Degree Of Social Mobility Research Articles

Perfect Performance for export: shame, narcissism and contaminated ideals in Santos-Febres’ Sirena Selena (2000)

In her first novel, situated in “this soup of islands stewed in hunger and the desire to be someone else” (Sirena Selena 211), Santos-Febres explores the world of transvestites and young male prostitutes following the trajectory of a new star, bolero-singer and seductive diva “Sirena Selena,” from the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to rich audiences in the Dominican Republic. The novel shows feminine characters that resist shame and humiliation by narcissistically focusing on themselves as a means of survival, adhering each to different rigid ideals of femininity permeated by normative systems of value focusing on appearance, financial solvency or ambiguous desire. Their tactics are deployed against a background where the social geography of the islands appears hierarchically ordered with Haiti at the bottom, the Dominican Republic and Cuba in the middle, and Puerto Rico at the top. The novel alludes to the social/political/economic hierarchies that organize migrations among islands in the Caribbean, always against the powerful backdrop of the United States. Sex tourism is recreated as a profitable industry that relaxes strict machista prejudices and allows for sexual experimentation of those who pay and some degree of social mobility of those whose bodies are for hire.

Los dominios valencianos de la casa de Medinaceli entre los siglos XVI y XVII. El Ducado de Segorbe

En los señoríos valencianos de la Casa de Medinaceli, la expulsión de los moriscos tuvo efectos negativos, pero no catastróficos. La repoblación impulsó el proceso de concentración de la propiedad de la tierra y supuso una reorganización del régimen señorial que le permitió adecuarse mejor a los movimientos inflacionistas. Los establecimientos enfitéuticos de los bienes que pertenecieron a los moriscos originaron unas comunidades rurales bastantes homogéneas, aunque paulatinamente se incrementó su diferenciación interna. Hasta mediados del siglo XVIII seguían constituyendo ejemplos típicos de sociedades agrarias con un escaso grado de movilidad social.

A ‘Small’ Language in Contact with a ‘Big’ One: The Loss of the Alienability Distinction in Tének (Mayan) under Spanish Influence

In this paper we discuss changes in possession marking in Tének (also Teenek, Huastec), a Mayan language spoken in Mexico. While traditionally only alienable possession is marked overtly with the suffix -ilattached to the possessed noun, the marker of alienable possession is being extended in the speech of young and socially mobile Tének speakers to contexts traditionally lacking overt possession marking. We attribute this extension to changes in social and cultural patterns in Tének communities. Thus, we show that the choice of possession marking in modern Tének is sensitive to both semantic factors and the socio-cultural background of Tének speakers, including such factors as age as well as the degree of social mobility and exposure to Spanish. In addition, we interpret these developments in terms of ongoing simplification in Tének morphology. We thus take a more general view of grammatical categories as shaped not only by internal developments but also changing cultural and social patterns.

Porters, Beggars, and Noblemen: The Social Construction of Political Power in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Rome

Employing Norbert Elias’s notion of figuration and referring to models based on the relational nature of power (patron-client, entrepreneur and big-man relationships), this article highlights how the relationship between the elite and the lower classes played a crucial role in the establishment of local power in Rome. The high degree of social mobility amongst the Roman elite made the neighborhood a politically open space: an official list of the aristocracy’s members was not available until the eighteenth century, and the Statute of Rome (1580) simply defined eligible candidates for local offices as “illustrious men of the neighborhood.” In this context, strong territorial connections were key when it came to gaining local power. An interconnected network of relationships linked the lower classes and noble families vertically. Through judicial sources, notarial records, and account books, this article presents the highly personalized nature of exchanges between the elite and the lower classes in addition to the complex web of economic transactions and social relations which was essential to creating a local network of clients.

Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions

Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions

The Distribution of Wealth and Fiscal Policy in Economies With Finitely Lived Agents

We study the dynamics of the distribution of wealth in an overlapping generation economy with finitely lived agents and intergenerational transmission of wealth. Financial markets are incomplete, exposing agents to both labor and capital income risk. We show that the stationary wealth distribution is a Pareto distribution in the right tail and that it is capital income risk, rather than labor income, that drives the properties of the right tail of the wealth distribution. We also study analytically the dependence of the distribution of wealth—of wealth inequality in particular—on various fiscal policy instruments like capital income taxes and estate taxes, and on different degrees of social mobility. We show that capital income and estate taxes can significantly reduce wealth inequality, as do institutions favoring social mobility. Finally, we calibrate the economy to match the Lorenz curve of the wealth distribution of the U.S. economy.

On the Thin Line Between Good Intentions and Creating Tensions: A View on Gender Programmes in Muslim Contexts and the (Potential) Position of Islamic Aid Organisations

The relationship between religion and development remains a contentious issue, especially when it comes to the position of women in the Muslim world. Western and international gender approaches encounter the limits of their effectiveness and legitimacy for reasons that have as much to do with global political factors as well as contextual issues. Adequate gender approaches often require engagement with social actors and with the culture ‘as they are’, including religious actors, even if the values they espouse are often considered incompatible with international standards, or they do not correspond to the kinds of partners that many Western actors and local secular elites desire. Is there an Islamic alternative in this regard? Through three case studies set in majority Muslim contexts characterised by a high degree of social mobility, this article looks into the question of how and to what extent Islamic faith-based aid organisations anticipate or tackle such challenges.

Social mobility and the demand for public consumption expenditures

The collective choice of public consumption expenditure is reconsidered when voters are socially mobile. In accordance with previous work on social mobility and political economics, the analysis concerns a class of mobility processes that induce mappings from initial income to expected future income that are monotonically increasing and concave. The paper abstracts from the explicitly redistributive role of government and concentrates on public consumption which is modeled as a classical public good. In equilibrium, provision is sensitive to the degree of social mobility, theoretically linking social mobility to public consumption. Further, empirical puzzles about the impact of voting franchise extensions on the growth of government spending are addressed within the context of social mobility.

Transnationalism and the Social Mobility of Migrant Workers from the Post Socialist World

Since the accession of A8 and A2 member states to the EU in 2004 and 2007, labour mobility across borders has intensified with large numbers of migrant workers seeking economic and social opportunities in member states other than their home country. In particular, it is widely held that the UK is one of the major 'receiving' states for migrant workers from the post-socialist world. Policy directions have been focussed either around encouraging migrant workers to fill labour shortages in the UK or around the integration of migrants into communities and neighbourhoods once they have arrived, using a demand led, responsive approach. The degree of social mobility amongst these migrant workers is not widely discussed, nor is it commonly studied using a transnational frame of reference which sees migrants as maintaining links to their home communities and traditions after they have moved (Basch et al., 1992). Studies on social mobility have tended to be viewed through a national lens, often comparing states and their levels of social mobility (Breen, 2004), but rarely acknowledging the transnational dimension. This overlooks complex social networks across state borders and the important social and cultural capital involved in these exchanges. I posit that transnational networks of migrant workers have a dynamic effect on relative social mobility, whereby notions of class, occupational and social status shift based on interactions between home and host community. Improving knowledge and understanding of these networks could help to inform further policy development around the integration and settlement of migrant workers in the UK, contributing to equality of opportunity and social justice for those often living at the margins of society. This paper will explore the literature around transnational migrant networks and social mobility, providing a review of existing discourse with a hope of stimulating debate around future research directions in transnational migration. It will also provide an overview of current policy debates concerning migration management, considering how far the social mobility of migrants features at a policy level.

Book Review: Levin, J. S. (2007). Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges: The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan

Levin, J. S. (2007). Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges: The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.DOI: 10.1177/0091552108315591Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges: The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism, by John. S. Levin, explores the experience of the most vulnerable and marginalized student populations currently served by community colleges. Drawing on qualitative methodologies that included interviews, observations, and document analyses at 13 community colleges across the nation over a period of 5 years, Levin addresses the questions of whether and how education promotes an equitable and just society. Framed against the cultural and social constructs of globalization and neoliberal ideology and practices, Levin argues that the most disadvantaged of community college students, as a group, are deprived of access and opportunity for the realization of both individual and economic potential.Using Rawl's theory of justice as a measure for evaluation, Levin details his findings to identify and articulate the manner by which specific groups of students, including but not limited to those enrolled in English as a second language, general educational development, and continuing education classes, are systematically denied the resources and accommodations required to overcome their disadvantaged positions in society and in a postindustrial economy. Without such resources and accommodations, particularly those related to funding, policy, and programming, these students' disadvantaged positions are maintained and perhaps even perpetuated. Levin argues that the systematic continuation of an unprivileged existence equates to a failure of community colleges to seek and achieve some semblance of justice for these specific students and for society in general.Themes of justice and neoliberalism are discussed in the introduction and provide a succinct backdrop from which Levin introduces the already-underprivileged status of community colleges in the hierarchy of higher education. In chapter 1, the characteristics of community college students are outlined in terms of their heterogeneous traits, motivations, and disadvantaged positioning. This portrait of community college students is given meaning in chapters 3, 4, and 5, as particular students' stories are shared to illustrate the influence of their distinctive traits on their identity and experiences as students. Chapter 2 provides a discussion of the theoretical frameworks used historically to interpret such positioning and experiences, as well as a justification for the frameworks-including Rawl's theory of justice-that are chosen by Levin to analyze and interpret his data. Chapters 6 and 7 explore the ways in which community colleges, via their missions, programming, and structures, fall on neoliberal assumptions of equality, purpose, and value to justify the exclusion of and inattention to the most disadvantaged students. Levin asserts that although community colleges may allow students a degree of social mobility, as it relates to increased employability, such attainment itself does not fully meet the standard of justice or equity. …

Operationalizing Max Weber's probability concept of class situation: the concept of social class1

In this essay I take seriously Max Weber's astonishingly neglected claim that class situation may be defined, not in categorial terms, but probabilistically. I then apply this idea to another equally neglected claim made by Weber that the boundaries of social classes may be determined by the degree of social mobility within such classes. Taking these two ideas together I develop the idea of a non-categorial boundary 'surface' between classes and of a social class 'corridor' made up of all those people who are still to be found within the boundaries of the social class into which they were born. I call social mobility within a social class 'intra-class social mobility' and social mobility between classes 'inter-class social mobility'. I also claim that this distinction resolves the dispute between those sociologists who claim that late industrial societies are still highly class bound and those who think that this is no longer the case. Both schools are right I think, but one is referring to a high degree of intra-class social mobility and the other to an equally high degree of inter-class mobility. Finally I claim that this essay provides sociology with only one example among many other possible applications of how probability theory might usefully be used to overcome boundary problems generally in sociology.

The short-term society: a study in the problems of long-term political and economic development in Iran

Iran was a short-term society in contrast to Europe’s long-term society. It was a society in which change - even important and fundamental change - tended to be a short-term phenomenon. And this was precisely due to the absence of an established and inviolable legal framework which would guarantee long term continuity. Over any short period of time, there could be notable military, administrative and property-owning classes, but their composition would not remain the same beyond one or two generations, unlike traditional European aristocracies, even merchant classes. In Iran, property and social positions were short term, precisely because they were regarded as personal privileges rather than inherited and inviolable social rights. The situation of those who possessed rank and property - except in very rare examples - was not the result of long-term inheritance (say, beyond two generations before) and they did not expect their heirs to continue in the same positions as a matter of course. The heirs could do so only if they managed to establish themselves on their own merits - merits being the personal traits necessary for success within the given social context. There thus was a high degree of social mobility, unthinkable in medieval and much of the modern European history. This did not exclude the position of the shah himself, since legitimacy and the right of succession were nearly always subject to serious challenge, even rebellion.

An Experimental Study of the Poum Hypothesis

The prospect of upward (POUM) hypothesis formalised by Benabou and Ok (2001a) finds explicit assumptions under which some individuals that are poorer than the average optimally choose to oppose redistribution policies. The underlying intuition is that these individuals rationally expect to be richer than average in the future. This result holds provided the mobility process is concave in expectations, redistribution policies are expected to last for a sufficiently long period and individuals are not too risk averse. This paper tests the POUM hypothesis by means of a within subjects experiment where the concavity of the mobility process, the degree of social mobility, the knowledge of personal income and the degree of inequality are used as treatments. Other determinants of the demand for redistribution, such as risk aversion and inequality aversion are (partially) controlled for via either the experiment design or the information collected during the experiment. We find that the POUM hypothesis holds under alternative specifications, even when we control for individual fixed effects.

Human Capital Accumulation, Social Mobility and Migrations

This paper studies the effects of migrations on growth and income distribution when social mobility is imperfect. Workers migrate in response to differences in expected wages between home and a foreign country, but their choice depends also whether they qualified themselves as skilled workers by accumulating human capital or not. Such an activity has a cost, which depends on each agent’s family background: sons of skilled workers have lower human capital accumulation costs. The effects of labour migrations on per capita income depend only on the degree of social mobility: if there is a difference in the cost of accumulating human capital for the sons of educated and non‐educated people, migrations reduce total earnings of unskilled workers in the receiving country, and increase those of skilled workers.

Intergenerational Schooling Mobility and Macro Conditions and Schooling Policies in Latin America

The effects of market and policy reforms on poverty and inequality in Latin America have been of considerable concern. The region continues to have relatively great income inequalities. Two different societies with the same income distribution may have different levels of social welfare because they have different degrees of social mobility. To date little attention has been paid to measuring social mobility in the region. Schooling is thought to be a major mechanism through which intergenerational social mobility is affected. This paper explores the strength of the association of family background with child schooling and whether the strength of this association is related to some major macro and aggregate school policy variables.

Black middle classes: The outlook of a new generation

In the mid-20th century only 10 percent of all black workers were employed in middle class occupations. Today, however, they represent ap? proximately 27 percent of employed blacks (Landry, 1987: 2-3). This significant increase was a consequence of events occurring during the 1960s, such as an expanding economy, the Civil Rights Movement, and the im? plementation of state and federal laws mandating equal employment opportunity for all American citizens. Since the decade of the 60s, blacks have experienced a greater degree of social mobility than in the past be? cause of the plethora of white collar occupations now available to them. For many white collar workers, employment is a primary source of social identity. Hence, one expects that as job demands gain in importance, in? dividuals will become detached from other primary associations having a basis in family, spirituality, race, and ethnicity. Of particular concern for this paper, the rise of blacks into the ranks of the middle class may function to slowly dissipate racial solidarity and/or social cohesion between them? selves and lower class blacks. In other words, I am suggesting that for the black middle class, the priorities of work and living a middle class lifestyle may, over time, take precedence over attachment and identification with issues involving race. This paper suggests then, that the identification of the black middle class with the black lower class will decrease as the former continues to occupy white collar positions and to experience upward social mobility. Indeed, this has already occurred to a significant degree, and as a result the black middle class's traditional leadership role in the black community has been altered. The effects of structural change on middle class behavior and

Social Class in a Mid-Eighteenth-Century Apulian Town: Indications from the Catasto Onciario

Cluster analysis is applied to the mid-eighteenth-century tax register and household census of the southern Italian town of Locorotondo in the Province of Bari in order to reconstruct aspects of social class. Other documentary sources such as notarial transactions are also brought to bear on the study. It is argued that in this zone there existed a degree of social mobility even within the strictures of late feudalism, that both an entrepreneurial elite and yeoman peasantry existed, and that analysts of synchronic documents of this kind must be careful about taking occupational categories as coterminous with social class categorizations. In this article I will discuss social class in the town of Locorotondo, Province of Bari, southern Italy, at the middle of the eighteenth century. I intend it both as a substantive contribution to our knowledge of southern Italian peasant culture in its historical dimension and as a demonstration of methodologies which can be applied to a set of documents which have been little utilized by anthropologists. Recently anthropologists working in Italy have turned their attention to historical problems and historical methodologies (Blok 1974; Douglass 1980 and 1984; Kertzer 1984; Schneider and Schneider 1976). Similarly historians have used anthropological understandings in reconstructing aspects of Italian society in the past (Bell I979; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber I985). This article is informed by such interdisciplinary approaches and is part of a continuing project meant to produce an anthropological history of Locorotondo which traces the formation of the unique peasant cultural patterns of the zone, the Murgia dei Trulli, in which it is located. The murgia, or plateau, is characterized by two things which set it apart from other areas in rural south Italy. First are the trulli themselves. These coneroofed peasant dwellings are found only in this area of Italy and are widely known from travel posters and picture books. Second, in contrast to the more Ethnohistory 33:4 (Fall 1986). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-I8oI/86/$I.5o. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 06:06:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Phonological hypercorrection in the process of decreolization – the case of Trinidadian English

It is now well established that creole language situations such as those that exist in West Indian communities like Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, etc., are characterized by continuing variation resulting from increasing modification of Creole structures in the direction of the lexically-related model language. The pace of the modification depends in turn on such factors as the degree of social mobility and the strength of corrective pressures from above. In all such cases, however, there develops ‘a continuous linguistic spectrum of speech varieties… which includes all possible intermediate varieties’ (DeCamp, 1971: 28).

Performance and Propriety: Representations of Madame Vestris as Actress and Theatre Manager in 19th-century Print Media

In 19th-century Britain, women professionally involved in theatre faced a double bind: their popularity depended on the commodification of their bodies, yet their sexual availability excluded them from the propriety of domestic middle-class femininity that Victorian culture valued highly. This project aims to offer insight into how these women negotiated their respectability by examining the career of Lucia Elizabeth Vestris, an actress and theatre manager, through an analysis of contemporary print media. The poster compares Madame Vestris’ reputation at the beginning and end of her career in 1820 and 1855 respectively. In particular, I have focused on Vestris’ transition from salacious starlet, associated with light comedy and the sexualized breeches’ role, to esteemed manager, known for constructing the Lyceum Theatre as a visual spectacle suited for refined audiences. Drawing from a variety of 19th-century London periodicals such as the Times and the Inquirer, I examine Vestris as understood by a body of mainly middle-class male critics, exploring implications behind their simultaneous attraction to and moral repulsion of young Vestris’ sexualized self-presentation, as well as their positive response to her upmarket renovation of the Lyceum as a sign of her respectability. Ultimately, the poster reflects how notions of gender and class heavily shaped the Victorian discourse on theatre: while the actress as a profession was deemed inherently sexualized, women working in the theatre could achieve some degree of social mobility if they packaged their sex appeal as socially acceptable commodities for bourgeois audiences.

Social Mobility and Schizophrenia

An ongoing study of the social and psychiatric correlates of successful performance and community tenure among schizophrenic males provided the opportunity to investigate the relationship between the direction and degree of social mobility and the occurrence of schizophrenic disorder. Analysis of the occupational movement of patients relative to their fathers indicated that schizophrenics tended to be more often and more severely downwardly mobile than a national comparison population. This relationship held both across and within social status categories. A comparison of alternative operations for estimating social status was used as a basis for reconciling apparently divergent findings. Analysis of the relationship between mobility and severity of disorder within the schizophrenic sample offered no evidence that social mobility could eflectively distinguish these groups.