Social Stratification and Mobility : Two Decades of Cumulative Social Science

The last 25 years have been a period of cumulative social science in the sociological study of inequality and social mobility. This outcome stems both from the diffusion of new methods of quantitative analysis and from the use of a life-course conceptual model that fostered an incremental approach in research. On the other hand, this positivistic sociology of social stratification has not engendered as much progress in building middle-range theory. As a commentary on these relative developments over the last two decades, this essay suggests that progress in the future will require departures from existing designs of research and from dominant theories and their metatheoretical world views. Social Stratification and MObility: Two Decades of Cumulative Social Science In the last two decades, the subdiscipline of sociology known as social stratification and mobility has made greater progress toward cumulative social science than any other branch of sociological research. Developments have been most extensive in the statistical description of both intergenerational and intragenerational processes of socioeconomic allocation--social mobility. Progress in descriptive model building reflects wide application and refinement of various advanced statistical techniques, including structural equation models of the process of stratification (mobility), loglinear analysis of mobility tables, and stochastic models of positional (status) change. Advances have been less cumulative in analyzing class relations and hierarchical categories of social structure, especially when these relations and categories are conceived as properties of social aggregates and not of individuals (e.g., social classes, ethnic and racial strata) or of non-person entities (e.g., labor markets). Little, if any, refinement of major theoretical positions has ensued, particularly if attention is restricted to intellectual derivations from Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Sorokin, or Parsons. This pattern of relative development in the last two decades has prompted at least one sociologist to argue that stratification and mobility research has become little more than mindless quantification of trivialized relationships in the social structure (Coser, 1975). Whether this provocative accusation was intended to be taken literally or as merely a dialectical admonition to improve an inherently sound line of scientific