The Constant Flux: Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies - Softcover

Erikson, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198279086 ISBN 13: 9780198279082

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1993

Synopsis

This is a study of social mobility within the developing class structures of modern industrial societies based on a unique data-set constructed by John Goldthorpe and Robert Erikson. The focus is on the experience of European nations - western and eastern - in the period of the `long boom' following the Second World War; but the book also devotes separate chapters to examining the experience of the USA, Australia, and Japan. The authors combine historical and statistical approaches in their analysis of both trends in mobility and of cross-national similarities and differences. They show that wide variation at the level of actually observed mobility coexists with a surprising degree of constancy and commonality in underlying patterns of social fluidity. The empirical results of their study serve as the basis for a critical re-examination of current theories of mobility and for raising more general issues of the proper concerns and methods of comparative macro-sociology. This book is intended for teachers and postgraduates in sociology, social and economic history, social stratification, and the sociology of industrial societies.

About this title

Review

`detailed, rigorous and comprehensive ... a model of theoretically informed, empirically grounded, macro-sociological analysis that will be of interest to all those concerned with the development of industrial societies in general and the patterning of class mobility in particular ...' -- Times Higher Education Supplement

About the Author

John H. Goldthorpe is a world-famous sociologist. Before taking up his present post at Nuffield College, Oxford, he taught at the University of Leicester (1957-60) and King's College, Cambridge (1960-9). He has also delivered the Fuller Lectures at the University of Essex (1979) and the Marshall Lectures at the University of Southampton (1989). He is a Member of the Academia Europaea and has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Stockholm University. He has written or edited several
books, including The Development of Industrial Society in Ireland (OUP, 1992).

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198279086
• ISBN 13: 9780198279082
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 445