the differential rates of mobility between the two
broad occupational (and societal) groupings centering around the
manual/nonmanual "divide," to my knowledge few if any have spent
much time on intra-group differences, and none has related these
differential rates to dominant class-configurations in society:
that is between different categories of manual or of white-collar
workers and their differing relationship to the dominant value
and resource centres of the society. The one exception is that
of elite studies, which have made exhaustive analyses of social
origins, career patterns, and mechanisms of exclusion and cohesion
which mark off elites from non-elites—but the studies have not
been linked to the mainstream of mobility research. It would appear
from this lack of connection that the reality of the elite world
is not thought to have repercussions for the non-elite world in
terms of opportunity structure at lower points on the ladder,
in terms of the locus of control and power, and the basis of
elite dominance. This is particularly curious considering the
concern expressed by elite researchers about the economic and
institutional consequences of concentration of power.

The notion of dominant and subordinate classes and of the property
system around which their relations revolve in capitalist
societies have been conspicuously absent in the mobility theorist-
researchers' kit of concepts and explanations. It appears not
to occur to them that, as Parkin (1973: Ch. 2) sees it, some degree
of mobility in capitalist societies not only assures the infusion
of talent when needed but also serves to legitimate the existing
set of relations by reinforcing the belief in the rise of merit
regardless of origins.

Both Parkin (1973: Ch. 1) and Anderson (1974: 121-122) criticize
the use of the "multidimensional" framework for the analysis of
social class common not only to stratification theorists in
general, but to those cited here. V/hen wealth, status and power
are treated as separate variables with little relationship to
one another, or at least, with some disjunctions, attention is
drawn away from what is the major societal underpinning in
capitalist systems: control of productive property. Anderson
argues that property classes or ownership must occupy the first
and central part of any theory of stratification, as was held by
Marx and Weber, and that from the fact of property other dimen-
sions of stratification can then be examined in proper context.
He goes beyond Parkin's view that the occupational order is the
"backbone" of the class structure and reward system in modern
western societies, stating that occupation has always been an
important and usually only source of sustenance for the masses;



99

the shift from self-employment to salaried employment is due not
to the demise but to the "increasing preponderanc e of property
in shaping industrial society" (:122; his err.phasisT^

Anderson also argues that what is at issue is not the operation of
the mobility system but "why such a stepladder society exists in
the first place and how and why it is perpetuated." ( :140)

.

Mobility researchers have been obsessed with establishing the
rate of mobility, and with the existence of stratification systems
almost (if not completely) universally as an important fact—but
one may ask whether it is the fact of stratification which is the
important concern of research once the fact is established, or
whether it ought to be the basis of stratification, its under-
pinnings, and its meaning. This venture has not gone far enough,
and the reason it has not within "mainstream" sociology a; pears
due to the limitations imposed by theory and behind that, of an
ideological inclination which impedes it.

Strauss (1971: 1) has concluded that sociological theory is "shot
through with rhetoric and ideological commitment" —he has found
from an analysis of clusters of images in American stratification
literature that the dominant themes of the frontiers as "seed-
beds of democracy," the honest workman, the "rugged individualist,"
the emphasis on personal character, "destiny and civilization"
and the "just rewards" of social mobility contained in social
theories about industrialization "reflect and are virtually
inseparable from their views about social mobility." (:10>).

The conviction that Americfn stratification literature has been
dominated by notions of "evolutionary liberalism" and functionalism
has also been expressed by Pease, Form and Rytina (1V70). They
trace dominant themes and assumptions in the research to the
present, and find that in the postwar period, despite the critique
of functionalism and the discovery of some merit in the theories
particularly of Weber (and to a lesser extent Marx), only a per-
functory nod has been made in their direction. Social mobility
researchers have trivialized Weber's work by separating out status
from its theoretical brothers; by the 19>0's interest evolved into
a concern for "mass middle-class society" with consumption patterns
of more importance than income patterns.

The authors give three reasons why stratification research seems
to have steered clear of hard-hitting issues: the dominant
American ideology of individualism which has seeped into socio-
logical theory despite the sociological perspective on "social"
explanations for phenomena; the public ideology which conceives of
any theoretical debt to I-.arx as implying Marxism ; and the struggle
of sociology to achieve scientific status, hence its emphasis on
improving quantification procedures and choosing variables like
status which are easier to operationalize than power (: 132-133).

In summary, the sociological enterprise as it is represented in
the vast majority of North American stratification and mobility



100

studies is aptly characterized by Pease, Form and Rytina thus:

"Sociologists who view stratification as a matter of
individual occurrences rather than social structure,
who study consumption to the neglect of distribution
and production, who study the labor market but not
the credit and commodity markets, who emphasize status,
oversimplify class, neglect wealth, define power as
being outside stratification, and who fail to see
'race relations,' minority status, and poverty in the
context of stratification confirm Robert Lynd's
observation that when it ccmes to matters of class
stratification, 'the social sciences tiptoe evasively
around the problem' ." ( :134)

.



101

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