The generalized action potential of protest movements: The new class,social trends,and political exclusion explanations

Three explanations have been advanced to account for the generalized action potential of contemporary protest movements: the rise of the new class, a set of general social trends that cumulatively lead to liberalized social values and loosened social restraints against protest, and the mobilization of excluded groups. Analyzing three dimensions of generalized action potential—protest potential, political action repertoires, and protest movement support—we find support for all three explanations. Educated salaried professionals, especially sociocultural and public sector professionals, display greater protest potential, especially for civil disobedience, and are supportive of emerging “middle class” movements. A set of general social trends centering on increased education, life-cycle and generational change, secularism, and increased women's autonomy also create greater action potential. Reflecting mobilization against political exclusion, African Americans display a consistently strong generalized action potential. These protests reflect the rise of new political repertoires, particularly “protest activism,” which combines protest with high levels of conventional participation and is centered among the more educated.     

The organizational shaping of collective identity: The case of lesbian and gay film festivals in New York

Using information gathered during fieldwork on New York lesbian and gay film festival organizations, this paper argues that scholarship on identity has not paid sufficient attention to the organizational mediation of collective identity. The shape of collective identity—how internal instabilities and diversities are accommodated, in this case—depends not only on the emergent characteristics of the “collective,” but also on the resolution of challenges particular to organizational fields. Two very differently conceived lesbian and gay festival organizations, sites at which decision making about collective identity is ongoing and self-conscious, are examined. The analysis traces how each responds to two related tasks: maintaining community legitimacy, which requires racial diversification, and surviving within an altered institutional environment. Rather than imposition from “above” or construction from “below,” the adaptive responses by organizations (to changes in both community expectations and the resource environment) transform the collective identity formulations reaching public visibility. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Colloquium Series of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York, 1995, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, 1995.     

The sources of political orientations in post-industrial society: social class and education revisited

This paper studies the impact of social class and education on political orientation. We distinguish the 'old' middle class from a new class of social/cultural specialists. However, the difference in their political orientation may especially be related to the level and field of education; the new middle class is more highly educated and often in fields of study that extensively address social competencies, characteristics independently affecting political outcomes. Analyses on Dutch data showed that education is more important in the prediction of 'cultural' liberal issues than social class. Economically-oriented issues are more strongly affected by social class. This means that interests of the new middle class are served by liberal standpoints relating to a strong government and income redistribution policies, but not relating to cultural issues.     

The material and the symbolic in theorizing social stratification: issues of gender, ethnicity and class

Within most approaches to stratification gender and ethnicity are seen to pertain primarily to the symbolic or cultural realms, whilst class is regarded as pertaining to material inequality. This constructs gender and ethnic positioning as entailing honour, deference, worth, value and differential treatment (sometimes expressed through the notion of 'status'), but the social relations around these are themselves not seen as constitutive of social stratification. In this paper I will rethink social stratification away from the polarity between the material and the symbolic, and argue that material inequality, as a set of outcomes relating to life conditions, life chances and solidary processes, is informed by claims and struggles over resources of different types, undertaken in terms of gender, ethnicity/race and class. This formulation allows us to include these categorial formations, alongside class, as important elements of social stratification i.e. as determining the allocation of socially valued resources and social places/locations.     

The intersection of class origin and immigration background in structuring social capital: the role of transnational ties

The study investigates inequalities in access to social capital based on social class origin and immigration background and examines the role of transnational ties in explaining these differences. Social capital is measured with a position generator methodology that separates between national and transnational contacts in a sample of young adults in Sweden with three parental backgrounds: at least one parent born in Iran or Yugoslavia, or two Sweden‐born parents. The results show that having socioeconomically advantaged parents is associated with higher levels of social capital. Children of immigrants are found to have a greater access to social capital compared to individuals with native background, and the study shows that this is related to transnational contacts, parents’ education and social class in their country of origin. Children of immigrants tend to have more contacts abroad, while there is little difference in the amount of contacts living in Sweden across the three groups. It is concluded that knowledge about immigration group resources help us predict its member's social capital, but that the analysis also needs to consider how social class trajectories and migration jointly structure national and transnational contacts.     

The school class as a social network and contextual effects on childhood and adult health: Findings from the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s cohort study

Little is known about the health consequences of the school class as a social network. The present study asked whether overall school-class structure has contextual effects on psychiatric problems in childhood and adult self-rated health. From longitudinal data on a Scottish cohort, measures of school-class structure (centralisation, degree of reciprocity and proportion of isolates) were constructed based on sociometric information. Multilevel analysis demonstrated significant effects of centralisation on both health outcomes. It is suggested that highly centralised classes are characterised by inequality, resulting in a low level of integration, with subsequent negative consequences for health.     

The Role of Father’s Occupation on Intergenerational Educational and Occupational Mobility: The Case of Second‐Generation Chinese Americans in New York1

A considerable body of research has found a positive relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s educational achievement and attainment. The predictive role of parents’ socioeconomic status generally applies for most racial and ethnic groups, but that association does not always hold for groups that exhibit high levels of education, such as Asian Americans. This article considers the role of parents’ education and occupation on children’s educational and occupational attainment for Chinese Americans aged 18–32. The results corroborate the positive link between parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s educational and occupational attainments. Children of professionals command an educational and occupational advantage over children of entrepreneurs and children of manual workers. Yet, the children of entrepreneurs attend selective colleges and obtain professional occupations in proportions closely following those of the children of professionals. Although the educational attainments between the fathers who worked as entrepreneurs and those fathers engaged in manual work were comparable, it was the children of entrepreneurs who surpassed the children of manual workers with respect to educational and occupational achievement and attainment. This suggests that immigrant entrepreneurship contributes in the upward educational and occupational mobility of the children of entrepreneurs.