Zbigniew Sawiński

STABILITY OF PRESTIGE HIERARCHIES IN THE FACE OF SOCIAL CHANGES: POLAND, 1958-1987

Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies worldwide demonstrate that consensus and stability characterise prestige hierarchies. In Poland changes in values, and economic and political crises since 1975, provide the circumstances in which a 1987 survey of employed people re-examines this stability. Results indicate persisting stability with a correlation of 0.94 between the prestige scores of 1975 and 1987, but also show some changes in relative scores, including the downgrading of occupations connected with authority and of clerical jobs, and the upgrading of skilled workers (especially miners), farmers and small business people. These changes suggest that rationality and effectiveness are becoming more important in prestige ratings and the continuing high prestige of the intelligentsia in spite of low earnings, a Polish idiosyncracy, may show economic reality is being made to fit persistent norms.

Classification schemes and the study of social mobility: A detailed examination of the Blau-Duncan categories

The Blau-Duncan system of seventeen occuptational categories has frequently been used as the basis for the study of social mobility patterns in the contemporary United States. In this paper, we examine the validity of these categories by subdividing them in various ways and examining the mobility flows in this more detailed classification. Initial log-linear and cluster analyses using data from the Occupational Changes in a Generation II (OCG-II) survey suggest that the Blau-Duncan scheme hides certain patterns of social structuration, and we form new classification systems on the basis of these results. However, cross-validation analyses using the cumulative General Social Survey data set show that the improvements associated with our schemes do not generalize beyond the OCG-II data. Thus, we recommend continued use of the Blau-Duncan categories, given that they have been employed so often in previous work.