Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._4

The various statistical forms descriptive social indicators can take are described by Land (1983, p. 6). These forms can be ordered by degree of abstraction from those which require only one or two data series and little processing (e.g., an agespecific death rate) to those which involve more complicated processing into a single summary index (e.g., years of life expectancy at a given age and years of active or disability-free life expectancy at a given age). Descriptive social indicators can be formulated at any of these levels of abstraction. Moreover, as described in Juster and Land (1981), these indicators can, at least in principle, be organized into demographicor time-budget-based systems of social accounts.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT FUNCTION: MONITORING, SOCIAL REPORTING, AND FORECASTING

The social indicators movement was motivated by the principle that it is important to monitor changes over time in a broad range of social phenomena that extend beyond the traditional economic indicators and include indicators of quality of life (Andrews 1989, p. 401; Noll and Zapf 1994, p. 5). Many organized actors in contemporary society—in- cluding government agencies, organizations and activists interested in social change programs, scholars, and marketing researchers interested in market development and product innovations—moni- tor indicators in which they have a vested interest and want to see increase or decline (Ferriss 1988, p. 603).

A second principle that has been part of the social indicators movement from the outset (Biderman 1970; Land 1996) is that a critically important role of social indicators in contemporary democratic societies is public enlightenment through social reporting. In brief, modern democracies require social reporting to describe social trends, explain why an indicator series behaves as it does and how this knowledge affects interpretation, and highlight important relationships among series (Parke and Seidman 1978, p. 15).

It also is important to document the consequences that are reasonably attributable to changes in a series. This includes the systematic use of social indicators to forecast trends in and/or turning points in social conditions (Land 1983, p. 21). The

area of projection or forecasting is filled with uncertainties. Techniques range from the naive extrapolation of recent trends to future scenario construction to complicated model building with regression, time series, or stochastic process techniques. Moreover, there appear to be intrinsic limits to the accuracy of forecasts in large-scale natural and social systems (Land and Schneider 1987). However, demands for the anticipation of the future (at a minimum, a description of ‘‘what will happen if present trends continue’’), foresight and forward thinking in the public and private sectors, and the assessment of critical trends (Gore 1990) appear to be an intrinsic part of contemporary postindustrial societies. Thus, it is prudent to expect that ‘‘anticipation’’ will become an increasingly important part of the enlightenment function of social indicators.

Social Reporting at the Turn of the Century.

As the decade of the 1990s unfolded, the model of a comprehensive national social report in the tradition pioneered by Ogburn and Olson clearly faltered in the United States, at least in the sense of federal government sponsorship and/or production. However, the key ideas of monitoring, reporting, and forecasting were evident to a greater or lesser extent in the production of continuing periodic subject-matter-specific publications by various federal agencies, including Science Indicators (published by the National Science Foundation),

The Condition of Education (published by the Department of Education), the Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice (published by the Department of Justice), and numerous Census Bureau publications. Special topics involving groups of federal agencies also receive attention from time to time. For instance, in 1997 the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics began the annual publication America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. In addition, numerous private research organizations, policy institutes, and scholars continue to produce reports, monographs, and books interpreting social trends and developments in several areas of social concern.

In contrast to the situation in the United States, comprehensive social reports and social indicators compendiums continue to be published periodically in several other countries. Examples are the Social Trends series published annually since 1970 by the United Kingdom’s Central Statistical Office, the Datenreport series published bien-

nially since 1983 by the Federal Republic of Germany, the Social and Cultural Report published biennually by the Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands, and Australian Social Trends published annually by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Citations and summary reviews of these and other social indicators and social reports publications can be found in the quarterly newsletter and review of social reports SINET: Social Indicators Network News (see the World Wide Web home page: http://www.soc.duke.edu/dept/ sinet/index.html).

The difference between the organization of social indicators and reporting work in the United States and that in other countries is in part attributable to the lack of a central statistical office responsible for the coordination of all government statistical activities in the United States. More generally, it is indicative of the fact that despite the invention of the ideas of social indicators and comprehensive social reporting in the United States, this nation has lagged in their institutionalization ( Johnston 1989). Whether a new round of legislative efforts (e.g., then-Senator Albert Gore, Jr.’s, proposed Critical Trends Assessment Act [Gore 1990]) will create the necessary institutional base remains to be seen. Perhaps marking a turning point and indicative of things to come is Public Law 100-297, enacted April 28, 1988, which requires an annual education indicators report to the president and Congress.

Quality of Life as a Unifying Concept. Another development became vividly apparent in the 1990s (Land 1996): the widespread political, popular, and theoretical appeal of the ‘‘quality-of-life’’ (QOL) concept. As was noted above, this concept emerged and became part of the social indicators movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s as doubts were raised in highly developed Western industrial societies about economic growth as the major goal of societal progress (Noll and Zapf 1994, pp. 1–2). The ‘‘social costs’’ of economic growth were cited, and there was increasing doubt about whether ‘‘more’’ should be equated with ‘‘better.’’ The QOL concept that resulted from this discussion was posed as an alternative to the increasingly questionable concept of the affluent society and entered discussions of social policy and politics as a new but more complex multidimensional goal. As a goal of social and economic

policy, QOL encompasses all (or at least many) domains of life and subsumes, in addition to individual material and immaterial well-being, collective values such as freedom, justice, and the guarantee of natural conditions of life for present and future generations. The political use of the idea of QOL is paralleled in the private sector by the widespread use and popularity of numerous rankings—based on weighted scales of multiple domains of well-being—of the ‘‘best’’ places to live, work, do business, play, and so on, whether they are cities, states, regions, or nations.

The theoretical appeal of the QOL concept as an integrating notion in the social sciences and related disciplines is due in part to the perceived importance of measuring individuals’ subjective assessments of their satisfaction with various life domains and with life as a whole, as was reviewed above. For instance, QOL has become a concept that bridges the discipline of marketing research and strategic business policy with social indicators. Marketing is an importance social force—with farreaching direct and indirect impacts on the prevailing QOL in a society—through consumer satisfaction (Samli 1987; Sirgy and Samli 1995) and its impact on satisfaction with life as a whole. The intersection of marketing research with social indicators through the QOL concept led to the organization in the mid-1990s of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (for information about the society and its activities, see its Web homepage: http://www.cob.vt.edu/market/isqols/). Sociologists who want to become more involved in the field of social indicators should participate in this international and interdisciplinary society.

Summary Indices of the Quality of Life. As the twenty-first century approaches, it is evident that the field of social indicators is entering a new era of the construction of summary social indicators. Often these indices attempt to summarize indicators (objective and/or subjective) of a number of domains of life into a single index of the quality of life. They thus attempt to answer one of the original questions that motivated the social indicators movement: How are we doing overall in terms of the quality of life? With respect to our past? With respect to other comparable units (e.g., cities, states, regions, nations)? Many pioneers of the social indicators movement in the 1960s and 1970s backed away from the development of sum-

mary indices to concentrate on conducting basic research on social indicators and the measurement of the quality of life and the development of a richer social database. With the tremendous increase in the quality of social data available for many societies today compared to two or three decades in the past, a new generation of social indicators researchers has returned to the task of summary index construction. Some examples are

(1) at the level of the broadest possible comparisons of nations with respect to the overall quality of life, the Human Development Index (United Nations Development Programme 1993), Diener’s (1995) Value-Based Index of National Quality of Life, and Estes’s (1988, 1998) Index of Social Progress and (2) at the level of comparisons at the national level over time in the United States, the

American Demographics Index of Well-Being (Kacapyr 1996), The Fordham Index of Social Health (Miringoff 1996), and the Genuine Progress Indicator (Redefining Progress 1995). The field of social indicators probably will see several decades of such index construction and competition among various indices, with a corresponding need for careful assessments to determine which indices have substantive validity for which populations in the assessment of the quality of life and its changes over time and across social space.

THE POLICY ANALYSIS FUNCTION: POLICY GUIDANCE AND DIRECTED SOCIAL CHANGE

Policy analysts distinguish various ways of guiding or affecting public policy, including problem definition, policy choice and evaluation of alternatives, and program monitoring (MacRae 1985, pp. 20–29). The social reporting–public enlightenment approach to social indicators centers on the use of social indicators in problem definition and the framing of the terms of policy discourse. Indeed, studies of the actual use of social indicators suggest that this is precisely the manner in which they have affected public action (Innes 1989).

However, policy analysts from Olson to MacRae always have hoped for more from social indicators: the shaping of public policy and planing through the policy choice process. At a minimum, this requires the identification of key variables that determine criterion indicators and changes in them

(i.e., causal knowledge). More generally, it requires the construction of elaborate causal models and forecasting equations (often in the form of a ‘‘computer model’’) that can be used to simulate ‘‘what would happen if’’ under a variety of scenarios involving policies and actions. An example of this is the development of the National Cancer Institute model for the control and reduction of the incidence of cancer in the United States to the year 2000 (Greenwald and Sondik 1986). Various policy and action scenarios involving prevention, education, screening, and treatment and their implications for cancer mortality were simulated and estimated with this computer model. These simulations led to a decision to allocate funds to prevention, education, screening, and treatment, and their implications for cancer mortality were simulated and estimated with this computer model. These simulations led to a decision to allocate funds to a prevention program rather than to additional clinical treatment.

At a more discursive level, the following model for directed social change has emerged in policy uses of social indicators in areas such as health, education, and the welfare of children and youth in the United States (Ferriss 1998):

1.Identify trends in criterion indicators, the direction or rate of change of which should be changed.

2.Gather intelligence from experiments, field research, or theory that suggests what should be done to bring about the desired change.

3.Launch a decentralized program to effect change in specific criterion indicators by specific amounts, to be attained by a target date.

4.Monitor progress by periodically assessing trends on the specific indicators, modifying strategies as needed.

5.As initial goals are reached, set new goals for continued progress.

Many more applications of social indicators to policy choice and evaluation are likely to appear in the future. In particular, such applications probably will occur in three areas. The first is the additional development of well-grounded, theoretically informed, and policy-relevant indicators

and models for national and/or regional-level analyses in fields such as health, education, crime, and science (Bulmer 1989). In such applications, the phenomena to be included are definable and delimited and the limitations of the data on which the indicators are based are known. The second is the use of social indicators in the field of social impact assessment (Finsterbusch 1980; Land 1982), which has arisen as part of environmental impact assessment legislation and attempts to anticipate the social effects of large-scale public projects (e.g., dams, highways, nuclear waste disposal facilities) as well as to assess damage from both natural and human-made disasters (e.g., earthquakes, oil spills, nuclear plant accidents). This application of social indicators in impact assessments brings the field back full circle to its point of origination in the American Academy’s effort of the 1960s. Finally, the many times series of indicators now available will increasingly be used by sociologists to assess theories, hypotheses, and models of social change, thus bringing social indicators data to bear on core issues in sociology.

(SEE ALSO: Attitudes; Longitudinal Research; Public Opinion; Quality of Life; Social Change; Social Forecasting)

———, ———, and Willard L. Rodgers 1976 The Quality of American Life: Perceptions, Evaluations, and Satisfactions. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Carley, Michael 1981 Social Measurement and Social Indicators: Issues of Policy and Theory. London: Allen and Unwin.

Cummins, Robert A. 1995 ‘‘On the Trail of the Gold Standard for Subjective Well-Being.’’ Social Indicators Research 35:170–200.

——— 1998 ‘‘The Second Approximation to an International Standard for Life Satisfaction.’’ Social Indicators Research 43:307–334.

Davis, James A. 1984 ‘‘New Money, An Old Man/Lady and ‘‘Two’s Company’: Subjective Welfare in the NORC General Social Survey.’’ Social Indicators Research 15:319–351.

Diener, Ed 1994 ‘‘Assessing Subjective Well-Being: Progress and Opportunities.’’ Social Indicators Research

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———, Eunkook M. Suh, Richard E. Lucas, and Heidi L. Smith 1999 ‘‘Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress.’’ Psychological Bulletin 110: forthcoming.

Duncan, Otis Dudley 1969 Toward Social Reporting: Next Steps. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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KENNETH C. LAND

SOCIAL INEQUALITY

Social inequality refers to the graduated dimensions (Blau 1977), vertical classifications (Ossowski 1963: Schwartz 1981) and bounded categories (Tilly 1998), or hierarchical relations (Burt 1982) by which human populations at varying levels of aggregation are differentiated. This concept is among the oldest and most diversely defined in sociology, extending back at least as far as Plato’s conception of the republic and developed subsequently in the social theories of Marx [1859] 1976–1978, Mosca (1939), Weber [1947] 1978, Simmel (1896), Sorokin (1941), Eisenstadt (1971), Merton (1968), and others. The construct often is used interchangeably with related (though relatively more specific) concepts such as social class, social stratification, socioeconomic status, power, privilege, cumulative advantage, dependence, and dominance. It is relevant for the study of social systems that range in size from the dyad (Simmel 1896) to the modern world system (Wallerstein 1974).

SOCIAL INEQUALITY AS A GRADUATED

DIMENSION

When social inequality is conceptualized as a graduated dimension, it is treated as a distributional phenomenon. Here the approach is to define inequality in terms of the distribution of socially valued attributes such as education, income, information, health, and influence in a population. However, distributional phenomena can be examined from one of two very different assumptions. The first assumption views inequality as being an outcome of or generated by the underlying distribution of valued traits among individuals. In this sense, it refers to ‘‘regular differences in power, goods, services, and privileges among defined sets’’ of actors (Granovetter and Tilly 1988). The second assumption views inequality strictly as a systemlevel property with individual-level differences that are defined as derivative rather than generative (Blau 1977). Distributions such as the size of the system and its total volume of resources are exam-

ined as higher levels of aggregation, with the goal of determining the overall level of inequality (oligarchy) across systems and without reference to individual differences (e.g., Lenski 1966; Mayhew 1973; Mayhew and Schollaert 1980).

Both approaches operationalize inequality along criteria that usually are measurable at the level of individual actors (persons, races, gender categories, organizations, nation-states) in a system. Early applications of the first assumption can be found in Pareto’s ([1897] 1980) examinations of income distributions and the circulation of elites. Pareto proposed that economic and political inequality emerged from the distribution and redistribution of ‘‘congenital abilities’’ that were valued within social systems. Sorokin (1941) proposed similar arguments to explain social and cultural processes of mobility and inequality.

Among the most influential and controversial conceptualizations of inequality as a graduated dimension emerging from individual differences was Davis and Moore’s (1945) functionalist statement of the principles of stratification. Those authors argued that social inequality results from the differential distribution of societal rewards to individuals on the basis of their relative achievement of ranked social positions. This achievement process, with its implications for social mobility, was formally specified by Blau and Duncan (1967), who established that educational attainment mediated the process of intergenerational social mobility among men. Those researchers defined social inequality as socioeconomic status based on the economic and prestige rewards accorded to achieved occupational positions in American society. The strong parallel between this model of inequality and the neoclassical model of human capital (see Becker 1964) is well established (Wright 1978).

The most prominent distributional theories of inequality, however, are founded on macrosocial views of the division of labor, the rationalization of authority, and the distribution of social and economic rewards in industrial societies. Weber’s ([1947] 1978) theory of economic organization proposed that capitalist systems of property, power, and prestige developed out of the conjunction of changing systems of economic exchange (money economies) and accounting (double-entry bookkeeping) with rationalized systems of social con-

trol (rational-legal authority). Thus, social inequality in industrial society developed along economic and political dimensions to produce the multidimensional bases of inequality: class, status, and party. Lenski’s (1966) comparative study of the evolution of inequality attempted to test Weber’s rationalization thesis that inequality evolves necessarily (functionally) with increasing differentiation in the direction of systems of privilege based on rational authority and away from socially illegitimate systems of force or economic dominance.

Accordingly, distributional inequality can be concerned with more than the single dimension of individual socioeconomic outcomes. It also addresses macrosocial patterns of inequality (Eisenstadt 1971). According to Blau (1977), the parameters of social structure include inequality and hetero- geneity—or graduated and nominal dimensions, respectively—which intersect to constrain and differentiate individuals’ opportunities as well as their motivations and outcomes. The intersection of graduated and nominal parameters creates diverse systems or populations with differing distributional properties that cannot be reduced to an original individual source. Blau’s distributional theory is ‘‘macrosocial in the sense that the ‘cases’ are populations or communities and the ‘variables’ measure some aspect (a rate or a distributional property) of these populations’’ (Skvoretz and Fararo 1986, p. 30). Following this approach, indicators of inequality can be defined in terms such as Lorenz curves (e.g., Gini indices, Theil coefficients), social welfare functions, or similar distributional properties (see Allison 1978; Wolfson 1997).

The emergence of the new global economy over the last two decades of the twentieth century has been associated with what has been characterized as a ‘‘surge’’ in wage and household income inequality (Gottschalk and Smeeding 1997) and a ‘‘winner-take-all income market’’ (Levy 1998) in advanced industrial countries. By and large, the growth of very high incomes in some sectors and the stagnation of wages in selected labor markets have produced a widening distribution of income. Distributional measures of economic inequality such as Gini and Theil coefficients reveal growing inequality among employed workers across advanced industrial societies with some of the highest inequality observed in the United States.

Economic inequality also may intersect with the nominal category of race, for example, and produce more diverse outcomes than traditional functional or neoclassical economic theories would predict. Examinations of patterns of interracial/ interethnic marriage, for example, indicate that the association between occupational achievement and race is mediated by the extent of interracial/ interethnic marriage in a community (see Blum 1984; Blau et al. 1982). This treatment of inequality, which is based on notions of dispersion and association, departs from the simple reduction of unequal outcomes to individual attributes and embeds the process in extended distributional contexts.

Other distributional approaches introduce constructs to explain inequality at levels above individual attributes, although individuals usually remain the units of analysis. Spatial and temporal contexts, for example, define and constrain distributions of individual outcomes. The examination of occupational mobility within organizational or la- bor-market contexts attempts to nest the process of inequality in the workplace within organizational and occupational boundaries. The availability of occupational positions within a system is seen as being independent of the motivations and other attributes of workers. White’s (1970) influential notion of ‘‘vacancy chains’’ exemplifies this approach with its argument that job vacancies produce opportunity structures for individual mobility and define the mobility chances, and thus distributional outcomes, of individuals. Vacancychain models have been particularly useful for examining closed opportunity systems, such as internal labor markets (Sorensen 1977).

Distributions of individuals in systems of inequality also are influenced by temporal factors. Merton’s (1968) provocative discussion of the ‘‘Matthew effect’’ in scientific career systems argues that over time, initial inequalities in a system bias distributional outcomes in favor of initial advantage. Formal extensions and applications of Merton’s notion of accumulative advantage have been applied across contexts (Cole and Cole 1973; Allison and Stewart 1974) to establish patterns of temporal regulation of distributional outcomes over and above the attributes of individuals over time. The cumulative advantage hypothesis has received considerable attention in research on the relationship between age and inequality within cohorts (Dannefer

1987; O’Rand and Henretta 1999). Succeeding cohorts of U.S. populations display growing inequality across the age span, with higher coefficients of inequality at older ages within cohorts and (in recent decades) increased inequality among the aged in successive cohorts (Crystal 1995).

SOCIAL INEQUALITY AS A VERTICAL CLASSIFICATION OR BOUNDED CATEGORY

When social inequality is conceptualized as a vertical classification system, it is treated as an oppositional phenomenon. Here the approach is to define inequality in terms of ‘‘the relative position in a matrix of oppositions’’ (Schwartz 1981, p. 94) of social categories that determine relations of dominance, such as class, race, and gender. Vertical classifications grow out of antagonistic and contradictory interests in the relations of ‘‘objective’’ positions in the social division of labor, not out of the dispersed motivations and interests of individuals. Dominance and subordination emerge from the objective opposition of social categories. Dichotomous, binary, and polar conceptions of inequality (e.g., ruler–ruled, rich–poor, white–black, masculine–feminine) generally are informed by an oppositional framework. Some researchers have argued that this approach to inequality may be the most ancient in human social consciousness (Ossowski 1963; Schwartz 1981).

Class theories that follow Marxian frameworks dominate this approach (Braverman 1974; Wright 1985). Marx’s theory of class proposes that class relations in capitalist systems are inevitably in conflict. Since all value is ultimately produced by labor, all (capitalist) profit must be at the expense of labor. The objective positions of the owning class (bourgeoisie) and the laboring class (proletariat) therefore are necessarily antagonistic. Advanced capitalist systems sustain the exploitation of labor through rationalized job-definition systems and the degradation of work (Braverman 1974). Wright (1978) has argued, furthermore, that in advanced capitalist societies, the elaborate differentiation of functions originally embodied in entrepreneurial capitalism into many different categories has not overcome the fundamental oppositional inequality of its origins; contradictory class positions continue to exist as a result of the underlying structure of capitalist relations.

Oppositional frameworks lend themselves to the examination of classlike relations such as those observable in raceand gender-centered systems of inequality. Oppositional approaches to the examination of race inequality can be traced to Myrdal’s (1944) pioneering analysis of racial exploitation in the U.S. context. These approaches argue that race is an invariant principle of vertical classification that is masked by ideologies of economic progress and attainment (Pinkney 1984). Debates regarding the inevitability of racial opposition as the basis of inequality center on the substitutability of race and class as categories in the recent history of U.S. inequality. Wilson (1980) has proposed the controversial argument that class inequality has superseded race inequality as the basis of cross-race differences in economic and social outcomes.

Theories of gender inequality extend back to Mill’s libertarian essay on the subjection of women (Mill 1859) and Engels’s Marxian analysis two decades later (Engels [1884] 1942) of the relationship between private property and the stratification of family (gender) roles. However, contemporary feminist theories provide the strongest argument for gender inequality as an oppositional, vertical classification system. The sex/gender system, it is argued, subordinates women in patriarchal relations that exist over and above class relations ( Jaggar 1984), since male dominance over women’s productive and reproductive roles predates the emergence of capitalism (Harding 1983). This system of inequality leads inevitably to a conflict of interests and to the emergence of competing ideologies.

Since the notion of dominance is central to vertical-classification approaches to inequality, these approaches are readily applied to the analysis of large-scale systems of inequality, such as the state (Skocpol 1979) and the modern world system (Wallerstein 1974). Mechanisms of domination extend beyond class (or classlike) interests and are observable in the historical relations of nationstates (Reddy 1987) and multistate sectors of the modern world system (Wallerstein 1974). Asymmetrical relations of exchange and dependence between states and geopolitical state sectors create relations of dominance, which define global inequalities. Those inequalities can be formulated as distributional phenomena by following a functional framework; however, the historical analysis

of dominance systems lends itself more readily to oppositional analysis. The classification of the world system into core and periphery sectors that resulted from historically contingent factors introduces notions of centrality and dominance that suggest more than an underlying distribution of resources (Wallerstein 1974).

Tilly’s (1998) statement on ‘‘durable inequalities’’ argues that persistent inequalities based on exploitation, opportunity hoarding, adaptation, and emulation largely take the form of bounded (usually dichotomous) categories (male–female, slave–owner, citizen–foreigner, white–black, etc.) that are resilient and readily generalizable across time and social systems. Relationships of inequality persist because participants in paired categories adapt to and participate in the perpetuation of those arrangements.

SOCIAL INEQUALITY AS HIERARCHICAL

RELATIONS

When social inequality is conceptualized as hierarchical relations, it is treated as a system of interactions or interdependencies characterized by relative symmetry (equality) and asymmetry (inequality) among relations. Here the approach usually is to define the form of social relations rather than the attributes of individuals in those relations and to account for patterns of unequal relations without referring to oppositions. Inequality or dominance stems from positions in hierarchical relations, not from the a priori possession or control of resources or power by individuals, groups, or categories (Marsden 1983). This relational approach to inequality can be traced to Simmel (1896), whose studies of the structures of superordination–sub- ordination by persons, groups, and principles continue to inform research on hierarchical relations and social networks in modern life (Coleman 1982).

Because social relationships have formal properties such as connectedness, transitivity, reciprocity, and multiplexity, they are measurable units of analysis in the study of social inequality within populations at all levels, from siblings to communities to transnational trading systems (Lin and Marsden 1982). These social units make up complex configurations of social relations within which distinctive positions of relative equivalence or cen-

trality can be revealed (Burt 1982). Thus, in their study of coalitions and elite structures in the German community of Altneustadt, Laumann and Pappi (1976) determined the relational bases of influence between natives and newcomers by using network techniques that emphasized associational patterns rather than personal attributes. Patterns of social distance and connectedness among corporate actors, not the preexisting distribution of resources, defined the influence process in that community.

A study by Granovetter (1974) of the jobsearch process clearly demonstrates the relative utility of relational over distributional approaches to inequality. Granovetter demonstrates that weak ties, rather than strong ties, in a community prevail in a successful job search. The ‘‘strength of weak ties’’ hypothesis (related to Simmel’s tertius gaudens, or the third who enjoys) provides the counterintuitive argument that weaker (secondary) social contacts increase individuals’ access to jobs more than stronger (primary) ties do. These ties operate independently of the attributes of individual job seekers.

The ‘‘strength of weak ties’’ phenomenon can be extended beyond the job-search process to examine structures of relational inequality in different contexts. Studies of interlocking directorates and informational brokerage systems, for example, demonstrate that loosely coupled relational systems of different forms produce different systems of social inequality (Burt 1982). The network of ties constitutes a social-constraint context within which actors are ‘‘captured.’’ Burt’s (1983) study of corporate philanthropy as a cooptive relation is a specific example of the relational bases of inequality in a market context. Using Internal Revenue Service data on firm expenditures for advertising and philanthropy, Burt demonstrates that firm philanthropy co-opts the household sector by legitimizing the firm to the public as a protector and by improving the ability of specific classes to purchase the firm’s products (Burt 1983, p. 424). The strength of this approach is that advertising, which is more blatantly co-optive, does not escape public suspicion, whereas philanthropy does so more easily. Firms in an economic sector perform unequally as a result of their relative co-optive relations with the public, and the public has a co-optive relationship as consumers in that context.

Finally, it should be mentioned that despite the rationale provided above for the bulk of sociological research on relational inequality, the relational approach has been used to examine the importance of individual resources for social inequality. Indeed, early experimental efforts to study small group processes of inequality demonstrated that both individual resources and social relations can create systems of inequality, whether measured as leadership processes or as communication networks (Thibaut and Kelley 1959). More recently, studies of what Burt (1982) has termed ‘‘ego-centered’’ networks examine network position itself as an individual resource with implications for social inequality.

APPROACHES TO SOCIAL INEQUALITY

The three major approaches to the study of social inequality outlined above have different implications for theory as well as for method. The distributional approach that examines social inequality as a graduated dimension depends primarily on sample data and can be directed toward individual as well as structural explanations of inequality. The oppositional approach to vertical classifications and bounded categories may use sample data but has tended to adopt historical and qualitative approaches to study the institutionalization of dominance in various forms, such as class, race, and gender, as well as other forms of domination/subordination. The relational approach, which provides a direct method for examining the social context of inequality, may use sample or case data to map the configurations of the relations of inequality with implications for explanation at both the individual and structural levels.

Blau, Peter M. 1977 Inequality and Heterogeneity. New York: Free Press.

———, Terry C. Blum, and Joseph E. Schwartz 1982 ‘‘Heterogeneity and Intermarriage.’’ American Sociological Review 47:45–62.

———, and Otis Dudley Duncan 1967 The American Occupational Structure. New York: Wiley.

Blum, Terry C. 1984 ‘‘Racial Inequality and Salience: An Examination of Blau’s Theory of Social Structure.’’

Social Forces 62:607–617.

Braverman, Harry 1974 ‘‘Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century.’’ Monthly Review 26:1–134.

Burt, Ronald S. 1982 Toward a Structural Theory of Action: Network Models of Social Structure, Perception, and Action. New York: Academic Press.

———, 1983 ‘‘Corporate Philanthropy as a Cooptive Relation.’’ Social Forces 62:419–449.

Cole, Jonathan R., and Stephen Cole 1973 Social Stratification in Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Coleman, James S. 1982 The Asymmetric Society. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.

Crystal, Stephen 1995 ‘‘Economic Status of the Elderly.’’ In Robert H. Binstock and Linda K. George, eds.,

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Dannefer, Dale 1987. ‘‘Aging As Intracohort Differentiation: Accentuation, The Matthew Effect, and the Life Course.’’ Sociological Forum 2: 211–236.

Davis, Kingsley, and Wilbert E. Moore 1945 ‘‘Some Principles of Stratification.’’ American Sociological Review 10:242–249.

Eisenstadt, S. M. 1971 Social Differentiation and Stratification. Glencoe, Ill.: Scott Foresman.

Engels, Frederick (1884) 1942 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. New York: International Publishers.

(SEE ALSO: Equality of Opportunity; Social Stratification)

REFERENCES

Allison, Paul D. 1978 ‘‘Measures of Inequality.’’ American Sociological Review 43:865–880.

———, and John A. Stewart 1974 ‘‘Productivity Differences among Scientists: Evidence for Accumulative Advantage.’’ American Sociological Review 99:596–606.

Becker, Gary S. 1964 Human Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Granovetter, Mark 1974 Getting a Job. Cambridge, Mass.:

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———, and Charles Tilly 1988 ‘‘Inequality and Labor Processes.’’ In Neil J. Smelser, ed., Handbook of Sociology. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Gottschalk, Peter, and Timothy Smeeding 1997 ‘‘CrossNational Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality.’’ Journal of Economic Literature 35:633–687.

Harding, Sandra C. 1983 Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel.