Occupational Mobility and Historical Social Structure

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Historical social mobility research has played an important part in the coming-of-age of “the new social history” as an active arena for empirical social research. The contribution of this social mobility research tradition can be traced in part to its success in providing three critical elements that lie at the heart of most coherent social science research traditions. These critical elements include the following: 1) the identification of important substantive questions that are susceptible to empirical analysis; 2) the identification of data sources that can provide empirical information relevant to these questions, and 3) the provision of a set of methodological operations and research practices that link substantive questions to the results of empirical analysis. The importance of Thernstrom’s (1964, 1973) landmark works on historical mobility in providing these fundamental elements is reflected in the widespread adoption of his research design by subsequent empirical studies of occupational mobility in historical settings.