Pitirim
Sorokin
Social
Mobility
κοινωνική κινητικότητα
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
Conception
of Social Mobility
And Its
Forms
By SOCIAL MOBILITY
is understood any transition of an individual or social object or
value—anything that has been created modified by human activity—from one social
position to another.
There are two
principal types of social mobility, horizontal
and vertical.
By horizontal social
mobility or shifting, is
meant transition of an individual or social object from one social group to
another situated on the same level. Transitions of individuals, as from the
Baptist to the Methodist religious group, from one citizenship to another, from
one family (as a husband wife) to another by divorce and remarriage, from one
factory to another in the same occupational status, are all instances of horizontal
mobility.
So too are
transitions of social objects, the automobile, fashion, Communism, Darwin’s
theory, within same social stratum, as from Iowa to California, or from any place
to another. In all these cases, “shifting” may take place without any
noticeable change of the social position of an individual or social object in
the vertical direction.
By vertical social
mobility is meant the relations involved in a transition of
individual (or a social object) from one social stratum to another.
According to
the direction of the transition there are two types of vertical social
mobility: ascending and descending, social climbing and social
sinking. According to the nature of stratification, there are ascending and
descending currents of economic, political and occupational mobility.
The ascending
currents exist in two principal forms: of an infiltration of the individuals of
a lower stratum into an existimg higher one; and as a creation of a new group
by such individuals, and the insertion of such a group into a higher stratum
instead of, or side by side with, the existing groups of this stratum.
Correspondingly, the descending current has also two principal forms: the
first consist in a dropping of individuals from a higher social position into
an existing lower one, without a degradation or disintegration of the higher
group to which they belonged; the second is manifested in a degradation of a
social group as a whole, in an abasement of its rank among other groups, or in
its disintegration as a social unit. The first case of “sinking” reminds one of
an individual falling from a ship; the second case reminds of the sinking of
the ship itself with all on board, or of the ship as a wreck breaking itself to
pieces.
The cases of
individual infiltration into an existing higher stratum or of individuals
dropping from a higher social layer into a lower one are relatively common and
comprehensible. They need no explanation. The second form of social ascending
and descending, the rise and fall of groups, must be considered more carefully.
Before the recognition of the Christian
religion by Constantine the Great, the position of a Christian Bishop, or the
Christian clergy, was not a high one among other social rank of Roman society.
In the next few centuries the Christian Church, as a whole, experienced an
enormous elevation of social position and rank. Through this wholesale
elevation of the Christian Church, the members of the clergy, and especially the
Church dignitaries, were elevated to the highest ranks of Medieval society.
Pitirim Sorokin, “Social Mobility”, Harper, New York
and London, 1927.
from chapter VII
“Social Mobility, Its Forms and Fluctuation”,
pp. 132-136.
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[ ανάρτηση 11 Δεκεμβρίου 2024 :
Pitirim Sorokin
Social Mobility
κοινωνική κινητικότητα
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
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