Publisher's Synopsis
This book engages in the ongoing debate concerning the consequences of the industrialization process for social mobility. Within contemporary sociology, research in social mobility represents one of the most advanced and successful specialisms. In recent times, such research has in fact done much to preserve the interdisciplinary and public standing of sociology. For example, sociologists working in the field have given new analytical leads to economists investigating income mobility and to political scientists concerned with the changing relationship between social class and politics; they have collaborated closely with statisticians in developing various quantitative modelling techniques; and they have been increasingly called upon to advise governments and governmental agencies on a range of policy issues. Two main sources of this success can be identified. Firstly, social mobility researchers have, for over more than half-a-century and several academic generations, built up a distinctive tradition that emphasises the importance of a close integration of theory, methods and empirical inquiry.;Secondly, sustained research has been undertaken of two different, but complementary and mutually supportive, forms: on the one hand, detailed analyses of mobility in particular societies and, on the other, extensive cross-national comparative studies. Meir Yaish's work falls squarely within, and does honour to, the established tradition; and, while exemplifying the nationally specific form of mobility research, at the same time well brings out the way in which this relates to the comparative form. As a case-study, Israel is of potential interest in various ways. It is a relatively new national or rather bi-national society; it is, to an exceptional degree, a society of immigrants; it is a society characterised by wide ethnic diversity; and it is a society that, over the years of its existence, has experienced very rapid economic development and associated social transformation. In each of these respects it offers, as Yaish points out, strategic opportunities for testing the main extant theories concerning levels and trends of social mobility in modern societies and their determinants.;To exploit these opportunities, it is necessary to establish the empirical facts of the Israeli case but, further, to then situate these findings in the larger context of comparative work already in existence, so that their full significance can be assessed. It is the great strength of Yaish's work that it accomplishes both of these tasks. This is not the place to attempt a summary of the results Yaish produces or of the conclusions that he draws from them. He does this well enough for himself. However, one point worthy of particular emphasis is the following. It is often the degree to which Israel conforms with what would appear typical of modern societies - its unique historical formation notwithstanding - that is of chief theoretical consequence. For example, such conformity is evident in the general pattern of the Israeli 'endogenous' mobility regime and in the facts that this regime reveals both a high degree of stability over time and only quite limited variation among different sub-populations within Israeli society, including among different ethnic communities.;Moreover, even in the one main respect in which the Israeli mobility regime lies towards an extreme of the known range of cross-national variation, that is, in the high level of social fluidity that it entails, it still does not altogether defy general expectations. For what has emerged from comparative studies is that where such national distinctiveness is apparent, this is more often to be explained in terms of specific institutional features of the society in question than in terms of systematic co-variation with factors such as level of economic development or the political complexion of ruling parties. And as Yaish indeed shows, while it is difficult to link Israel's high social fluidity either with its rapid industrialisation or with the success of public policy directed towards greater 'openness' or 'meritocracy', there is good evidence that features of Israeli military organisation make an important contribution, at least to the unusually favourable chances of long-range upward mobility that Israeli society affords.;Thus, in the end, the deepest significance of the analysis of social mobility in the Israeli case is that - as Yaish recognises - it underlines the need for fairly radical theoretical reorientation in the field. Instead of attempts at explaining levels and trends of mobility in different societies 'macro-to-macro (to use James Coleman's terminology) and through exploitation of the idea of 'social system exigencies', in the manner of the functionalist theory developed in the 1960s and 1970s, what is called for is, rather, a 'micro-to-macro' approach. That is, an approach that starts from the mobility goals and strategies of individuals and their families, acting under the differing degrees of opportunity and constraint that characterise their class situations - with, it seems, a high degree of cross-national commonality - and that then seeks to trace the aggregate outcome of the pursuit of these goals and strategies within cross-nationally variable institutional contexts. The hope must be that the rising generation of social mobility researchers, of which Meir Yaish is a notable member, will rise to the challenge that he has so ably helped to define.
