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206 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

aspects can be recognized, and certain According to Cuin (1993), the ideological
authors do look for hierarchical effects in trajectory of American sociology leads from
social mobility patterns. 8 such structuralist or mixed views of institu-
tional mediations to a dominant individualistic
view, best illustrated in the status attainment
The tension between individualist programme proposed by Blau and Duncan
(1967). This programme investigates the
and structuralist views
extent to which the present occupational
Since Sorokin’s pioneering work, theories status of individuals is associated with the
of social mobility have faced a tension status of their family of origin, or rather
between structuralist and individualist views reflects their own achievements, and in par-
of institutional mediations. In a strict struc- ticular their educational attainment. The
turalist perspective, such as Sorokin’s, indi- question they keep raising is: ‘how and to
viduals are not actors: they are educated, what degree do the circumstances of birth
tested, selected and distributed by agencies condition subsequent status’ (Blau and
or channels of circulation. According to Duncan, 1967: 118). Their results show that
strongly individualist views, on the contrary, half of the association between father’s edu-
the individuals are, to a large extent, all- cation and son’s occupation appears to be
powerful actors: their achievements are the mediated by the latter’s educational achieve-
exact rewards accruing to their talents and ment. According to this individualistic per-
efforts. spective, modernizing societies shift from
Most of the American literature on social ascriptive to achievement criteria, and there
mobility puts forward a mixed view, with an is a movement towards meritocratic selection
equal interest for structural and motivational through the educational system.
factors: the former correspond to the equilib- This individualist view was confronted, in
rium between the demands for various abili- the 1970s, with radical critiques coming
ties and the supply of talents, the latter to from a number of sociologists of education.
personal qualities and motives. Davis and Anderson’s paradox constituted a major
Moore’s foundational paper (Davis and anomaly for the now established individual-
Moore, 1945) about the American function- istic paradigm of social mobility research. In
alist theory of stratification clearly holds spite of a strong individual correlation
such an implicit view: ‘as a functioning between education and occupation, Anderson
mechanism a society must somehow distrib- (1961) found that relative occupational posi-
ute its members in social positions and tion seems to be independent of relative edu-
induce them to perform the duties of these cational position. Boudon (1974) used this
positions’. We owe the first explicit theoreti- finding to urge a return to the structuralist
cal formulation of this mixed view to Lipset point of view, which can readily recognize
and Bendix (1959). According to them, ‘the that there is a substantial amount of inde-
amount of social mobility’ is largely deter- pendence between changes in the educational
mined by five structural factors: the number structure and changes in the occupational
of available vacancies, the rates of fertility, structure, potentially leading to ‘educational
the rank accorded to occupations, the number inflation’. As Sorokin pointed out five
of inheritable status-positions, and legal decades earlier, the function of schools
restrictions. At the same time, they empha- largely involves certifying children for par-
size that the ‘consequences of upward ticular positions, and not only promoting
mobility’ are very different from one culture each individual’s abilities.
to another; the existence of ideological This theoretical tension between individu-
egalitarianism in the US, in particular, facili- alist and structuralist views has produced
tates the acceptance of upward mobility. many methodological controversies on the