ABSTRACT
Although more attention has been lavished on mobility tables than perhaps any other type of sociological data, only rarely have sociologists sought to map the underlying contours of mobility between actual occupations, where these are understood as functionally defined positions in the division of labor (cf. Rytina 1992; Evans and Laumann 1978). The prevailing practice has been to examine patterns of mobility between "classes" or "strata" formed by aggregating detailed jobs or occupations in terms of their measured (or presumed) work conditions, market position, consumption practices, mobility chances, or socioeconomic standing. While there is surely no consensus on any single class schema, the shared and unchallenged assumption has been that some sort of aggregation into supraoccupational categories is appropriate. The latter assumption has limited empirical inquiry into such fundamental matters as (1) the extent of social closure at the detailed occupational level, (2) the size and location of interoccupational cleavages, disjunctures, and discontinuities in mobility chances, and (3) the macrolevel sources and causes of occupational persistence and mobility. This chapter provides new insights into these issues by presenting a disaggregate occupational classification and calibrating it against one of the standard data sets in the field.
