Theoretical social mobility models and congruence with comparative findings: An analysis of Raymond Boudon's works
✍ Scribed by Steven I. Miller; Rosemarie B. Bogal
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1979
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 833 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0033-5177
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The pioneering work of Raymond Boudon [1] in the areas of social stratification, social mobility, inequality of educational and social opportunity and model building (1973b, 1974) has produced a large and extremely important body of literature for sociologists of education. Perhaps one of the greatest impacts of Boudon's work has been the number of suggestive hypotheses that it has generated. This is evidenced by the volume of recent articles and criticisms directed toward his work (Miller, 1976;Hauser, 1976; Andorka, 1976; Alker, 1976).
While it is key to and the scope of this article to summarize all of Boudon's ideas, the major direction of his work is best developed in his recent volume (1974). Most basically, Boudon is interested in explaining a central paradox inherent in Western industrialized societies; namely, why has there been a steady decrease (since World War II) in IEO (inequality of educational opportunity), with a corresponding stability in ISO (inequality of social opportunity? He defines lEO as "differences in level of educational attainment according to social background". ISO is defined as "differences in social achievement according to social background", (1974: p. xi). In terms of these two definitions, Boudon is interested in explaining two phenomena: (1) one raised by the well-known Lipset and Bendix study (1959) which showed that mobility rates were basically the same in industrialized societies that had different forms of stratification, and (2) the low correlation, in supposedly meritocratic societies, between relative educational attainment and relative social status. This last relationship Father's Son's educational social status level and educational level Son's social status