Social History Update: A Sociological Approach to Historical Social Mobility

Recent methodological & conceptual innovations in the study of social mobility are reviewed, discussing the methodological rationale behind a loglinear approach to mobility tables. Analyses of an archive of nineteenth-century data collected from 6 US cities are used to illustrate the approach. A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of social history 1989-10, Vol.23 (1), p.221-232
Main Authors: Grusky, David B., Fukumoto, Ivan K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capitalism
Cities
Demography
Labor mobility
Methodological Problems
Methods
Modeling
New urban history
Nineteenth Century
Occupational mobility
Social history
Social Mobility
Social structures
Sociological methods
Sociology
United States of America
Workforce
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Summary:Recent methodological & conceptual innovations in the study of social mobility are reviewed, discussing the methodological rationale behind a loglinear approach to mobility tables. Analyses of an archive of nineteenth-century data collected from 6 US cities are used to illustrate the approach. According to the models, the densities of nineteenth-century occupational inheritance are especially strong at the two extremes of the class structure, while the middle class of craft workers had considerable opportunities for upward or downward mobility. It is also found that the cleavage between the manual & nonmanual sectors is large & appears to have been of fundamental importance in structuring individual life chances. It is shown that these new models address some of the criticisms often advanced against the "new urban history.". 2 Tables, 2 Figures. Modified AA
ISSN:0022-4529
1527-1897
DOI:10.1353/jsh/23.1.221