Search

Objective: This paper examines how parents' socioeconomic status (SES) affects the support parents give to children and how parents' SES moderates changes in support across children's life courses. Background: Many studies have documented effects of parents' SES on support to adult children, as well as effects of children's life course stages on received support, but few studies have examined how these two factors interact. A dynamic perspective on the social stratification of support can provide new clues about how parents transmit advantages across generations. Method: Using prospective panel data on 10,822 parent–child dyads in the Netherlands from 2003 to 2015 and random and fixed effects models, this paper examines life course changes in the financial, practical, and informational support adult children (aged 18–59) receive from parents. Results: Positive effects of parents' SES were found on informational and financial support, but there were no main effects on practical support. Informational support declined with age but later in higher‐SES families. Support declined after union formation and similarly for higher‐ and lower‐SES families. The increase in practical support when children became parents and single parents was stronger in higher‐SES families than in lower‐SES families. Stratification of financial support was stronger in early adulthood and increased again later in children's lives. Conclusion: There was evidence for a prolonged support pattern among higher‐SES families, combined with stronger effects of children's parenthood transitions in such families. Parents' SES affects support streams to adult children, but effects depend on the type of support and children's stage in the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political participation is socially distorted: Socio-economic resources affecting the probability of individuals becoming politically active question the principle of political equality. Such inequality in participation based on social stratification is well documented for elections, while research on inequality in referendum participation is still scarce. Based on the observation that such inequality varies between referendums, this paper explores referendum-specific contextual factors that may affect socially distorted referendum participation. We leverage information from an original dataset covering 1788 districts in 35 German municipalities for 68 local referendums held between 2000 and 2019. The results of our multilevel models indicate that concurrent first-order elections boost referendum turnout and decrease social stratification, while the closeness of the decision increases turnout but does not affect stratification bias. Moreover, we find a curvilinear relationship between turnout and stratification, with stratification only diminishing from participation levels above 40–50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in examining climate change adaptation has arisen in many disciplines in the past two decades; however to date, sociologists have given only sparse attention to the issue. This is both a missed opportunity for sociologists and a detriment to the study of adaptation. In this paper, we set out the following research agenda: bringing core concerns of sociology into the critically important conversation of how society will respond to climate change. We identify five broad themes in which sociologists can begin their work on adaptation: (1) structures and resource access, (2) social cohesion and future planning, (3) constraints of social stratifications, (4) power and agency in decision‐making, and (5) justice in process and outcomes. After summarizing existing sociological work on adaptation and detailing our research agenda, we draw examples from our own work in Bangladesh to illustrate how this agenda might be taken up. In doing so, we point to several places where sociological insights come into play in questions related to development, organizations, expertise, migration, gender, and labor. We believe a robust sociological analysis can produce a clarified, reparative, and just conceptualization of adaptation that will contribute to the growing global discourse on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary policy has been historically concerned with controlling inflation, using the interest rate as its main tool. However, such policies are not gender- or race-neutral. This paper explores econometrically the effect of changes in the interest rate for female and black employment creation in Brazil. We conducted a fixed effects analysis for 13 states between 2012 and 2021 to estimate the effects of changes in interest rates on unemployment, separating it by gender and race. Our results show that the increase in the real interest rate has a positive effect on the relative unemployment of black men to white men, no effect on the relative unemployment of black women to white men, and a negative effect on the relative unemployment of white women to white men. These effects are intensified in regions where the black share of the population is lower. This paper contributes to understanding the challenges to closing gender and racial gaps, particularly in developing economies. We conclude that social stratification, if not considered, can lead to misleading policies that perpetuate unequal socioeconomic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodological nationalism as a critique of container-based and nation-state-focused theory and empirical research is currently strongly anchored within migration studies, where it was initially developed. While this has led to extensive literature and critical engagement with methodological nationalism, and ways to circumvent the national trap in many (sub-)disciplines, it has not much penetrated theories of social stratification. This conceptual paper will address this gap by discussing the social positioning of high-skilled migrants in contemporary stratified societies. This exemplary discussion will bring together a critical perspective of methodological nationalism on class and milieu theory. It will also confront the critique of methodological nationalism with the question of the origin of social power and dominance, which are the foundation of stratification theories. This article will specifically draw on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social space and its derivative. Emphasis will also be given to Michael Vester's development of social milieu to highlight blind spots according to the critique of methodological nationalism. This paper shows that these theories have not grasped high-skilled migration thoroughly. It also outlines that migrant theories and their critique of methodological nationalism inadequately address the source of symbolic hierarchy and the formation of social stratification. Thus, both theoretical strands would benefit from a deeper conversation with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Did love conquer marriage between the 19th and 20th centuries in France? Does a personal choice imply a free choice? To date, no study has had access to sources that are both numerous and sufficiently stable over the vast period of the 19th and 20th centuries to allow a comprehensive examination of the simultaneous emergence of the love marriage norm and its impact on spouse selection. This paper sets out specifically to explore the issues of spouse selection and the eco-intimate changes in marriages, highlighting the evolution of the love marriage norm, using the archives of matrimonial agencies and advertisements from the 19th and 20th centuries. While the writings of the time debated the merits of marrying for money versus marrying for love, the dating market was serving a bourgeois clientele in search of homogamy. The study of agency operations shows how these marriages first unite two families and two heritages from the same milieu. This good match is seen as a necessary condition for mutual affection. When, in the 20th century, matrimonial ads more systematically enabled individuals to search for their spouse themselves, without the help of their family, these economic stakes did not disappear, but underwent a significant evolution. They are now put on the same level as moral and physical criteria. While homogamy was still preferred, it was no longer considered the only condition for a happy union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the economic and marketing analysis of the Burning Man event (also known as the "Burning Man festival"). It is doing so by tracing the festival's evolution from a small bonfire ritual on San Francisco beach in California in 1986 to a globally renowned art festival held for the whole full week before the Labor Day weekend in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The festival has gradually become one of the world's top "must-see" and "must-attend" attractions (often getting various nicknames by the press and researchers - from the "magic circus in the desert" to the "lucrative circus" or "Silicon Valley playground"). Currently, Burning Man is attracting more than 60,000 participants (who call themselves "Burners") annually and making over $8 million in tickets and donations (there has been a cap implemented on the maximum number of participants due to the environmental and land protection concerns since the current venue is located in the National Conservation Area). It has also served as an inspiration for a series of similar festivals or smaller events organized in other parts of the world, from Lithuania to Spain (or even Israel), helping to create and sustain the global "Burning Man" worldwide community. Drawing on data from more than 500 surveys conducted at the different Burning Man festivals between 2012 and 2018 by the authors, this paper explores the transformation of the Burning Man event into a high-end event characterized by significant expenditure and participation from upper social echelons. Contrary to popular perception, Burning Man emerges not as a 'hippie' Woodstock-type gathering but as an elite networking hub, highlighting the interplay of luxury and 'radical expression'. The research reveals that average spending per participant ranges from $5,000 to $6,000 (including tickets, travel costs, gear, supplies, and gifts), challenging the festival's accessibility. Furthermore, despite the allure of the event, the demanding Black Rock desert environment distinguished by the severe temperature changes and alkaline dust storms often happening on a dry lakebed (or "playa") seems to deter repeat attendance among wealthier participants. Our paper contributes to understanding the dynamics of popular festival marketing and the shifting demographic profile of the Burning Man festival, offering insights into its exclusivity and the economic implications of its 'radical expression' ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper re-examines the approach of conventional economics to social stratification, in particular class structure and distribution of wealth. It argues that conventional economics generally tends to assume an ambivalent, dualistic position on social stratification, especially class structure and distribution, expressed in a dual approach to the matter. The first approach consists in neglecting or downplaying stratification, plus treating it as transient and benign, and explaining and rationalising it by "natural" and/or transcendental causes. The second approach involves recognising and stressing the existence and relevance of class and generally social stratification, particularly the arbitrary institutional nature and adverse effects of the unequal distribution of wealth and income. The paper intends to make two contributions to the history of economic thought. They are, first, disclosing an implicit, rudimentary and partly overlooked debate on social stratification in the history of economic thought, and second, helping develop a more complete, explicit and systematic historical account of the subject. These goals and contributions can be of high relevance for the history of economic thought for at least two reasons. These are that, first, many economists seem unaware of some debates on social stratification within the latter, and second, a fuller historical account of the subject is necessary or desirable in view of its relative importance historically contemplated. These goals are consistent with the rebirth and growing pertinence of stratification economics. The paper can hence potentially be of interest and relevance to economists working on re-emerging stratification economics as well as to sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly all the literature on colonialism in Africa focuses on African resistance rather than the roles of the Traditional Rulers in its formation. Thus, this paper is a deviation from that. This paper intends to portray the position of the Chiefs in the colonial enterprise, and how it led to the decline of the chieftaincy institution in Ghana. In doing so, I trace the events that attracted Europeans and subsequently led to the imposition of colonialism in Ghana, and how those interactions modify the status quo thus leading to new social stratifications and hierarchical formations. The peak of European imperialism’s drive coincided with the formative stages of most African States. So, it prevented the development of large States on the African continent. The study, thus, explores the impact of British imperialists and administrators in colonial Ghana in the face of the modus operandi and modus vivendi of the Chiefs. Although the Gold Coast Colony was established in July 1874, the Chiefs remained at the helm of affairs until they decided in 1925 to work with the colonial regime in administering the territory. Thus, as this “error” indubitably marked the beginning of the end for the Chiefs and the Chieftaincy Institution, it paved the way for the emergence of the leadership of the educated class by the middle of the twentieth century. The paper uses archival sources with secondary sources. The archival documents will explicate how deeply the Chiefs partook in establishing Colonialism in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a qualitative analysis of decisions of 64 community-college students in seeking a transfer in Hong Kong. In weighing a number of educational options and then offers, with a similar level of desirability in some cases, in order to achieve their transfers, advantaged-class and disadvantaged-class respondents struggled with different logics of reasoning and negotiated anxiously with their changing structural realities. This qualitative analysis addresses the contextual, processual and emotional aspects of their decision making and provides a more convincing illustration of how the secondary effect of social stratification operates against a changing landscape of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes two contributions to the literature on social stratification in vocational attainment. First, we evaluate whether labour market literacy, as measured by knowledge about earnings in different occupations, is socially stratified. Second, we analyse whether differences in expected earnings between high-income and low-income occupations contribute to the social stratification in vocational aspirations and attainment using serial mediation based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study. We find that students are well informed about earnings, on average, but substantially underestimate earnings in some occupations. Students from low socio-economic status (SES) families underestimate earnings more than those from high SES families, particularly earnings in high-status occupations. Therefore, low SES students expect smaller earning differences between high-income and low-income occupations than high-SES students. In turn, small expected differences between high-income and low-income occupations are associated with lower vocational aspirations as well as attainments. Differences in expected earnings of high-income and low-income occupations mediate 4% of the differences in vocational aspirations by parental SES and 2% of the differences in vocational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African and African diaspora scholars have made key contributions to contemporary understandings of inequality, intersectionality, institutions and 'development'. A recent major contribution to this debate is offered by Franklin Obeng-Odoom's Property, Institutions and Social Stratification in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Drawing on a wide range of literatures, but especially from traditions of Black radical economic thought that span the United States, the Caribbean and Africa, the book calls for intersectional perspectives to be brought to bear on classical institutionalist and stratification economics traditions, in order to rethink 'development economics' as we know it. Obeng-Odoom utilises these traditions to make sense of persistent and increasing intra- and inter-group inequalities in Africa and between Africa and the world, showing how classed, raced and gendered identities shape diverse political and economic experiences, including the access to property or employment opportunities. At the same time, Black wo*men economists and wo*men economists of Colour have made notable contributions to the themes addressed by Obeng-Odoom's book – an archive that deserves deep attention. Gathering a collective of feminist economists from and beyond Africa (Abena D. Oduro, Tanita J. Lewis, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko, Sara Stevano, Ingrid Kvangraven), this symposium paper develops a conversation around the themes of intersectionality and social stratification in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Chinese college graduates have faced a challenging employment situation, calling for an analysis of the social stratification function of higher education. This paper used linear regression to analyze factors influencing the occupational status attainment of college graduates. The social stratification function of higher education was found to be significant. Educational factors were essential for occupational status attainment. Nevertheless, new graduates' occupational status could also be affected by individual and family factors. On the whole, college graduates achieved stratum promotion. Men had higher occupational status and longer mobility distance than women, and rural graduates had higher occupational status and longer mobility distance than urban graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatially equitable educational facilities play an important role in narrowing the gap between social strata. This paper, taking the example of Lanzhou, aims to classify households into different social strata by the hierarchical cluster method and analyze their spatial feature to identify the strata attributes of the community and calculate the spatial equity of educational facilities within different strata by constructing a fairness index model. We verify the positive correlation between social stratification level and educational equity, which has been largely ignored in previous studies based on basic education facilities. The results indicate that the spatial differentiation trend of social strata in Lanzhou shows that a circle structure of the center belongs to the upper social stratum and the marginal areas belong to the lower social stratum. Urban villages in the urban fringe are an important area of social stratum differentiation. Different social strata have significant differences in terms of access to educational facilities. The spatial fairness of educational facilities from high to low is the wealthy and the elite class (WEC), the middle class (MC), the low class (LC), and the lower class (LEC). The higher the social class level is, the greater the equity difference. The lower the social class is, the smaller the difference. The equity of educational facilities within the WEC and the MC is obviously better than that of the LC and the LEC. The spatial distribution of educational facilities among social strata is unfair, and at the urban edge, there exists an obvious weakening phenomenon of spatial justice and social equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the Australian higher education landscape has achieved significant expansion. Initially aimed at getting more people into university, massification policies have, more recently, focused on widening participation – encouraging a more diverse array of students to 'choose' higher education. Paradoxically, this shift has deepened stratification, with new inequalities within and across the academy. However, this stratification is glossed over in widening participation policy and research. In this paper, we challenge this view by examining young people's capacities to 'choose' university using the heuristic of 'embedded choosers' and 'contingent choosers.' Our analysis of two school-based case studies highlights the early stratification of students' post-school choices, conceptualised as a continuum from an absence of choice to a wide array of global choice. We argue that rather than focus on gains in overall enrolment, there is a critical need to address the insidious stratification that is subsumed within the widening participation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the diversity of higher education (HE) systems is a widely debated topic in literature, this has been rarely examined considering multiple levels of analysis. This article adopts both a multilevel and longitudinal perspective to study which dimensions of horizontal diversity diversified the English HE system most. Diversity, and how this has changed over time, is investigated at the level of the HE system (macro-level) at the level of homogeneous groups of universities, i.e. mission groups (meso-level), and at the level of individual universities (micro-level). The comprehensive multivariate quantitative analysis performed across the three levels of analysis shows the polarization between research and teaching orientation emerges as the dimension on which the HE system and universities horizontally diversify most together with the internationalization of the student body. The analysis furtherly suggests that mission groups well represent the diversity of the English HE system and universities' membership in one of these groups emerged as an element that restrains distinctive institutional positioning patterns of universities. Younger universities and those not affiliated to any mission groups are indeed those that present changes in their strategic positioning paths over time, and thus affect more the diversity of the HE system. However, while the horizontal diversity of the HE system has slightly increased over time, this paper also suggests that competition has concurrently contributed to reinforcing the hierarchical stratification of English universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does international order look like when analysed from its margins? Such a question is the obvious consequence of efforts within International Relations (IR) to take empire, colonialism and hierarchy more seriously. This article addresses this question by examining one of IR's most important touchstones – the Great War – through the experiences of peoples in southeast Africa. It argues that to do this, we should use the methodological approaches of histories 'from below' and contrapuntal analysis. When looking at the Great War from the vantage point of southeast Africa (contemporary Mozambique), the key patterns of interaction organising the international look different to those emphasised in traditional accounts of international order and hierarchy. Notable features are the significant continuities and intersections between structures of war and colonialism, the racialisation of death and suffering, the effects of white imperial prestige as a strategic preoccupation and the deep historical roots of anti-colonial resistance. Reading upwards and contrapuntally from these histories, the paper argues for a redescription of international order as reflecting not predominantly a balance of power or a normative framework for the organisation of authority, but a dynamic matrix of structural violence. Reading order from below in this way helps us better capture how the international is implicated in the production and reproduction of everyday life for many people, as well as in more dramatic political transformations such as those generated by experiences of war and resistance to colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a history of more than a century of efforts to establish and maintain a homegrown Canadian sugar supply – a twentieth-century version of what Eric Williams called the 'war of the two sugars', or the global competition between sugar beet and cane. To resolve beet sugar's so-called 'labour problem', the industry has collaborated with the Canadian state to produce new classes of temporary workers, mobilising incarcerated Japanese Canadians, migrant Indigenous families, and Mexican and Caribbean workers employed through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. At the same time, the sugar industry has sought to refine itself of the racialised workers upon whom it relies by promoting the figure of the white Canadian worker. The Canadian 'war of the two sugars' has been fought through the stratification of the labour force along the lines of citizenship, resulting in the production of unique racial forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop the idea of cosmopolitan stances – one 'intellectual' and the other 'aesthetic' – to examine conceptions of cosmopolitanism within a range of university strategies. Recent research into cosmopolitanism has adopted a Bourdieusian lens, understanding it as cultural capital, which acts as a locus of stratification in the global system. By examining the strategies in 11 London-based universities, this paper sought to identify which cosmopolitan stances are mobilised. Following a thematic analysis this paper argues that those stances privileged by the global middle class are often implicit and generated incidentally as a function of other initiatives such as inclusivity and diversity, global citizenship, placement opportunities and graduate attributes/outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the association between parental divorce during childhood and children's university attainment in Spain, based on parental socioeconomic status. For this, linear probability models were estimated, using data from the Spanish General Social Surveys of 2013, 2015 and 2017. The results suggest a negative association between parental divorce and the probability of children obtaining university degrees, with a higher penalty occurring when the divorce occurs when the child is aged 0-5 or 12-16 years. Moreover, the penalty of divorce on the probability of obtaining a university degree is higher for children of parents having a high socioeconomic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is an exploratory attempt to assess the relationship between individuals' objective class position and subjective social positions in the South African hierarchy. While objective class dynamics have received much attention in South Africa, less is known about the subjective social position individuals place themselves. The study aims to make use of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) dataset and assess the relationship between objective and subjective class positions in South Africa. The results show considerable variation between objective and subjective class positions, with a strong middling tendency among all objective class groups in South Africa. The study also shows that this middling tendency has increased in the last decade in South Africa, predominantly due to individuals overestimating their social positions. With a large share of South Africans living close or below the poverty line, there is a clear biasedness of South Africans placing themselves in the middle of society, deviating from their lower objective position. The study further measures the variation between objective and subjective social positions to create a novel class scheme of inflated, deflated, and concordant class perceptions. These biased perceptions are then compared to socio-economic characteristics, showing that gender, race, and education are closely related to bias perceptions in South Africa. Furthermore, the increasing nature of high inequality and social unrest events in South Africa prompts the study also to assess the different social and political attitudes by varying objective and subjective class schemes. The results show that among the subjective class identification, individuals in higher perceived class positions tend to be less angered towards inequality, have lower redistribution preferences, and perceive a weaker conflict between the rich and the poor. These results confirm the impact perceived social positions and biased perceptions could have on social and political attitudes in South Africa. Attitudes that have been considered relevant in voting behavior and social policy formulation models. The results of the paper provides some vital information for policy makers on the dynamics behind subjective class and bias perceptions in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely assumed that post-industrial societies are characterized not only by growing economic inequalities and social polarization but also by increasing spatial segregation. This paper does not address residential segregation (i.e., "intra-city" inequalities), but instead investigates how social classes are distributed over different settlement types and whether class differences in places of residence have increased between 1996 and 2018. Based on microcensus data and applying the ESeC class schema, we focus on the question of whether members of the "new middle class" are increasingly concentrated in post-industrial metropolises while members of the "old middle class" largely reside in peripheral towns and regions. The results do not support the assumption that spatial disparities between classes have systematically increased in Germany. However, opposing trends in the likelihood of residing in the most dynamic cluster of the German metropolises are observed for the youngest age group of the new middle class and the oldest age group of the old middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long studied the social stratification of physical activity patterns in terms of 'determinants' of physically active lifestyles. In this article, we set out to explore how Bourdieu's concept logic of practice can be used as an intermediating analytical tool to promote understanding rather than the calculation of human participation in movement culture. The logic of the practice is similar to the logic of the logician, but it differs in terms of temporality and directionality. Specifically, where the logician needs not take notice to such worldly matters, they are inevitably inherent in social life. Thus, logics of practice guide how practice is played out as well as, on the level of the unconscious, the attitude of its participants towards themselves, the practice, and each other. Different logics of practice, as previously theorised by Engström, may 'taste' differently to people depending on their habitus, that is, their embodied dispositions. In this article, such logics of practice of movement culture are investigated further. The purpose of the article is to investigate how gender and social position relate to participation in movement cultures that are guided by different logics of practice. In 1968, just over 2000 Swedish teenagers who were born in 1953, answered a questionnaire about their participation in movement culture. New data collections took place in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1994 and 2006/2007. The current paper is based on data collected from 846 individuals, now 63 years old, who chose to participate in a new data collection. Data about self-reported participation in movement culture, and the stated taste (or dis-taste) for certain logics of practice in movement culture, was calculated in relation to gender, level of education (cultural capital) and self-reported class affiliation (economic capital). The statistical analysis indicates that while the logic of performing in this study indicates masculine and upper-class values, the logic of experiencing indicates feminine and academic values. The logic of improving seems to hold a middle-ground position. Importantly one of the logics, experiencing nature, which is actually also the one that most of the 63 year-olds express a taste for, seem not to be linked to either gender or social position. We conclude that this may have important societal and pedagogical implications, for example, that increasing the possibilities to experience nature could facilitate participation in movement culture at least among Swedish upper middle-aged people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper formulates a proposal for the construction of two composite indicators of social inequality intended for the comparative analysis of the social stratification between Spain and Argentina as a result of various comparative research advances carried out in different projects over the last few years. A multidimensional theoretical perspective on social stratification is adopted and an analysis model for comparative study between the two countries is implemented, which incorporates the gender dimension, which reduces coverage bias selecting the entire society and which takes into account household as an analysis unit, thus avoiding population dismemberment. We hypothesize that both countries maintain similar general patterns in terms of social stratification that structure the social inequalities of households. Although structuring patterns are common, the levels of inequality they entail are accentuated in the case of Argentina. We also understand that these levels are reproduced both when whole of society is taken into account and when only households with an employed population are considered. To account for the hypothesis, the article presents two strategies that seek to obtain two measures of social stratification as composite indicators. On the one hand, following the typological construction methodology that we call structural and articulated, where we seek to obtain a qualitative measure through a Typology of Social Stratification (TSS). On the other hand, and in the context of this methodology, we propose to generate an alternative composite indicator that measures inequalities with a quantitative variable through a Social Stratification Index (SSI). In both cases, the ultimate objective is to use these measures in the comparative study of social stratification over time and through space. In this paper, Spain and Argentina are compared with 2018 sectional data and the hypothesis is partially corroborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have long been interested in the meaning workers derive from their jobs. The issue has garnered increasing academic and policy attention in recent years with the concept of "meaningful work," yet little is known about how social stratification relates to access to it. This paper addresses this issue by exploring how the meaningfulness of jobs—as rated by their incumbents—is stratified across classes and occupations in a national survey of 14,000 working adults in the United Kingdom. It finds modest differentials between classes, with those in routine and manual occupations reporting the lowest levels of meaningfulness and those in managerial and professional occupations and small employers and own account workers reporting the highest levels. Detailed job attributes (e.g., job complexity and development opportunities) explain much of the differences in meaningfulness between classes and occupations, and much of the overall variance in meaningfulness. The main exception is the specific case of how useful workers perceive their jobs to be for society: A handful of occupations relating to health, social care, and protective services which cut across classes stand out from all other occupations. The paper concludes that the modest stratification between classes and occupations in meaningful work is largely due to disparities in underlying job complexity and development opportunities. The extent to which these aspects of work can be improved, and so meaningfulness, especially in routine and manual occupations, is an open, yet urgent, question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author investigates rural Chinese citizens' encounters of structural and institutional inequalities and social (im)mobility. The author addresses social (im)mobility from a holistic perspective (i.e., in institutional, occupational, social, educational, cultural and political dimensions). In this regard, the author explores if a range of parental disadvantages serve as significant hindrances to the acquisition of social mobilising opportunities among the next generations in rural Chinese contexts. Here a holistic presentation helps understand the nuanced relationship between institutional barriers (i.e., rural hukou status) and alternative obstacles to social mobility; and explore, in part, how parental inheritance of rural hukou status would bar individuals' from socially mobilising and result in some forms of unsustainability. Previous research on China restrictively measures social (im)mobility from limited perspectives, failing to fully and accurately reflect the extent of social (im)mobility Chinese populations face. This paper is a comprehensive literature review where relevant Chinese literature, exclusively found in the e-library system of the University of Cambridge, is included and thoroughly discussed. Articles that include the keywords of "hukou", "China", "social mobility" and (a) "economic", (b) "social", (c) "cultural", (d) "linguistic" or (e) "political" are extensively studied, in a hope to understand the existing scholarship on multifaceted social (im)mobility in Chinese contexts. The author argues that, despite the 2014 hukou reform, further loosening the requirements for rural-to-urban hukou conversion should be prioritised by the Central Government of China in order to ensure the rural-urban divide and structural and institutional inequalities rural hukou holders face can curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is an exploratory attempt to assess the relationship between individuals' objective class position and subjective social positions in the South African hierarchy. While objective class dynamics have received much attention in South Africa, less is known about the subjective social position individuals place themselves. The study aims to make use of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) dataset and assess the relationship between objective and subjective class positions in South Africa. The results show considerable variation between objective and subjective class positions, with a strong middling tendency among all objective class groups in South Africa. The study also shows that this middling tendency has increased in the last decade in South Africa, predominantly due to individuals overestimating their social positions. With a large share of South Africans living close or below the poverty line, there is a clear biasedness of South Africans placing themselves in the middle of society, deviating from their lower objective position. The study further measures the variation between objective and subjective social positions to create a novel class scheme of inflated, deflated, and concordant class perceptions. These biased perceptions are then compared to socio-economic characteristics, showing that gender, race, and education are closely related to bias perceptions in South Africa. Furthermore, the increasing nature of high inequality and social unrest events in South Africa prompts the study also to assess the different social and political attitudes by varying objective and subjective class schemes. The results show that among the subjective class identification, individuals in higher perceived class positions tend to be less angered towards inequality, have lower redistribution preferences, and perceive a weaker conflict between the rich and the poor. These results confirm the impact perceived social positions and biased perceptions could have on social and political attitudes in South Africa. Attitudes that have been considered relevant in voting behavior and social policy formulation models. The results of the paper provides some vital information for policy makers on the dynamics behind subjective class and bias perceptions in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we ask how the Finnish Roma community handled the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the information reached Roma communities. The previous studies indicate existing health inequalities between Finnish Roma and the general population. The point of departure for the article is crisis communication between Finnish Roma and national authorities. The themes of racialization, mistrust and Roma relying on peers as a source of information and support became apparent. From this setting, this article sheds light on the way of speaking, usage of language, (Finnish) as a social construction of ethnic identity and expression of (non)belonging. At the same time, the usage of languge and codeswitching reveals social stratifications among the Finnish Roma population. Findings indicate that subtle forms of exclusion of Roma prevail in Finland and are materialized as a "left alone mentality". Consequently, Roma persons working as civil servants or NGO workers would potentially constitute a crucial link between health authorities and the Roma population. This link, however, should be constantly maintained. The study is a qualitative study and based on thematic interviews among Roma actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our paper, based on the 2016 microcensus occupational supplementary survey, we seek to answer the question of which occupations are the most inconsistent in today's Hungary, and what is the meaning of the inconsistency of these occupations. In contrast to traditional prestige surveys, we are not investigating how respondents perceive the occupations on the basis of a dimension with no clear content, but we are interested in the basis of prestige ranking, how the dimensions shaping prestige are combined, and what inconsistencies can be observed in these combinations. Our aim is to understand the patterns of these inconsistencies by comparing the occupations prestige items ranked along different dimensions. This will give us an insight into how the Hungarian population thins about occupations, through them, about the stratification of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caste is a unique marker of social stratification in India. There are significant eco- nomic inequalities and considerable disparities in educational achievements between historically disadvantaged caste groups and Others. Unequal investments in their chil- dren's human capital by caste can perpetuate income inequalities and reproduce class differences between caste groups. This paper analyses caste-based disparities in house- hold expenditure on children's school education using nationally representative social expenditure data on education from 2007–08 and 2017–18 in India. The paper uses a recentered influence function (RIF) based decomposition analysis to pinpoint the key factors underpinning the disparity in private educational expenditure between disadvantaged caste groups and Others. Further, to overcome the problem of heterogeneity of data the study also employs propensity score matching (PSM) as robustness check for the decomposition analysis. The findings from decomposition and matching approaches reveal that differences in endowments, specifically income differences, between caste groups explain most of the caste-based gap in children's human capital investments. The study has implications for public policy to address educational and economic disparities between disadvantaged caste groups (ST, SC and OBC) and Others in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our work, we aim to create a comprehensive prestige scale based on the 2016 microcensus supplementary occupational prestige survey of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, in which each occupation is assigned a score that provides information on the relative prestige of each occupation. Furthermore, we create five additional scales that ranking occupations according to earnings, social utility, knowledge, power and fashionability. In this paper, we first briefly summarise the characteristics of the occupational prestige scales in relation to other gradual measures of social position, and then describe how the new prestige scale was created. We will then present the basic features of this new measure and – as illustrations – some examples of its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant literature on felon disenfranchisement has generally focused on the justicity of disallowing felons to vote and its implications for social stratification in the United States. Punishment for crimes does not often end with sentence completion. Post-conviction restrictions block felons' access to economic, social, and political opportunities long after they have paid for their crimes. Some studies have demonstrated that felon disenfranchisement affects the African American community disproportionately. However, there is a paucity of studies on the study of the possible effects of felon disenfranchisement on election outcomes. During presidential elections, millions of Americans with felony convictions are denied the right to vote. It is estimated that up to five million felons were denied the right to vote in the 2020 presidential election. This paper examines how felon disenfranchisement might affect presidential election outcomes and its danger to equal citizenship and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines between-country differences in why education promotes trust using data from 29 countries (and 146 regions) participating in the OECD's Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). Results indicate that education is strongly associated with trust and that individuals' literacy, income, and occupational prestige are important mediators of this association. Contrary to previous studies we do not find that country level or regional level birthplace diversity is associated with average levels of trust. However, education gradients in trust and the extent to which these are due to social stratification or cognitive mechanisms vary both at the country and regional level depending on birthplace diversity. Multilevel mediation-moderation analyses reveal that in countries and regions with greater birthplace diversity there is a greater polarization in levels of trust between individuals with different educational qualifications. This polarization is primarily due to cognitive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of "memory time" and gives an overview of its application to dialect forms that refer to "father". Changes in many regions are shown by glottograms that simultaneously show regional and generational differences. The usage of kinship terms in Japanese shows interesting sociolinguistic features. It is linked to the consciousness of attribution to a specific social class. Due to the agricultural land reform after the war, the difference in social hierarchy within the rural areas became smaller, but the distinction or disparity made by kinship terms remained. Although the agricultural land reform was carried out all over the country at the same time, the standard form o-too-san for "father" gradually spread throughout the country in the latter half of the 20th century. The diffusion pattern is similar to other standard forms. From the above, it can be concluded that the standard form otoo-san was not directly influenced by changes in social stratification, but was the spread of standard language only in words without social-class background. The ultimate mechanism of change was found to be the "law of respect reduction". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by a social inequality perspective that combines Bourdieu's conception of socially shaped tastes and lifestyles with Peterson's notion of omnivorous consumption, this paper addresses the link between social inequality and participation in specific subfields of sport. Ten popular sports and adjacent activity subfields are analysed and compared. Based on representative data from Germany, the paper points out that participation in different fields of sport is socially structured, however to different degrees and in different ways. Almost all fields of sport appeal to individuals with above-average levels of cultural capital, whereas lower social classes dominate the group of inactive individuals. Football is least structured by cultural and economic capital, while racket sports, nature-related activities, yoga, fitness and water sports are socially most selective. Beyond social class, gender is also key for structuring participation. Finally, findings show that cultural capital is closely associated with multiple engagements in a broader range of different sports, thus buttressing the notion that omnivorous participation signifies a higher social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social stratum differences lay behind the winter sports body-building activities of Chinese residents. Guided by social stratification theory this paper takes heterogeneity research as the paradigm, and carries out in-depth interviews to explore the winter sports body-building behaviors and concepts of Chinese citizens in three classes, namely, middle class (white collar), working class (blue collar), and unemployed (jobless) class. In addition, the authors explored the correlation of participation and experience of each class with economy, education, and society dimensions of snow sports culture. This paper holds that: a. Difference in economic conditions determine the level, scope, and degree of the participation of winter sports; b. The improvement of education level accelerates the socialization progress of participants, but it also increases the differentiation of individual participation and intensifies social stratification; c. The bidding and holding of Beijing Winter Olympics greatly promotes the development of winter sports in China, and forms a feature of "middle-class consumers", while the consumption of the working class and unemployed (jobless) residents is more "rational". The paradigm of social stratification and heterogeneity research helps relevant researchers to break away from the narrow perspective of finding the individual-level causality behind winter sports body-building, laying the basis for social, and sports researchers to recognize and understand the unequal social structure of winter sports participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To use racial stratification and intersectional family justice frameworks to analyze experiences of and efforts to address diaper need. Background: One in three American families with infants and toddlers struggles with insufficient access to diapers, which can have negative social, physical, and economic implications for family well‐being. Prior research has yet to examine diaper need as a form of racial stratification, despite existing evidence of racialized prevalence. Method: In‐depth interviews were conducted with nonrandom samples of 70 mothers who experienced diaper need, including 61 mothers of color, and 40 diaper bank advocates. Qualitative abductive coding techniques were employed to identify how diaper need is experienced and framed as a form of racial stratification. Results: Mothers of color were more likely to report racialized stigma, stress, surveillance, and social exclusion associated with diaper need. Diaper bank advocates framed diaper assistance as necessary to address intersecting race, class, and gender inequalities of diaper distress. Conclusion: Conceptualizing diaper need and public responses as issues of racial stratification and intersectional family justice points to how family scholarship can center analyses of systemic oppression and privilege to optimize family and caregiving relationships and promote equitable pathways to well‐being for all families. Implications: These findings reinforce the importance of racially just strategies for equalizing access to basic needs and caregiving resources in ways that account for the racist underpinnings of social problems like diaper need and related influences on parenting experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the term 'global' has become a pervasive description of universities that aim to alleviate their importance and reach. The global looks inherently big. By relating to a spherical shape it attributes size in two distinct ways: it signifies the comprehensive and extensive reach of a theme or issue as well as the spherical centrality of an organisation. The paper argues that such perceptions of the global as big do not simply derive from the size of a terrestrial body. Rather, it excavates the historic roots of global size-building and the complicity of science and the university therein. It draws on two historic case studies: the formation of globality in the 'cordial agreement' between the Hohenstaufen emperors and medieval scholars and the conquering globality in the 'symbiotic relationship' between the Spanish Empire and cosmography. While distinct as historical cases they structure globality in a way that nurtures contemporary perceptions of the global. The historic genesis shows that the university is not merely sized through the global but that the university establishes a common knowledge space that makes the global emblematically big. The global sizing of the university today is just as much the story of the academisation of the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how violence conditions the use of public transportation is the main objective of this paper. Specifically, the paper asks if individuals from diverse social strata differently refrain from using public transportation due to security concerns. The paper is based on an analysis of the National Survey on Victimization and Perception of Public Security 2018, carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics (inegi). The paper shows that individuals from upper stratum are two times more likely to stop using public transportation due to security concerns compared with individuals from lower stratum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been and will continue to be made of 'official responses' to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly around the varying success of prescribed isolation practices and how well (or not) people, taken in aggregate, complied with them. This paper examines a more spontaneous response to COVID-19 isolation: bread-porn. Taken literally, bread-porn is the competitive display of gratuitous pictures of home-baked bread across social media (particularly in the 'west'), shared by people isolated at home. On the surface, such pictures perfunctorily depict bread; yet, it is argued that these pictures are more nuanced than that, and that the bread itself is almost immaterial. 'COVID bread-porn' was a jockeying for social standing and represented one of many unique, if temporary, forms of do-it-yourself (DIY) cultural currency while people were less able to access other extant systems of representational social stratification. The paper discusses the value and significance of the suffix 'porn' with respect to struggles to understand the extremities of new systems of value, by linking how temporary COVID culture fit into the flow of the cultural changes that preceded it. The paper argues that the world faced the COVID pandemic at a tumultuous time marked by liminality between historically 'physical' and emerging 'cerebral' cultural practices in many societies (i.e. the move from manufacturing to 'knowledge' economies). Thus, it situates bread-porn as an attempt to 'win' at isolation by demonstrating prowess with available domestic resources, and highlights the productive tension of bread-porn that extends and potentially resists the social imperatives of pandemic self-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the process of construction of the interconnection between ethnicity, indigeneity, and political participation in Sikkim concerning the Limbu ethnic community. It firstly discusses Limbu associations' claims for the reservation of seats for the Limbu community in the state legislative assembly, following the recognition of the group as a Scheduled Tribe in 2003. From this point on, the paper goes further back in time, and, based on archival documents, shows that the view of the lack of political representation of the Limbu as a result of ethnic discrimination is grounded in a 'uncertain' membership, which has historical roots dating back to the foundation of the kingdom. It shows that the troubled relations between the Limbu and the leading power in Sikkim in the early days of the kingdom long continued to inform their subaltern form of political membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not much has been written about Erving Goffman's conception of "deviance". The little that exists often mistakenly reduces it either to what I refer to in this paper as "Stigma and Mental Illness", or diminishes its novelty by rendering it a variant of "interactionist" view of deviance. The argument of this paper is that he had a broader and novel conception of deviance. In fact, he distinguished between six interrelated types of deviance: (1) Deviance related to presentation of "self" in social interactions; (2) Deviance as lack of self-control and violation of interactional scripts; (3) Deviation from assigned social roles in the system of social stratification; (4) Social deviance, i.e., willful and unabashed violation of social order; (5) Deviation from "identity values"; (6) Deviation due to a search for excitement [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ways in which university students articulate understandings of their class positions and perceptions of opportunities for social mobility. The promise that participation in higher education (HE) would lead to social mobility for all has been central to the project of widening participation. However, in the twenty-first century, graduate employment opportunities have not kept up with high rates of HE participation, and class divisions have become more visible rather than being reduced. Based on a longitudinal study of undergraduates attending two universities in the city of Bristol, UK at the beginning of the 2010s, this paper uses Anthias' notion of narratives of location to focus on students' awareness of social class and their experience of the dynamics of social difference in HE. The narratives demonstrate ways in which taken-for-granted privileged middle-class entitlement is performed and seen to dominate the social space of the university, from which working-class and other fractions of the middle-classes distance themselves. [Anthias, F. (2004) Social stratification and social inequality: Models of intersectionality and identity. In F. Devine, M. Savage, J. Scott, & R. Crompton (Eds.), Rethinking class. Culture, identities and lifestyles (pp. 24–45). London: Palgrave Macmillan]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As India, a country with a complex relationship with cleanliness, modernizes rapidly, urban infrastructures are increasing even faster than the growing population. This paper explores the relationships between access to infrastructures, social mobility and resource consumption in everyday lives through the case of cleanliness in Mysore, Southern India. We draw on interviews with 28 Mysoreans about cleanliness perceptions and practices. Analysing cleanliness across class, caste and gender reveals that in the globalizing cleanliness cultures of Mysore those who are precarious and have less access to hygiene infrastructures, tend to have to clean more but don't resist expectations. We argue that, as cleanliness contours citizenship claims, the 'great unwashed' are excluded from participating in society. We question whether infrastructures and policies purported to increase the quality of life and provide basic human rights through increasing cleanliness, actually inadvertently contribute to deepening social stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on key features of the use of sex and gender in titles of articles about women, science, and engineering over an important forty-six-year period (1965–2010). The focus is theoretically and empirically consequential. Theoretically, the paper addresses science as a critical case that connects femininity/masculinity to social stratification; and the use of sex and gender as an enduring, analytical issue that reveals perspectives on hierarchies of femininity/masculinity. Empirically, this article identifies the emergence, development, and stabilization of published articles about women, science, and engineering that use sex and gender in their titles. The distinctive method involves search, retrieval, and review of 23,430 articles, using intercoder reliabilities for inclusion/exclusion. This results in a uniquely specified and comprehensive set of articles on our subject and the identification of titles with sex and gender. Findings point to (1) the growth of gender titles, (2) their increase in every field, (3) differing concentrations of sex and gender titles in journals, (4) a span of telling topic areas, and (5) higher citation rates of gender, compared to sex, titles. Broader implications appear in reasons for the growth of gender titles, meanings of topic areas that occur, insights into social inequalities and science policies, and emerging complexities of nonbinary categories of sex/gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Odesa was one of the largest and most important cities in the Russian Empire. Numerous studies have addressed the economic development and social structure of Odesa, but there are some gaps in the knowledge of the social stratification during the nineteenth century. Although most studies of the social and economic histories of Ukraine provide qualitative or highly aggregated quantitative data, micro-data at the level of individuals and households in Ukraine are rare. This paper provides new micro-data from the 1897 census in Odesa. It is the first attempt to code occupations of Odesa workers according to the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO). Of the 2,435 individuals in the 457 sampled households analyzed, 1,443 individuals demonstrate 86 of the unique occupations coded with the international HISCO scheme. The analysis compares these HISCO occupations by the social estates, the gender, and the language of the surveyed individuals. The study confirms several old hypotheses but also unearths new findings regarding the number of urban females involved in service and sales occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mafuiane is considered the confluence where common references are shaped in the rural environment, based on the use of shade, playing an elementary role in the transmission of socio-cultural knowledge. The present paper focuses on the analysis of the multifunctionality of shade trees in the sociocultural context of the rural community of the village of Mafuiane (Homoíne District - Mozambique), by characterising the multiple functions, identifying the aspects that influence social segregation according to shade and the trees associated with some fact of special relevance, be it cultural, religious or merely linked to traditional aspects. To operationalise these objectives, a qualitative approach was chosen, seeking to value the lived space and everyday life in relation to shade in the geographical context, using as data collection techniques the semi-structured type interview, direct observation, confronted on the basis of the analysis of bibliographical research. The results illustrate that shade performs various functions in the sociocultural context of Mafuiane, aligned with the search for thermal comfort, aspects linked to tradition and culture, the social stratification related to shade (based on gender and traditional function) and other aspects that are summarised in economic, social, historical, religious and ecological values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how English language has gradually become a linguistic form of cultural capital in China's zigzag journey to modernization. It situates English's status in flux in historical context, with an analysis at both the international and intra-national level. It showcases the necessity to embed cultural capital within Bourdieu's full framework, and evidences the arbitrary nature of this form of cultural capital for its intimate tie to power and politics. By revealing how English has been officially consecrated as a global lingua franca and then socially recognized for material and symbolic benefits, this paper implicitly problematizes the officially validated cultural hierarchy, argues that the value of a cultural capital is context-dependent, politically and socially constructed, inseparable from the field where it is produced. The present-day English manifests its symbolic power in classification and social stratification, entrenching the already entrenched inequality within and without the national state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that personal and group migration (as a subset of mobility) was a central feature of Linearbandkeramik (c. 5500-4900 cal BC) life, and not confined to short-term events along the agricultural frontier. The first part summarises the data currently available on individual migration (mostly interpreted as female exogamy) and the migration of households or groups of households. It is noted that in current models, migratory behaviour is often seen as pertaining to lower-status groups or that it constitutes a crisis response. In the second part of the paper, I outline the evidence, both isotopic and archaeological, for migration as a constant behaviour and show where this has opened up avenues for new research, notably concerning the use of non-loess areas. In turn, narratives suggesting an increase in hierarchical differences throughout the LBK as a whole are challenged. It is argued that migration was an accepted social strategy that could be used to gain status, and counteracted the creation of hereditary and durable social stratification in established settlement sites. Seeing migration as a constant in LBK life can thus lead to a reinterpretation of other aspects of this early farming society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How immigrants frame their futures through enacting differential aspirations is undertheorised in migration and diasporic studies. This ethnographic study presents three groups of Chinese immigrants in Luxembourg and their differential engagements with education as part of the aspirational project of future making: second-generation youth born into upper-middle-class professional families, second-generation youth with blue-collar restaurant parents, and 1.5-generation youth who arrived during childhood or adolescence. Building on Appadurai's (2013. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso) notion of the 'capacity to aspire' and Bourdieu's (1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) theorisation of capital and habitus, the paper examines the divergent ways immigrant youth and families negotiate an unequal terrain of educational possibilities and articulate future aspirations. While upper-middle-class professional families are compelled to pursue a future around individual distinction, those of working-class backgrounds engage in less risky credentialing strategies to secure social mobility. 1.5-generation youth and their families, on the other hand, exhibit immigrant pragmatism to obtain stable future livelihoods. Chinese immigrants' divergent aspirations are intertwined with class, race, transnational connections and family strategies to shape the possibilities of future. The study contributes to the understanding of educational mobilities of Chinese immigrants, and illustrates the multiple aspirations, negotiations and educational futures within a rapidly stratifying Chinese diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]