Pathays to Social Class A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility [Hardcover]

Calling for a broader new approach to social mobility research which goes beyond statistics and utilizes life stories and family case histories, this richly suggestive volume explores sociological issues such as transmission between family generations, how immigrants make good, how social elites survive revolutions, and the meanings of houses, places and dreams for mobility.

Introduction,Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson
Women, Men, and Transgenerational Family Influences in Social Mobility,Paul Thompson
Heritage and its Lineage: A Case History of Transmission and Social Mobility over Five Generations,Daniel Bertaux and Isabelle Bertaux-Wiame
Shadow and Reality in Occupational History: Britain in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,David Vincent
The Familial Meaning of Housing in Social Rootedness and Mobility: Britain and France,Isabelle Bertaux-Wiame and Paul Thompson
The Local World View: Social Change and Memory in Three Tuscan Communes,Giovanni Contini
Migration, Mobility, and Social Process: Scottish Migrants in Canada,Brian Elliott
Transmission in Extreme Situations: Russian Families Expropriated by the October Revolution,Daniel Bertaux
Social Mobility in Hungary since the Second World War: Interpretations through Surveys and through Families' Histories,Rudolf Andorka
Social Mobility and the Survey Method: A Critical Analysis,Mike Savage

Especially for those American social scientists used to thinking of mobility studies as sophisticated statistical analyses of large numbers of variables in massive national data sets, the eights studies included here are themselves refreshing and unusual in their approach and specific subject matter...The richness of the details in the family chronicles suggests new information for the content of mobility theories and a new agenda for mobility studies. --Social Forces