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Oftentimes sociology has focused on the relationship between social origin and cultural habits. In this paper we study the social characteristics that have most influence on patterns of cultural consumption. Sociology has often addressed the study of social class and social status by explaining differences in habits and cultural practices (social uses). In this paper, we try to identify what social characteristics are most influential in the segmentation of cultural habits. To do this, we test a set of theories that examines the role of social stratification in the consumption of cultural goods and services, and, thereby, check its explanatory power in Spain. We use the framework that gives us the most important set of theories on social stratification in cultural consumption, namely the homology argument, the individualisation argument and the Omnivore-Univore argument. Simultaneously, we deal with the methodological difficulties posed by the different statistical techniques used in recent sociological tradition over social stratification of cultural consumption. Our results prove that cultural consumption reflects social stratification in contemporary Spanish society. We found evidence of how practices which are considered as «high culture» are associated with better positioned strata. Nevertheless, we find important evidence, although not decisive, that the homology argument loses explanatory power in favour of the omnivore-univore argument. These findings complement what other omnivourness research works have discovered in recent years. Finally, we have found several univore consumption patterns for Spain instead of just one univore cultural consumption pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how social class and different economic conditions influence men's parenting. The paper is based on a qualitative study of 30 Swedish couples who live together with their biological children. The study shows that, despite the generosity of the Swedish welfare state and family subsidies, both internal and external economic conditions affect the way men construct their fatherhood. This was shown most clearly in the couples’ discussions around parental leave where parents under economic pressure often distributed the leave in a gender-traditional way. It was also apparent how traditional class patterns and structures still have a strong influence on today's parenthood. Fathers in working-class households often saw fatherhood as creating meaning in their lives and saw the process of becoming a parent as an explicit aspiration to establish something ‘natural’, well known and predictable. Fathers in middle-class households, on the other hand, considered fatherhood as something new, a reflexive project or an opportunity to develop their identity and to get to know new sides of themselves. In practice, these different ways of creating meaning in fatherhood are illustrated by the finding that working-class fathers tend to take up fewer parental leave days and uphold more traditional patterns of family life than fathers in middle-class households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to understand the role that housing plays in the system of social stratification. First, it generates a model of how housing outcomes are stratified along dimensions of socioeconomic status and race. Second, it asks what role housing conditions play in tile system of educational stratification of offspring. Using two-generational data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper demonstrates that home ownership is predicted by family income and race and that this indicator has a significant effect in predicting the educational attainment of offspring. Household crowding is also related to income and race and also affects the educational attainment of offspring. Meanwhile, housing quality-as measured by the physical condition of the unit-is not related to income or race and has no effect on educational attainment. Of particular note is that when socioeconomic status and housing conditions are held constant, African-Americans demonstrate more than a half-grade advantage over their non-black counterparts in years of completed schooling. In conclusion, the paper argues that housing matters not only for the immediate well-being of families, but also for the life-chances of the subsequent generation, and should he a standard variable in the conception of class background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper submits the results of a visual research on the perception of inequality within Romanian society. The data were collected by means of drawings, an uncommon method used in studying social stratification. The analysis was applied to 82 drawings obtained from 41 Romanians (and 16 drawings obtained from 8 Italians added to the former, in an attempt to explore differences cross-nationally). The results refer to the resources that are perceived to be unequally distributed in Romania, to the acceptable sources of inequality in Romania and, in exploratory terms, to the comparative analysis upon the perception of inequality in Romania and Italy. The commonest inequality perceived in Romania is the economic inequality. Here, one of the acceptable sources of inequality is related to the prestige of professions, and one of the unacceptable sources of inequality is the qualitative dimension of lifestyle: dissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as a contribution to the formal theory of stratification systems. The paper has five sections. In Section I, a method for analytically inducing an order over a multi-dimensional status is discussed. It is believed that such a technique can aid in the specification of conceptual tasks within stratification theory, as well as serve as a baseline in actual measurements. It is subsequently employed in the axiomatic work of Sections 3 and 4. In Section 2, there is a brief discussion of the axiomatic method as a prelude to the system developed in the following two sections. In Section 3, the axioms are stated. In Section 4, various elementary consequences of the axioms are shown; most importantly, various concepts which are intuitively important in stratification theory are shown to be definable (e.g., a class system with a determinate number of classes). Finally, in Section s, there is a concluding discussion of the picture of stratification which emerges within this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN A RECENT paper Mr. Runciman concludes by inviting replies to his argument that it is logically and conceptually useful to employ the tripartite distinction between `class' `status' and `power' in the analysis of social stratification. Mr. Runciman does not, of course, deny the existence of links between these three dimensions, but suggests that such links must be seen contingent empirical relationships and not necessary logical ones. I hope that the following paper will provide such a reply. It must be clear that the following criticism is directed, in the main, to those parts of the paper in which Mr. Runciman is concerned with the logical and conceptual problem. The essay in question also contains a clear and valuable assessment of the problems encountered in any attempt to measure the three types of inequality. In the first part of the paper I propose to give a critical assessment of certain central aspects of Mr. Runciman's argument and, in the second part, I will put forward a very brief formulation of what I consider to be a more meaningful alternative view of the relationships between class, status, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on some of the conceptual implications of changes in youth transitions over the last 40 years. I argue that changes have often been exaggerated with researchers too enthusiastic to jump on theoretical bandwagons without due regard for empirical evidence. While I suggest that there are important changes that impact on the ways in which social classes are reproduced, involving a perception of increased opportunity and greater scope for individual agency, a degree of class-based convergence and illusions regarding the disappearance of class, I will argue that the new mechanisms lead to the re-establishment of very familiar patterns of socio-economic inequality which can largely be understood by employing established theoretical ideas. While biographical approaches are regarded as useful, the continued use of social class is defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on college students' views of the American class system and the extent to which they see it as an open system of contest mobility, in which individual effort and ability determine achievement and social standing, or as a system of sponsorship, in which family connections determine class position. The effects of family class position, income, gender, and other status variables are examined. The data come from a confidential survey questionnaire administered to a random sample of 154 undergraduates from a mid-Atlantic liberal arts university. Conclusions and implications of the data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues there is a new theoretical current in Western sociology - `game- theoretic Marxism'. It situates the current in what seems to be a more general paradigm shift from the mid-1970s, that is, from a focus on structure to an emphasis on agency. In this context we consider the debate between the new theory's foremost proponent Jon Elster and G. A. Cohen, advocate of functional explanation. It is shown, then, how this new theory of collective action draws on Mancur Olson's formulations of the mid-1960s, after which its central tenets are developed in a discussion of two significant variants of it. Finally, the shortcomings of game-theoretic Marxism are analysed and an alternative notion of explanation by collective agency is proposed: one that centres upon the `causal powers' of social classes and breaks with both Cohen's functionalism and Elster's intentional explanation. This alternative version (1) can account for non-intentional causation and (2) considers social classes (and other collective actors) as possessed with organizational and cultural resources. It is argued that this alternative version is more fruitful for the understanding of social processes and that it contributes to the attempts to supersede the strict dichotomy of structure versus agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between class and status may be viewed in two distinct, if not contrasting, ways. In the first view, class and status are opposed as two different and mutually irreducible dimensions of inequality: here the stress is on distinctions of status expressing honour, dignity, worth, and so on. In the second view, class and status are opposed as one might oppose inequality and equality: here the stress is on the role of citizenship as a major force in redefining the relationship between class and status in modern industrial societies. The paper examines the different implications of defining status in terms of rights on the one hand and esteem on the other. It argues that it is not possible to guarantee equality of esteem simply by legislating equal rights for all citizens, no matter how extensively those rights are defined. For while status may be a matter of rights, it is also a matter of esteem, and the two do not necessarily move in step with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]