This article introduces a new approach to the study of the association between education and socio-economic outcomes in the Czech Republic: educational pathways, which are the primary channels of study involving at least two educational transitions with qualitatively different tracks. Based on Czech Household Panel Study data, I operationalise Czech educational pathways between secondary and tertiary education and examine the role of eight different educational paths on ESeC-derived social classes, contrasted by parental education, gender, and birth cohort. Based on the ordered logit model, I compute the predicted probability that specific educational pathways would lead to a specific class status. I find that the educational pathway approach yields distinct insights about the education-class link that would be masked had I studied only highest level of education attained. The educational pathway approach could, therefore, be a fruitful way to approach other areas of Czech social stratification research.
Although Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time originally was a widely popular book in the nineteenth century, Fern and Ruth Hall were criticized after readers learned about the similarities among Fern’s life and book. Contemporary critics have recovered Ruth Hall from the literary margins and situated Ruth’s story in the context of the popular American dream story while emphasizing the book’s satirical elements. Reexamining the novel’s originally popular sentimental elements alongside the novel’s more recently popular satirical elements expands the literary critical focus from Ruth’s sentimental struggles and Fern’s satirical accomplishments to Ruth Hall’s equally important critique of American greed, especially among wealthy and socially-conscious Christians.
This paper examines the role of psychological determinants for Poles’ location in the postcommunist social structure, above and beyond the traditional determinants of occupational achievement. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, I expect that peoples’ outlook on the future-whether in terms of perceived opportunities and threats or a more general view of the times ahead-has a lasting impact on their success, understood here as attaining higher income and/or privileged class membership. I analyze this relation over time, considering that the current status (St) is an additive function of future orientations (Ft−1) and earlier status (St−2). The Polish Panel Survey POLPAN 1988–2008 represents the backbone for my analyses. In this survey a representative sample of adult Poles was interviewed in 1988 and re-interviewed in 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008. I analyze these panel data with lag variables, using OLS estimates and logistic regression for particular time-points. I also use cross-sectional time-series analysis to account for autocorrelation and multicollinearity stemming form the data’s hierarchical structure. Results support the main hypothesis in this study: consistently, thinking confidently about the future has positive effects on earnings and on belonging to the privileged social classes. This impact is substantive and statistically significant when prior income and social class, demographic characteristics, and education are controlled for.
A description of borderland as a space can be inspiring for an analytical presentation of other social phenomena in which coexisting borderline categories occur. An example is social stratification within which different groups of individuals referred to as layers, castes or classes can be distinguished. Their character is arbitrary, resulting from a concern for the conventional, often not very distinctive interests of some social groups. Since the 19th century, the most widespread stratification system in Western societies has been the class system. However, its analytical value has been fading due to the blurring of boundaries between particular classes. The social classes, on the one hand, are subject to strong internal differentiation and are losing their previous cohesion, and on the other hand, they are becoming similar in many respects. Therefore there is a need to create an alternative and more analytically useful way of categorizing societies in contemporary social sciences. Segmentation based on the category of lifestyle seems valuable, because lifestyle is what, in a particularly important way, differentiates in the social dimension individuals forming contemporary Western societies. At the same time, this category is so capacious and distinctive that it can be analytically useful for representatives of various social sciences. The aim of the paper is, first of all, to present the structural foundation of class systems, secondly, to identify the reasons for the loss of their analytical value, and thirdly, to discuss the scientifically useful segmentation of society relating to different lifestyles.
In light of the significant stratification of Polish middle class, the formation of a group of people representing the 'seed' Polish upper class seems to be obvious. This is a group almost totally unrecognized by economic sciences, though representing a very important segment of customers. The difficulties in the recognition of the group are not only the consequence of the lack of developmental analogies to other market economies (almost 60-yearlong break in functioning of this class in Poland), but also its hermetic nature. The paper will also present the major dilemmas encountered by the authoress at the stage of carrying out her research surveys.
The article presents the analysis of social identifications of Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) population with middle class position between 1991 and 2012. The forms of social identification in different periods of formation of the Baltic countries are analyzed in the context of the dominant ideologies or theories and national self-identification complexity is investigated. The class structure in all Baltic countries is changing. The analysis of social structure in different countries moves mainly in parallel to each other but the data is not strictly comparable neither by themes, nor by sample for each country. Sociologists are no longer surprised of the efforts of researchers in various countries undergoing rapid transitions or transformations to provide new meanings to the concepts of the middle class taking into account peculiarities and history of their respective countries. This article also aims at analyzing social identity of the people of the Baltic countries at the beginning of their formation and further as well. Different surveys are discussed in this article. Since 1991, until now, after the restoration of the independence of the Baltic countries, a number of sociological studies has been carried out to analyze the emerging post-Soviet social structure of society. In practice, every research carried out differed both in methodological and method’s approaches. The aim of this article is to analyze the existing social stratification in the Baltic countries on the basis of sociological studies of the middle class, emphasizing the middle class as the main guarantor of creating a modern society. The novelty of the article is that it makes an attempt to use the data of different, multidimensional researches to discover commonalities or peculiarities of the middle class formation and self-identification with middle class position in the Baltic countries. The analysis has also shown that the identity of the middle class remains the strongest on all stages of formation of the Baltic countries, while only the content and the understanding of the middle class differ. Dominant tendencies of the middle class formation in the Baltic countries are connected with transformations and changes taking place within working class and intelligence. It has been revealed that the Baltic countries middle class is far from being homogeneous.
This article is based on data collected during a qualitative survey on children's leisure practices and family socialisation patterns. The paper focuses more specifically on the cross effects of gender and social class on the construction of body hexis and relationship to sports. The results show that several dimensions of family habitus must be taken into account: lifestyles, way in which parents divide the tasks of raising children and relationship they have with social competition or gender norms. Moreover, taking these different dimensions into account must be accompanied by an analysis of the concrete modes of socialization within the family and the practice context.
The article studies the discourse on social class that emerged around the Czech parliamentary election of 2010. The authors look at Czech discourse from the perspective of the wider discussion about the role that the notion of class plays in post-communist societies. While some researchers argue that social class is absent as a category within post-communist political discourse, other researchers report the existence of derogatory discourse on the lower classes and even consistent symbolic boundaries between classes. This analysis contributes to the discussion by offering recent evidence of both the rejection and the use of class-based classification in the discourse. The authors argue that the rejection of the notion of class goes hand in hand with the symbolic division of society into class-like groups. They illustrate how these divisions are tied to the idea of a legitimate political subjectivity and conclude by noting similarities to contemporary ‘Western’ discourse on social class.
The biggest problem with the renovation of the centres of Polish cities is the fact that their revitalization is accomplished only through the process of gentrification. The implementation of exclusively this measure makes renovation largely ineffective and leads to social conflicts between the incoming representatives of the middle class and the underprivileged residents who have lived in the central city space for decades. However, there are exceptions to the rule, as in the case of the Poznań administrative housing estate Wilda. The present study also aims to compare the changes ongoing in the above mentioned housing estate with the changes occurring in other gentrified spaces of Poznań, by identifying factors which seem instrumental to the effectiveness of the gentrification process.
While it is well-known that education is positively connected to support democracy (competitive elections, a multi-party system, and the belief that political leaders must obey the law) in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, we have few empirical tests of how attitudinal, structural, and cognitive mechanisms mediate that connection. I use the Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) for 2008–2013, a crucial period that captures the Polish political experience after acceding to the European Union and before the massive political change of the 2015 elections, to empirically test how these different mechanisms impact the link between education and democratic values. I find empirical support for the hypotheses that (a) in terms of attitudes, higher levels of education are associated with lower authoritarian attitudes, which in turn correlate with stronger pro-democratic values; (b) in terms of structure, individuals with higher levels of education, who are more likely to belong to privileged social classes, are more pro-democratic; (c) in terms of cognitive mechanisms, higher educational attainment is associated with higher cognitive abilities, which in turn correlate with stronger support for democracy.
The paper presents the results of the analysis of 25 biographical narrative interviews conducted between 2020–2021 with people from working-class backgrounds who, in the process of becoming academic workers, experienced the costs of cultural mobility. International literature suggests that upward mobility is not only a source of satisfaction or prestige but also suffering for academics from the unprivileged classes. Therefore, in our paper, we aim to answer two research questions: (1) what adaptation strategies do academics from the working-class use to deal with difficult experiences?, and (2) what resources do they mobilize at different stages of life (childhood, school years, the beginning of a research career) to implement these strategies? The analysis of empirical material allowed us to distinguish a number of practices that, in the long term, enabled the interviewees to develop an academic career, e.g., collaboration with “significant others” (of higher social positions), hiding deficits of a capital, context-dependent manifestation of various sets of cultural practices, or the rebellion against the rules and norms present in the family or academic environment. Based on these practices, we define six categories of adaptation strategies: “hacking the system”, “hyper-productivity”, “borrowing capital”, “class manoeuvring”, “indirect career path”, and “resistance”.
The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of class differences in contemporary Poland by studying the effect of social position and mobility on the commensal practices. For this purpose, the author applies Pierre Bourdieu’s multidimensional class model and argues that class effect may be disaggregated into three components: cultural, economic and social capital. Using data from a survey conducted in 2017, he finds support for three hypotheses. First, commensality is more typical for people with higher endowments of economic and cultural capital, but is not related to educational mobility/immobility. Second, commensality is correlated with social capital and social networks and thus potentially conducive to social advantages. Third, commensality goes together with culinary openness and cosmopolitan taste that foster it. Contrary to the thesis of class dissolution, class differences are still operative in contemporary societies.
This paper reports the results of a pilot survey conducted among the shipyard workers from Gdansk and Gdynia. The objective of the study was to diagnose the social mobility of those workers. We focused on the mechanisms behind the position change for both the workers and their adult children. Intragenerational mobility was captured by an examination of two moments of shipbuilders professional biographies. The first involved the late 70’s and early 80’s, the second refered to the current class position. At the same time, the contemporary class position of the adult children of the shipyard workers was studied, which allowed us to examine intergenerational mobility as well. Three research questions were answered using the empirical evidence: − Has the class position of shipyard workers changed? In other words; whether they have gone from working class to another great social class (eg. petty bourgeoisie, capitalist class, service class, etc.). − Has the specific intraclass position of workers changed? − Does the class position of children differ from the position of the parents? The terminology used above clearly indicates our interest in class positions. Class can be called a collection of people involved identical positions in the social division of labor and ownership or how Jacek Tittenbrun puts it: “groups of people which differ from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of economic acti-vity (i.e. production, exchange, transport, finance and services)” (Tittenbrun 2011, 188 –189). As noted above, in the first part of the study we describe shipbuilders’ class position in the early 80s and also their current position. Class position of the workers was finally compared to the current class position of their offspring. In this paper the preliminary results are presented. Particular attention is devoted to the changes in the stability of employment. We discuss how the working condition of the shipyard workers changed as well as we compare the stability of employment of parents and children.
Non-whites, non-males and other non-genuine citizens. The reproduction of social inequalities as seen in Karen Brodkin’s 'How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about America'The article offers a review of Karen Brodkin’s How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about America. Brodkin analyses the social and political transformations in America and puts the analysis in the context of her own autobiography. The first issue that Brodkin investigates are the processes that led to the change in the social status of Jews and other immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in the 20th century. Second, Brodkin tries to understand her own origins, as well as different life styles and ways of perceiving the Jewish identity present in her family. Beside the analysis itself, Brodkin also offers many interesting remarks on the construction of racial and ethnic categories, discrimination, and the interactions between the ethnic, class and gender aspects of one’s identity. Niebiali, niemężczyźni i inni nieprawdziwi obywatele. O reprodukcji społecznych nierówności w książce Karen Brodkin „How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America”Artykuł ten stanowi recenzję książki amerykańskiej antropolożki Karen Brodkin, zatytułowanej How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (‘Jak Żydzi stali się białymi i co mówi to o zjawisku rasy w Ameryce’), która łączy analizę przemian społeczno-politycznych w Stanach Zjednoczonych z autobiograficznym studium własnych doświadczeń autorki. Tym samym Brodkin podejmuje dwa zasadnicze problemy. Pierwszym z nich jest próba zrozumienia procesów, które doprowadziły do zmiany statusu społecznego Żydów oraz innych imigrantów ze wschodniej i południowej Europy w dwudziestowiecznej Ameryce. Drugą analizowaną kwestią jest próba zrozumienia przez autorkę jej własnego pochodzenia, sytuacji rodzinnej, obowiązujących w jej rodzinie rożnych modeli życia i rożnych sposobów postrzegania tożsamości żydowskiej. Podejmując wymienione zagadnienia, Brodkin oferuje szereg cennych refleksji dotyczących konstrukcji kategorii rasowych i etnicznych, zjawiska dyskryminacji oraz relacji pomiędzy tożsamością etniczną, klasową i genderową.
School is a unique environment of social interactions. It generates the variety of attitudes and behaviours. This paper demonstrates differences in the attitudes towards school of parents, according to their social status. The research study emphasises that social class is one of the key determinants of ways in which parents participate in their children’s education process. Likewise, it shows that educational aspirations of a certain group of parents, as well as their vision of what education should look like vary and make up specific‘class patterns’ of parental participation in education. This qualitative rese-arch clarifiesthat most parents from advantaged social background have a clear vision on education as well as expectations towards school. They are therefore more likely to demand and complain. On the contrary, parents from a lower social class tend to be conciliatory, unquestionably trusting the school institution.
This paper focuses on a neglected—horizontal—dimension of social stratification. It examines the patterns of social differentiation in the Visegrád countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) and attempts to assess changes in the social structure at the subnational level. Social structure changes are explained within the context of broader socio-economic development. The main analyses performed in this study are based on EUSILC micro-data covering 2006–2016 and offer a comprehensive perspective on the patterns of social-stratification development at the regional level utilising three dimensions: social class (proxied by the European Social-Economic Classification), highest attained education level, and income. The results indicate different trajectories in social differentiation across the four countries, although some of the patterns identified are similar. The results indicate that the working class is shrinking and the salariat is growing, and that there are declining shares of people with at most primary or secondary education and increasing numbers with tertiary education. Income inequalities remained relatively stable over the observed period across the Czech and Slovak regions, but fluctuated in Hungarian regions, and the initially greater income inequalities in Polish regions have tended to decline over time. The findings suggest that the least favourable patterns in the development of regional social differentiation are found in the Hungarian regions.
This paper argues that the British period drama Downton Abbey, which aired between 2010 and 2015 and encountered worldwide success, uses working class and middle-class female characters to promote the aristocracy and conservative ideas, while hiding behind historical accuracy and seemingly progressive patterns of behaviour. Through a close reading of four female characters, I will demonstrate how the series’ author, Julian Fellowes, uses the show to endorse his own political agenda, as a Conservative member of the House of Lords in the British Parliament.
In this article I examine the role of social class for poverty transitions. Social class has traditionally been an important predictor of social inequalities, but it is sometimes argued that it has lost its relevance for explaining precariousness and economic risk in contemporary societies. This paper reviews the debate regarding the relevance of social class, the literature on life course dynamics as well as the tensions and links between the social stratification framework and the dynamic perspective on economic risk. In the empirical partI assess the importance of life events as predictors of poverty in combination with social stratification variables. The results show that the risk of experiencing poverty triggering life events is not equally spread across populations, but rather varies across welfare states and linked to social class, gender and education level. Secondly, random effects discrete-time hazard models in thirteen European countries show the relative importance of life course events and social stratification determinants as predictors of poverty entry.
In economic history value theory is simply one paradigm amongst others. It refers to an ensemble of economic ideas developed by classical political economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. In the works of Karl Marx, however, value theory takes on a new meaning. It is charged with political significance and relates directly to class struggles in modern society. In this paper we will explore some aspects of Marx’s critique of capitalism as interpreted by Harry Cleaver, Isaak Illich Rubin, Roman Ro-dolsky and several other scholars.
The article deals with the emergence of a new social class, precariat, explains the causes that brought it into being, its structure and key characteristics. It traces the maturing of the idea of precariat in scientific thought, in world and Russian social practice. The main features of this class are revealed and a comparison is made with other social groups. The article reveals the specificities of this class, its place and role in contemporary divisionof labour, its position in the labour market and the first sprouts of its self-awarenessas “a class for itself.” The consequences of the existence and functioning of the precariat are discussed.
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