ABSTRACT
Social mobility addresses movement (or lack of movement) between social classes, on the a priori assumption that classes differ in material and socially significant ways. If each social class has a distinct social, economic, and cultural character, it follows that changing one’s class position requires personal re-adjustment. Beliefs, practices, tastes, and indeed, primary social relationships which were appropriate in one social location, or upbringing in one origin class, all become less appropriate dispositions in a new social destination, or field. The greater the homogeneity and distinctiveness of each class culture, and difference (or distance) between origin and destination classes, the greater is the need for, and challenge of, re-adjustment of personal habitus. For convenience we refer here to this state and process of unlearning and re-learning as ‘dissociation’, without implying the extreme clinical condition of an incoherent personal identity and disengagement from the environment, as used in contemporary psychiatry (American Psychological Association 2016).
