Status attainment's image of society: Individual factors, structural effects, and the transformation of the class structure

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this article, I assess the validity of the optimistic image of modern, mass, industrial society underlying status‐attainment research as found in the formulations of Blau and Duncan and the Wisconsin research program of Sewell and associates. Three issues are examined: the role of individual factors, the way social‐structural factors are conceptualized, and the possibility that historical developments at the societal and global levels are changing the structure (i.e., class order) of society. It is argued that the conceptualization of society underlying the status‐attainment tradition is deficient in several significant ways. Status attainment conceives individual characteristics as being prior to and independent of social structure, underplays the constraining features of the labor market, and identifies an expanding middle class as an enduring feature of American society, which recent evidence suggests is incorrect. A less complacent and more comprehensive conceptualization of society and attainment processes is outlined here.