Professor of Sociology at Tokyo Gakugei University.

Abstract  In this paper I discuss methods of integrating women into social stratification studies. Traditional stratification studies have focused only on the male "heads" of households. While considering this problem within a conceptual framework of theoretical assumptions and empirical evidence, I would like to review some of the earlier work in this area.
I propose to differentiate social stratification into "occupational stratification" and "consumption stratification" in order to facilitate the integration of women into these studies. I shall use data from a nationwide survey to show how and why the traditional male head-of-household approach is inappropriate in determining the social stratification of households.
Rather than considering the occupation of the male head of the household, I use the concept of "substantive complexity of work" to compare paid work with housework. If a married woman is working outside the home, I define her occupation as that which scores higher in this comparison.
I also suggest that we further subcategorize consumption stratification. Finally, I propose integrating the suggestions made in this paper with the status inconsistency approach to social stratification.     

Stratification and prestige among elite experts in methodological and mathematical sociology circa 1975

This discussion has two purposes. One is to describe the social differentiation of experts within an élite invisible college devoted to methodological and mathematical work circa 1975. The other is to illustrate the positional approach in network analysis. After introducing the invisible college to be considered, the form of stratification within it is described. Although completely interconnected to one another, experts are stratified across five structurally unique statuses. The form of stratification is given greater empirical meaning by considering its content. There is a subtle linkage between the extent to which a status is defined by substantive and methodological influence relations. The most prominent experts have merged their methodological concerns with specific substantive concerns. The most prestigious status is occupied by a “social statistics élite” to whom a “mobility élite” exists as a satellite status. Methodology leaders among social psychologists divide into a group pursuing the study of three-person groups, a “triads élite”, and a group with more general interests, a “social psychology élite”. Finally, a “mathematical sociology élite” jointly define no status since they have highly dissimilar substantive relations with one another and other experts. The last question addressed concerns the distribution of prestige in the college. As would be expected under a norm of universalism, the relative prestige of experts within the college is uniquely determined only by an expert's record of publishing in the college's core journals. The discussion concludes with comments.     

Social Integration,Psychological Well-Being,and Their Socioeconomic Correlates*

Unidimensional conceptions of socioeconomic status require that alternative indicators of one's position in the stratification system have similar effects upon the consequences of socioeconomic level. We show herein that different indicators of social participation and psychological well-being are in fact associated with different indicators of socioeconomic status. Thus, any attempt to combine these indicators—educational attainment, occupational pursuit, family income, or occupational origins—into a single index of socioeconomic status will prove unsatisfactory because its component parts have different consequences for the same variable. We also show in this paper precisely how certain formulations of the effects of inconsistency and mobility are wholly redundant and only represent a logically possible way of interpreting the linearly additive effects of the variables used to define inconsistency and mobility.     

Symbolic Justice: The Status Politics of the American Probation Movement

Abstract

This paper addresses in substantive terms an emerging debate between Marxian and Weberian perspectives on crime and law. It is argued that the cooptive character of the American probation movement and its impact on juvenile and criminal law is an anomaly for orthodox Marxian theory and its preoccupation with coercive strategies of crime control. Revisionist Marxian perspectives similarly fail to account for the growth of this movement. An alternative Weberian approach is then articulated. It is found that probation legislation evolved at a federal level in juxtaposition to American temperance legislation, drawing its base of support from status groups reluctant to support the latter social movement, as well as from the leadership and rank and file organization of a voluntary association, the National Probation Association. The attention of a Weberian approach to such factors of organization and status helps to correct a one-sidedness in the Marxian class analysis of crime and law.     

CONCERN FOR GOD AND CONCERN FOR SOCIETY: RELIGIOSITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

This paper adds to the integration of sociology of religion and social stratification by bringing together work in social justice from sociology of religion and economic issues from social stratification. The research focuses on the narrower topic of attitudes toward economic justice. Specifically, it focuses on the contributions of both religiosity and religious affiliation to such attitudes. The contributions of the religious components are assessed independent of other factors identified to be important in the two areas. Using data from the 1987 panel of the General Social Survey, multiple analyses of variance reveals relatively strong structural effects but no relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward economic justice. Religious affiliation is statistically significant, but of sufficiently limited “captured variance” that substantive interpretation must wait future research.     

The Nonconsequences of Objective and Subjective Status Inconsistency: Requiem for a Moribund Concept*

Though long suggested, subjective indicators of status inconsistency have seen little empirical use. Data from a sample survey with controls for additive status variables are used to compare objective and subjective status inconsistency with these conclusions: (1) Individuals in an “objective” state of educational-occupational inconsistency are no more likely to feel inconsistent than those whose objective statuses are aligned. (2) When considered in conjunction with vertical status dimensions, neither objective nor subjective status inconsistency is independently associated with measures of social participation; only the subjective measure is independently associated with powerlessness. (3) The joint use of subjective and objective status inconsistency concepts in future work must be carefully justified and must take into account well-substantiated but frequently ignored methodological problems.     

Industrialization and Social Stratification*

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effects of industrialization upon systems of social stratification. Taking societies as the unit of observation, we consider the relationships between level of industrialization and (1) the distribution of status characteristics in the population (the structure of stratification); (2) the pattern of interrelations among status characteristics (the process of stratification); and (3) the form of linkages between status characteristics and other aspects of social behavior (the consequences of stratification). A set of propositions is specified, a few of which are empirically well established but most of which yet require empirical testing.     

Mapping social milieus and cohesion patterns between 1997 and 2014. Exploiting the potential of the occupational position generator

The study joins the stream of the social network approach attempting to look beyond micro-level association patterns towards macro-structural modeling. Utilizing the versatility of the occupational position generator technique for measuring network resources generally related to hierarchical aspects, an attempt is made to apply the tool for horizontal targets. Furthermore, with some conceptual transfer, the paper applies the distinction between omnivorous and univorous patterns of symbolic selectivity to nexus choice as well. The comparative investigation relies on data from four Hungarian national surveys from the 1990s on, using 19 items of the position generator to measure network resources. Exploratory and confirmative factor analyses reveal four dimensions of occupational milieus; Goodman RC modeling outlines two organizing axes behind them interpreted in network terms as status and betweenness centrality. Latent class analysis results in a five-element typology with both vertical and horizontal features. The findings point to the stability, in some respects to the increase of gaps between various segments along the social ladder. As concerns the cultural aspect, returns on relational selectivity indicate some fading or even reversal of the omnivorous trend in contemporary Hungary; both tendencies suggesting some growth of distances between milieus with the related problems of social cohesion.     

Sport and Social Inequalities

This article reviews recent research on the relationship between sport and social inequalities, focusing on gender, race, nation and social mobility. Through an engagement with these areas of research, we highlight how sport reflects and reinforces broader hierarchical structures; how it serves as a site for both inclusion and exclusion, but in ways that work unevenly; and how sport is ultimately a site for social reproduction of hierarchy and social stratification. We argue that the gender, racial and national hierarchies that sport is embedded within interact to largely prevent sport from being a site for social mobility, despite popular myths to the contrary.     

Conflict and the separateness of peoples: investigating the relationship between multiplicity,inequality and war

ABSTRACT

The discipline-defining claim that anarchy leads inevitably to security-competition and war between states is unsustainable. This article investigates whether the concept of multiplicity can offer a reintegrated account of insecurity in world politics. As highlighted by rational choice approaches, substantive conflicts of interest are a necessary condition for organized violence to be a permanent possibility within, across and between societies. A materialist argument is presented that the most enduring incompatible interests arise from clashes over the rules of economic appropriation and redistribution, and the appropriate boundaries between social groups. Historically, unevenness and the possibility for exploitation have created structural pressures towards simultaneous social stratification and the institutionalization of inter-societal warfare. Because of the central importance of social boundaries for structural inequalities, multiplicity has profound implications for both patterns of organized violence and the fundamental issue in the study of politics: who gets what, when and how.     

Objective and Subjective Status Inconsistency: a Search for Empirical Correspondence

The relationship between objective (researcher) and subjective (respondent) definitions of status inconsistency is examined with data from a survey study of Gary, Indiana. The analysis of a variety of measures of income-occupation inconsistency indicated a moderately high correlation between "normatively" defined and objectively defined inconsistency but otherwise very little relationship between subjective and objective measures. The overall pattern of correlations among the particular measures employed suggests that researchers and subjects share a common mode of status evaluations up to, but not including, the concept of status inconsistency.     

Rebuilding Status Consistency in a Post-communist Society. The Czech Republic, 199197

In this paper we perform an empirical analysis of status consistency in a postcommunist society. We supply three arguments as to why the various dimensions of social status can be expected to have crystallized following the fall of communism. First, post-communist societies have experienced a significant increase in income and wealth inequality. Second, there have been significant changes in the class structure and, third, processes that generate inequality and social structure have been changing as well. The analysis demonstrates the increase in status consistency in the Czech Republic in the period 1991-97. Further, we explore the degree of status inconsistency in different subpopulations and the political consequences of status inconsistency.     

Tailoring Organizational Characteristics for Empowerment

ABSTRACT

Empowerment is an important value orientation and intervention approach in social work and other disciplines. Viewed from an ecological perspective, a good fit between organizational characteristics and the life circumstances of individuals should provide empowerment benefits. By studying interaction effects of material resources and organizational characteristics on empowerment, this research sought to extend understanding of empowerment dynamics in community organizations. Using hierarchical regression analyses to investigate socio-economic status (SES) in a moderator model, findings of the study demonstrated that, among a diverse group of participants in two different faith-based community organizations, perceptions of organizational characteristics were more strongly related to empowerment for participants of lower SES. A substantive implication of the study is that community practitioners should attend to the fit between specific organizational processes and economic circumstances of community based organization participants. Strategies weighted toward attention to relationships among members linked to availability of and participation in a variety of organizational roles may be more salient for empowerment of the disadvantaged. Our findings are consistent with an ecological orientation to empowerment, and they add further support to the importance of ecological specificity in empowerment theory.     

Class and status: on the misconstrual of the conceptual distinction and a neo‐Bourdieusian alternative

In this article, we address the classical debate about the relationship between the economic and cultural aspects of social stratification, typically cast in terms of Weber’s distinction between class and status. We discuss in particular Chan and Goldthorpe’s influential, yet largely unchallenged, attempt to reinstate a strict version of the class‐status distinction, mounted as an attack on ‘Bourdieusian’ accounts. We argue that this is unconvincing in two respects: There are fundamental problems with their conceptualization of status, producing a peculiar account where one expression of status honour explains the other; in addition, their portrayal of the Bourdieusian approach as one‐dimensional is highly questionable. In contradiction of a reading of Bourdieu as discarding the class‐status distinction, we develop an alternative, neo‐Bourdieusian account that recognizes class and status as distinct aspects of stratification, thereby allowing for a subtle analysis of their empirical entwinement. The fruitfulness of this approach is demonstrated by analysing the homology between the space of lifestyles and the social space through Multiple Correspondence Analysis of unusually rich data about lifestyles. Importantly, we highlight the relative autonomy of these spaces: Although they exhibit a similar structure, they do not overlap completely.     

Status Inconsistency: Its Objective and Subjective Components*

Sociologists need to recognize the distinction between objective and subjective status inconsistency. Objective inconsistency may be defined in terms of an arbitrary manipulation of an individual's status ranks, or it may be defined in terms of the normative expectations linking together the various status dimensions. Subjective inconsistency, on the other hand, involves asking the respondent to decide for himself whether or not he is inconsistent. When objective inconsistency is defined in terms of arbitrary mathematical manipulations, the relationship between these two components of inconsistency (i.e., objective and subjective) is basically an empirical question. However, when objective inconsistency is defined in terms of the normative expectations in a population, and when the respondent shares these expectations, we propose that these two components of inconsistency will be identical. Conversely, they will not be identical when the respondent does not share these expectations. Finally, the implications of defining inconsistency in terms of normative expectations are explored.     

The race relations problematic in American sociology: A case study and critique

This article reports the results of an analysis of all racial and ethnic relations articles published in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Social Problems, from January 1969 through December 1995. The analysis identifies by journal: 1) major methodological orientation(s); 2) how the concepts of “race,” “ethnicity,” and racial and ethnic relations are operationalized, which is useful for examining tendencies toward, or against, reification; 3) substantive content—that is, what a sociology of racial and ethnic relations is; and 4) primary context—that is, are racial and ethnic relations treated as a substantive subdiscipline in their own right, or are they merely a topic of interest for other subdisciplines such as social psychology? In brief, although some differences exist between the journals, all four journals publish disproportionately racial and ethnic relations research that: 1) is highly quantitative as opposed to theoretical, conceptual, or sociohistorical; 2) reifies U.S. Census definitions of race and ethnicity as opposed to critically evaluating such definitions; 3) social psychologizes racial and ethnic relations, or subsumes such relations under stratification processes; and 4) subsumes the racial and ethnic relations problematic under subdiscipline rubrics other than a sociology of racial and ethnic relations. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings; for example, by virtue of what they publish, these journals construct a paradigmatic frame that gives precedence to, or legitimizes, some views and excludes, or de-legitimizes others.     

Trends in gender stratification, 1970–1985

This paper addresses causes and consequences of sociological interest in gender stratification after 1970. The most recent women's movement spurred empirical research on the topic but development of a general theory was slowed by accidents of disciplinary history. A theory of preindustrial gender stratification that leans on anthropology is therefore used to interpret trends that occur during industrialization. This analysis helps to explain why trends in mortality, education, fertility, women's labor force participation, and men's household participation should continue to improve women's status relative to the status of men.