ABSTRACT

An industrializing society is bound to be a mobile society. The towns must take population from the countryside, some men must do new jobs, some sons must enter different occupations from their fathers. How many can vary from society to society depending on the extent to which there is further mobility between existing occupational groups. Societies may also differ in the extent to which the occupational mobility which does take place involves changes in individuals’ relative position in the hierarchies of prestige and power attaching to these shifting occupational structures (i.e. how far the new groups at the top of the new hierarchies are recruited from old groups at the top of the old hierarchies, groups at the bottom of the new from groups at the bottom of the old, and so on). They may differ, too, in the extent to which these differentials of power, income, and prestige are considered important, the extent to which they are considered legitimate, the extent to which changing one’s relative position in these hierarchies is a dominant preoccupation of the individuals in the society, the extent to which raising that position is considered possible, and the extent to which the possibilities of changing that position depend on personal enterprise, intellectual ability, character, educational qualifications, or patronage.