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LIFECOURSE OF THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PARADIGM 209

Muller, 1997). These papers could provide state regimes. The notion of societal context
interesting insights into social mobility is evoked in Zhou and Suhomlinova (2001).
research since they tend to show complex Charles (1998) and Wallace and Jepperson
interactions between ‘objective’ and ‘subjec- (1986) propose culturalist interpretations of
tive’ social classifications. international differences with respect to con-
In particular, only two empirical papers ventional variables.
explore subjective aspects of stratification One of the main reasons explaining the
as they intersect gender or ethnicity/race increasing focus on individual ‘effects’ is the
divisions. Jackman and Senter (1983) hegemony of statistical methods. The quanti-
explore differences between whites and tative approach has partially ‘swallowed up’
blacks, and men and women, in the values the qualitative one, as is apparent in the mod-
attached to various traits (intelligence, emo- elling of mobility tables. The latter is largely
tion); they analyze how dialogue about per- concerned with the ‘effects’ of social origin
ceptions between these groups can range on individual destination (net of structural
from consensus to muted conflict. Ayalon et al. changes in occupational distributions), rather
(1988) show that individuals from subordinate than with what the particular flows between
ethnic groups who enjoy high social and eco- specific categories can tell us about the social
nomic status still perceive discrimination. processes involved: for instance inheritance,
This individualist view of social mobility strategies with respect to schooling or mar-
mediations leads to the neglect of macro- riage, and ‘opportunity hoarding’ (Tilly,
social contexts and cultures in many respects. 1998). This hegemony is even more visible in
Of course, the focus of social mobility the extensive use of multivariate analysis of
research has very much been comparative continuous, vertical variables.
from its inception. But it was for the most The growing pressures for the harmoniza-
part without the benefit of macro-variables, tion of data and for the sophistication of
systematically characterizing the different methods partially explain the lack of interest
societies, and without ‘thick descriptions’ of in less easily captured cultural differences.
the macro-social context, and of the meso- There are thus relatively few qualitative
level differences among societies (institu- papers in RSSM. Most of the time, qualitative
tions and organizations shaping people’s surveys are simply seen as an exploratory
trajectories). Most authors tend to agree with stage before quantitative data collection.
the conventional idea that cross-national Very few papers rely on the analysis of a lim-
comparative research needs, first and fore- ited number of interviews, among them
most, standardized data (Treiman and Finlay (1988), Finlay and Martin (1994),
Ganzeboom, 2000). Hoff (2005), Spitze and Shaffer-King (1985),
There are exceptions, though, as illustrated Useem (1984), and Vallas (2001). This has
by some studies published in RSSM which contributed to a neglect of the ‘subjective’
focus on the role of the welfare state: social aspects of mobility and macro-social contexts.
stratification effects of redistributive policies While multilevel analysis has ambitions to
(Wilson, 2001), affirmative action (Edelman capture social contexts more effectively, it
and Petterson, 1999; Manley and Roos, 1999; cannot replace ‘thick’ descriptions of such
Snipp and Hirschman, 2005), minimum contexts.
wages (Volscho, 2005), full employment
proposals (Sheak and Dabelko, 1993).
Valocchi (1986) has proposed a comparison
of the welfare states of Great Britain, West AN EMERGING PARADIGM
Germany, and Sweden in the post-WWII
period. Drobnic and Blossfeld (2004) explicitly While the question of social mobility continues
discuss the theoretical framework of welfare to fascinate a large number of sociologists,