Editorial Foreword: Five Empirical Landmarks

Abstract

In roughly the past three decades, five empirical landmarks are easily discerned in the study of stratification and mobility in the United States. They are as follows: (1) Rogoff's analysis of trends in occupational mobility, (2) Reiss' analysis of the prestige data originally collected by Cecil North and Paul K. Hatt (including Duncan's use of these data as a vehicle for creating a socioeconomic index for all occupations), (3) Blau and Duncan's transformation of the study of occupational mobility into the study of status attainment, (4) Simon Kuznets' analysis of relatively long-run trends in income distribution, and (5) Floyd Hunter's critically received demonstration that the analysis of power can be put on an empirical footing. Each of these studies marks the launching of a line of empirical inquiry which has led to a meaningful augmentation of our knowledge about how systems of social stratification and processes of social mobility operate in modern societies. The purpose of this editorial essay is threefold: first, to review the contributions signaled out above; second, to relate the papers contained in this special issue to the problems generated by these landmarks; and, third, to comment briefly on the relationship between theory and research in the area of social stratification.