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204 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

social positions and roles. Indeed, most analysts who have devised one-dimensional
researchers will subsequently devise and use indicators of vertical social position, on the
complex schemes of socioeconomic cate- key role of one institutional mediation,
gories, usually based on occupational group- schooling. We will review this debate among
ings rather than income. Many of these social mobility analysts below, in the section
categories are not easily rank-ordered with on ‘The Tension between Individualist and
respect to one another in any convincing way, Structuralist Views’.
however. Consequently, exchanges of mem-
bers between them over the lifecourse and
across generations may call for ‘qualitative’ The divergence between schemes
interpretations going beyond the vertical of gradation and class schemes
dimension.
Other researchers will rather closely The mobility table has been, for a long
adhere to Sorokin’s gradation idea, and try to period, the most characteristic tool of the
devise various one-dimensional indicators of social mobility paradigm. Many crucial dis-
the vertical social position of various occupa- tinctions have been made and many findings
tions (occupations have by then become the achieved using mobility tables: horizontal
almost universal instrument for estimating and vertical mobility, intergenerational and
social mobility, because they are considered intra-generational mobility, and then counter-
as rather stable indicators of social position mobility, inflow and outflow analyses,
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and social class, contrary to income, which is forced and pure mobility. A shared vocabu-
more volatile). We will review this source of lary was thus developed from the thirties to
tension in Sorokin’s approach, as well as in the seventies.
the evolving field of social mobility, in the But starting with Blau and Duncan’s very
next section. influential book, The American Occupational
A second source of tension originating in Structure, in 1967, proponents of the grada-
Sorokin’s approach concerns the connection tion approach were given a new and powerful
between mobility tables and interpretations analytical instrument with the status attain-
of fluidity based on the role of social struc- ment model, based on regression analyses
tures and especially institutions. Sorokin involving continuous scales of Socio-
was, implicitly, inaugurating a comparative Economic Status (SES) and of schooling.
style of analysis, in his case between modern An explicit distinction between two tradi-
and more traditional societies. Early on, ana- tions among analysts of social mobility
lysts of social mobility will adopt this idea, developed thereafter. The social structure can
and start comparing contemporary societies be regarded as a system of gradation, or as a
with respect to their fluidity; the latter is taken system based on social relations of depend-
as an index both of modernity and of equity, ence (Ossowski, 1963). According to Weber,
in the guise of equality of opportunities. the status order describing ‘the way in which
But these social institutions are considered social honour is distributed’ and ‘represented
as a whole, not in any of their specific influ- by special styles of life’ is quite distinct from
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ences. Indeed, the analysis usually proceeds the economic order describing ‘the way
at the macro level, paying scant attention to in which economic goods and services are
the meso level of specific institutions evoked distributed and used’ (Weber, (1977) [1922]:
in Sorokin’s interpretive stance; no connection chap. 9, part II). This distinction has often
is usually suggested, not even ‘qualitatively’, been simplified into an opposition between a
between what happens to specific occupa- Weberian analysis of social status and a
tional categories and these institutional con- Marxist class analysis, but it is indeed much
duits for mobility. The one exception, starting broader. Marxian social classes are ‘qualita-
in the mid-1960s, is the insistence, among tive’ and relational, but as we will see later,