ABSTRACT
I met John Goldthorpe for the first time in 1969 when he was giving a lecture at the University of Constance. In this lecture he outlined his ideas for a programme of research on social mobility—a programme whose execution, ramifications and implications have occupied him ever since. Shortly before, I had written a similar assessment of the then current state of this field and was surprised about the convergence of our points of view. Since that time we have met once or more each year—often for purposes related to the activities of the Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility of the International Sociological Association. I was at Nuffield College, Oxford, as a visiting fellow in 1977–78, and in 1984 we jointly founded a new journal, the European Sociological Review. This project was based on our common conviction that European empirical social research needed its own forum. Through these experiences I can claim that in the role of a sympathetic observer from the Continent—unaffected by and mostly unaware of inner-British controversies—I have enjoyed for almost two decades the personal and intellectual pleasures, and suffered the intellectual irritations, of my acquaintance with John Goldthorpe.
