ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the extent to which institutional religion has been influential in facilitating or inhibiting collective social mobility. It argues that market capacity is itself partly the outcome of a political process, a power struggle, in which the principal social form has been the free occupational association. Using A. Giddens' typology of market capacities, the chapter shows that occupational associations may be formed on the basis of each of them: capital; skill and education; or manual labour power. Professionalism is regarded as an occupational strategy which is chiefly directed towards the achievement of upward collective social mobility and, it is concerned with the maintenance of superior remuneration and status. The chapter demonstrates the way in which sexual divisions have played an important role in relative success or failure in study of collective social mobility. Sexual divisions are regarded as an independent structural element cutting across class divisions in capitalist societies.
