Occupational Classification in History

Abstract

Occupational Classification in History Historians and sociologists usually couch statements about social stratification and social mobility in terms of occupational structure. They do so for sound reasons. In contemporary society, occupation, more than any other factor, determines income and prestige. In earlier times, the connection between these dimensions of social ranking may have been somewhat looser, but there is every reason to believe that it was nonetheless strong and pervasive. Thus, to trace the movements of a man from occupation to occupation is, to a considerable extent, to trace his vertical movement within social space; the sum of those movements determines the patterns and rate of social mobility, the degree of openness, within a society. Every student of society who undertakes to chart patterns of social mobility must confront the same initial problem. The number of distinct occupations existing within a good-sized nineteenth-century town reached into the hundreds; within a twentieth-century city, it is in the thousands. Clearly, any analysis must begin by defining a limited number of categories similar in one or another respect; it must determine in advance which occupations occupied the same niche upon a social scale and which movements, consequently, did not represent an increase or decrease in social standing. That task, to someone who has not thought about it for long, seems straightforward enough. But, as this paper will suggest, it bristles with ambushes. Its solution, moreover, is critical.