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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]

The most widely used measure for studying social, economic, and health inequality is the Gini index/ratio. Whereas other measures of inequality possess certain useful characteristics, such as the straightforward decomposability of the generalized entropy measures, the Gini index has remained the most popular, at least in part due to its ease of interpretation. However, the Gini index has a limitation in measuring inequality. It is less sensitive to how the population is stratified than how individual values differ. The twin purposes of this paper are to explain the limitation and to propose a model-based method—latent class/clustering analysis for understanding and measuring inequality. The latent cluster approach has the major advantage of being able to identify potential “classes” of individuals who share similar levels of income or one or more other attributes and to assess the fit of the model-based classes to the empirical data, based on different cluster distributional assumptions and the number of latent classes. This paper distinguishes class inequality from individual inequality, the type that is better captured by the Gini. Once the classes are estimated, the membership of estimated classes obtained from the best fitting model facilitates the decomposition of the Gini index into individual and class inequality. Class inequality is then measured by two relative stratification indices based on either the relative size of the Gini between-class components or the relative number of stratified individuals. Therefore, the Gini index is extended and assisted by model-based clustering to measure class inequality, thereby realizing its great potential for studying inequality. Income data from France and Hungary are used to illustrate the application of the method. INSETS: Figure 1. Gini indices and Lorenz curves for income data...;Figure 2. Empirical income distribution of France in 1990...;Figure 3. Income clustering in France, 1990.;Figure 4. Income clustering in Hungary, 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent years a series of 'ankles has appeared, the aim of which has been to demonstrate an unjustifiable neglect of women in social stratification theory and research and, in turn, to level charges of 'intellectual sexism' against sociologists active in this area. The central concern of the present paper is to address certain of the major substantive issues which are raised in this literature, and to argue that they have not so far been adequately treated from either a theoretical or an empirical standpoint. In Pan I of the paper, an attempt is made to distinguish between two lines of theoretical argument on the position of the family within the system of social stratification which, in recent critiques, appear to have been unduly confined. These are the arguments of (i) structural-functionalists of mainly American provenance, and (ii) mainly European exponents of class analysis. In Pan II, empirical data are then presented, by reference to which the stance adopted by the latter can be illuminated and, moreover, substantially supported. In Pan III, an attempt is made to show, on the basis of the foregoing, that certain conceptual and methodological developments that have been proposed in order to adapt class analysis to the increased labour market participation of women, and especially of married women, entail serious difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By bringing together a set of papers in the broad social structure and personality tradition of social psychology, this issue of SPQ seeks to manifest its centrality to social psychology, and vice versa. The papers illustrate the utility and necessity of incorporating more careful and more explicit analyses of macrosocial and psychological processes into the study of the relationships of macrosocial structures and processes to the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individual actors. Relationships between social stratification (by socioeconomic, gender, racial/ethnic, or age status) and the individual and intersections between the domains of work and family emerge as central problems in the study of social structure and personality, and of social psychology, sociology, and psychology more generally. These and other analyses could benefit from increased interplay among the different faces or branches of social psychology and of social psychology with emerging developments in the parent disciplines. The reemergence of the study of personality in psychology, especially from a cognitive perspective, the new concern of sociology with micro-macro links, increased intersections of biology with sociology and psychology, and the increased use of life course perspectives and longitudinal data in psychology and sociology are all developments that could contribute to, and benefit from, future advances in the study of social structure and personality. Each of these trends suggest the need for more attention to the interrelationships between individuals and macrosocial structures or processes. [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]

The increasing scale of transnational migration is sociologically one of the most interesting features of contemporary life, not least because of the analytical challenges posed by the complexity of this phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to explore the contradictions inherent in policy approaches to migration in the EU -- the logic of the market is weighed against welfare protectionism; welfare and labour market regulation against demands for cheap labour; national resource concerns against transnational rights. The outcome is presented in terms of an increasingly complex system of civic stratification, which raises a further set of contradictions; discriminatory exclusion alongside assertions of equal treatment. The implications of these cross-cutting pressures for a sociological understanding of migration are considered throughout, and doubt is cast on the validity of any single overarching perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the first detailed study of lower white-collar workers in Soviet society. It traces the historical development of this social category during the Soviet period, gives a general social profile of the stratum now and locates it in the Soviet system of social stratification. Comparisons are made with equivalent strata in Western society, and both divergences and commonalities are identified. The former are explained by reference to the different economic, political/ideological and cultural factors which have shaped the system of social stratification and movement within it. Similarities are seen to be a consequence of the fact that the same division of labour characteristics both types of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into social stratification has tended to concentrate on working-class men; there has been little on the middle classes, and even less on women. This paper looks at the class position and class images of 342 working married women in social grade Cl, drawn from a national survey of class images conducted between 1981 and 1984, to assess the extent to which these women's class identification is determined by the occupation of their husbands and the way in which the middle and working classes are perceived by women in same-class and cross-class marriages. It is concluded that a woman's class identification is determined at least in part by her own characteristics rather than her husband's, with education being a particularly important variable. [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]

This paper traces the contours of current, practical explanatory problems in stratification theory showing the similarity of issues in apparently diverse approaches, both Marxist and non- Marxist. There are two related purposes. The first is to show the specific nature of the current crisis, locating paninular explanatory failures. The second is to illustrate the more general issue of the way in which the central epistemology of self-conscious social science derives from and describes failures in social scientific practice. This is well illustrated in the response to current problems. Both purposes are served by Laying bare the procedures by which attempts are made to convert the contradictions inherent in explanatory failures into contradictory features of social experience which could be explained by consistent theories. Contradiction is thus, apparently, removed from its role in specifying the need for theoretical development, to encapsulating the processes by which current social arrangements are reproduced. However, we show that despite initial plausibility such attempts merely displace explanatory contradictions rather than solve them. The attempts are justified by an explicit or implicit action frame of reference which, though it is central to abstract discussions of the nature of social science, is invoked in practical social science only in circumstances of explanatory failure in an unproductive attempt to insulate the theories from the consequences of their failure. Productive social science is the resolution of contradictions in the transformation of theoretical objects and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology of social stratification and labour market economics have developed in isolation from one another. The present paper attempts to bring these two traditions closer together. The starting point is a critique of the very notion of social 'stratification'. A return to Max Weber's idea of `class situation as market situation' and to his concept of `social closure' is advocated. On this basis, a conception of structured social inequality in advanced capitalist societies is developed which is open for conceptual innovations to be taken from labour market economics. A number of approaches to labour market analysis are discussed, and the special significance of several recent contributions related to the so- called 'dual labour market theory' is emphasized. This leads up to the construction of a typological model supposed to supersede the traditional notion of social inequality as a system of hierarchically superposed strata. This model comprises eight levels of labour market structuration characterizing structured social inequality in advanced capitalist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that books by Warner and Low and Selznick on the sociology of organizations have been misinterpreted and that a reassessment is overdue. This is undertaken via an analysis of both the original texts and the process of misinterpretation. One implication is that organizational sociology is, in part, a product of those bureaucratic and labelling processes that it affects to describe and that the agenda of issues with which it deals has been unduly delimited as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of West Indian political mobilization in Britain is discussed. A number of processes-cultural ambivalence, individualism and island parochialism are examined as contributory factors to the paucity and ephemerality of localized West indian political associations in the metropolitan society. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of, for example, changes in religious and family organization and how these relate to localized stratification systems within West Indian settlements in Britain. The utility of historical and comparative frameworks is stressed throughout the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Mobility in Britain has been a key work for theories of mobility and social stratification, but its basic data on the occupation of fathers and sons is open to question. Arguing from evidence (mainly from the Census) about occupational transition and differential fertility, this paper suggests that the 1949 study appears to have an implausible number of middle-class fathers. When this critique is related to the peculiarities of the data already separately reported by others such as Ridge, Hope, and Noble, a strong case can be made for the rejection of the Glass findings. It follows that the conventional sociological wisdom that Britain has a low rate of mobility must be reconsidered, and also that those theories of stratification which have drawn too uncritically on Social Mobility in Britain must now be re-examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common phenomenon in sociology (and in other disciplines presumably) is that of the 'taken_for-granted reference'. This is typically an original empirical study, the findings of which become accepted and thereafter acknowledged as valid evidence in support of argument or for the generation of new hypotheses or counter hypotheses without presentation of critical re-evaluation. The extent to which this occurs and how and why it does occur are largely uninvestigated. In this paper, one case of the taken-for-granted reference, which is widely used in studies of social mobility, is subjected to critical re-evaluation in the light of original empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous designs for the analysis of the mobility effects hypothesis do not incorporate explanatory variables other than origins, destinations, and mobility, and most designs fail to parametrize the effects of origins and destinations in a substantively defensible fashion. Sobel (1981) proposed a class of models for the analysis of mobility effects that parametrizes the effects of origins and destinations in a sociologically meaningful fashion, but his models do not allow for the introduction of explanatory variables other than mobility. This paper shows how to incorporate covariates into the models proposed by Sobel, thereby allowing for a better assessment of the mobility effects hypothesis. Estimation of the new models is discussed, and the relationship between social mobility and fertility as previously considered by luau and Duncan (1967), is reexamined. Although this reexamination largely confirms the negative results obtained by Blau and Duncan (1967) on mobility effects. the models proposed here also yield previously unobtainable conclusions about the relative import of various origin and destination categories in the acculturation process and the differential impact of various explanatory variables. The relative impact of origins and destinations on fertility depends upon origin status; for example, origins and destinations are equally important among those with farm origins, but origin status is more central than destination status among those with higher white-collar origins. Also, the impact of the explanatory variables on fertility interacts with origin status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the rank-dimensional approach to the analysis of social stratification has become increasingly prominent. One of its advocates, Johan Galtung, has made relations between nations his major point of empirical reference. The present paper applies rank-dimensional analysis to the deprived nations of Africa and Asia (or the so-called Third World) in an attempt to grasp the degree of rank homogeneity within the group and to relate its rank characteristics to the more privileged nations in the global system. This exercise demonstrates that there is a linear relationship between total rank and rank disequilibrium in the Afro-Asian group; a finding which has a number of significant theoretical ramifications. The major theoretical innovation in this connexion is the concept of rank divergence-defined as the degree to which a unit in a system of stratification diverges from the typical relational pattern holding between the unit's total rank and rank disequilibrium scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]