Social Stratification and Mobility in the World System

Abstract

This article briefly reviews earlier as well as recent approaches to world social stratification and highlights changes in paradigms similar to those in national stratification research. One reason for conceptual similarities in both fields is increasing social differentiation, which triggered reconceptualizations. In reviewing different approaches, the article focuses on the innovative contributions of network analysis, which entered world stratification research in the 1980s, and outlines its main findings. A major concern of the authors lies in the integration of these theoretical explanations of successful or failed efforts in late development, explanations which are either situated on the level of the international or the national stratification system. Starting from the fact of the remarkably different economic performance of the semiperipheral countries like Taiwan and South Korea, as compared to Mexico and Brazil, the article explains such differentiation by - among other things - the interplay of internal stratification and world economic position, an interplay subsumed under the authors' concept of `the world market for protection and social order'.