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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]

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the Hollingshead Index of Social Position (I.S.P.) is correlated with class awareness and class identification, two principal components of class consciousness. Comparative data are introduced from the Hollingshead and Redlich (1958) community study of New Haven, Connecticut, and an investigation by this writer (1963) of an urban Pennsylvania community, hereafter referred to as Twin City. Both studies use an objective index (I.S.P.) to estimate positions individuals occupy in the status structure of the community, and both correlate class awareness and class identification with class placement by this index. The interviews for the present study were conducted in a middle-sized Pennsylvania city, with a population of approximately 75,000, in the summer of 1961. The number of completed interview schedules, from which data analyses were derived, was set at 1,811. The social position which individuals and families occupy in the Twin City status structure was determined according to the modification of Hollingshead's three-factor I.S.P. All of the sample households enumerated in the interview schedule were stratified by class through use of this index. The collected data used to determine the I.S.P. for each household consisted of the education and occupation of the head of the household plus the ecological location of the dwelling unit in which the respondent resided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an invitation to sociologists to take seriously the topic of fashion. Only a handful of scholars, such as Simmel (1904), Sapir (1931), and the Langs (1961), have given more than casual concern to the topic. Their individual analyses of it, while illuminating in several respects, have been limited in scope, and within the chosen limits very sketchy. The treatment of the topic by sociologists in general, such as we find it in textbooks and in occasional pieces of scholarly writing, is even more lacking in substance. The major deficiencies in the conventional sociological treatment are easily noted—a failure to observe and appreciate the wide range of operation of fashion; a false assumption that fashion has only trivial or peripheral significance; a mistaken idea that fashion falls in the area of the abnormal and irrational and thus is out of the mainstream of human group life; and, finally, a misunderstanding of the nature of fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to deal directly—in an exploratory fashion—with certain variables which might be considered basic to any verification of the intellectual subsociety hypothesis, focusing primarily upon the ethnic dimension and secondarily upon the class factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of Weber's city typology in relation to the Russian urban experience and to attempt to locate the Russian city within Weber's celebrated Oriental-Occidental dichotomy. The failure of various intellectual and revolutionary groups before and in 1917 to liberalize a traditionalistic societal system is correlated to the absence of a middle class in the Russian cultural context. Kiev, Novgorod, and Pskov existed long before the Mongol conquest of Russia in the thirteenth century and were exposed to certain Western influences due to the political connections with the neighboring Western countries. Unknown before the Mongols arrived, Moskva "still in the nineteenth century before the liberation of the peasants from slavery retained all the characteristics of a great Oriental city of about the time of Diocletian of the second century A.D." In addition to being the seat of the patrimonial ruler, Moskva was a "locality where rents from possessions in land and slaves as well as income from office holding were spent." Elsewhere Weber said that the cities in Russia "never arrived at freedom in the Western sense. Everywhere the military, judicial, and industrial authority was taken from the cities." This act of taking away autonomous-autocephalous authority is probably Weber's reference to the total destruction of Novgorod and Pskov by the Russian rulers as soon as they emerged from the shadow of Mongol dependence as well as to the Russian colonial conquest of the non-Russian cities and countries in the more recent centuries including the twentieth. Seven major characteristics basic to Weber's Oriental vs. Occidental typology of urban behavior, as tentatively modified in view of the needs and the contribution of recent research, will be utilized in examining the Russian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been almost twenty years since Davis and Moore published their famed theory of stratification. During this period, the discussions which it has engendered have been numerous and highly instructive. It is now time to address ourselves to problems which concern the testability of the theory and its experimental validity. This paper reports the results of an empirical study of one of the basic issues raised by Davis and Moore. A major proposition of their theory argues that in the final analysis, social stratification arises in a society because of differential rewards for performance in the social positions therein. These rewards can be of several types. For our purposes, two are of major importance: symbolic and economic rewards, hereafter referred to as "prestige" and "reward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytical methodologies assume 'resolution into simple elements' as a necessary preliminary stage of scholarly investigation. They explicitly, or more often implicitly accept, therefore, that the conclusions reached reflect not only the phenomena analysed, but also the applied system of analytical subdivision. The paper explores and compares the main systems of analysis in current sociology: institutional, class and communal. It suggests a taxonomy of analytical systems and a cross-classification which is introduced to throw light on their conceptual properties at the societal as well as the individual level. It proceeds by discussing the issues of: (A) The societal roots of selection of analytical schemes in sociology; (B) The advantages and blind spots of the specific analytical systems; and (C) Attempts at the integration and reduction of analytical systems in contemporary sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the influence of the policy of local education authorities upon educational attainment. We suggest that the influence of local policy has been neglected in the sociology of education and hypothesize that policy variables are likely to be of major importance as determinants of attainment. Evidence drawn from correlations of policy, provision and social-class variables with each other and with various measures of attainment tends to validate this suggestion, and indicates that two `policy- models' of local authority activity may be appropriate: viz, the elite-orientated authority model, in which resources are differentially concentrated on a sponsored elite with consequent high attainment of this elite; and the egalitarian authority model where resources are more evenly spread throughout the school system with consequent `inferior' attainment of an elitist kind, but where the evidence suggests there is higher overall attainment of the total school system product. It would also appear that the determinant of the policy set pursued by an LEA. is the social class background of the area it covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]