Social Structure and the Phenomenology of Attainment

Abstract

Reviews of recent research on the transmission of socioeconomic advantage have decried the increasing “narrowness” of the field. This chapter focuses on an alternative proposition, namely, that there is now a large enough body of work seeking fundamentally to reorient the field of social attainment studies that it is useful to identify commonalities as well as distinctive features. Conceptualization and operationalization of “social structure” in recent stratification research is the point of departure. Special attention is given to contemporary efforts to formulate a new phenomenology of attainment. In light of the many connections that are illuminated when these diverse strands are brought together, it is worthwhile to review them within the same scope and to discuss the prospect that they will form into a single specialty area within sociology.