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To compare France and Germany, we will take a new approach to the discussion on lifestyles and social stratification. Instead of anchoring our definition of social stratification in predefined concepts, such as social class and status, we will empirically explore the latent patterns of social stratification and lifestyles. Our strategy allows us to investigate whether social stratification is best measured by one, two, or more dimensions; and then to map the associated patterns of lifestyles onto this/these dimension(s).

As indicators of social stratification, we use education, household income, and occupational status; and to measure lifestyles, we use data from two surveys on lifestyles and cultural consumption (Media og kulturforbruksundersøkelsen 2004, Norway; and module Pratiques culturelles et sportives, Enquête Permanente sur les Conditions de Vie 2003, France). We limit our analysis to occupationally active respondents, 20–64 years of age.

We would expect our findings to differ somewhat between the two countries; but given that social stratification is a pervasive element of all modern societies, we would also expect to find common empirical patterns that may be of relevance to the way we conceptualize lifestyles and social stratification.

Purpose – This study examines religious stratification in America from the colonial period until the present.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We use a conflict theoretical approach to examine trends in religious stratification over time. The rankings of religious groups are based on tabulations of the religious affiliations of economic, political, and cultural elites collected at 37 data points from the colonial era until the present.

Findings – In the colonial period, the Upper stratum religious groups (Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists) accounted for nearly 90 percent of elites in cultural, economic, and political spheres. The representation of Upper stratum groups among American elites declined from the 1800s to the early 1900s, rebounded somewhat after the 1930s, and then declined after the 1960s. The four groups that comprise the New Upper stratum (Episcopalians, Jews, Presbyterians, and Unitarian-Universalists) account for nearly half of the nation's elites while representing less than 10 percent of the total population.

Research implications – Our research indicates that religious stratification has had largely destabilizing effects on society. In line with other research on stratification, we find that the harmful effects were somewhat muted when inequality was most severe, and these negative effects increased as religious inequality became less pronounced.

Originality/Value – This chapter highlights the importance of religion as a factor in stratification. The use of a conflict perspective allows us to bridge the gap between the stratification literature and the religion literature.

In their authoritative literature review, Breen and Jonsson (2005) claim that ‘one of the most significant trends in the study of inequalities in educational attainment in the past decade has been the resurgence of rational-choice models focusing on educational decision making’. The starting point of the present contribution is that these models have largely ignored the explanatory relevance of social interactions. To remedy this shortcoming, this paper introduces a micro-founded formal model of the macro-level structure of educational inequality, which frames educational choices as the result of both subjective ability/benefit evaluations and peer-group pressures. As acknowledged by Durlauf (2002, 2006) and Akerlof (1997), however, while the social psychology and ethnographic literature provides abundant empirical evidence of the explanatory relevance of social interactions, statistical evidence on their causal effect is still flawed by identification and selection bias problems. To assess the relative explanatory contribution of the micro-level and network-based mechanisms hypothesised, the paper opts for agent-based computational simulations. In particular, the technique is used to deduce the macro-level consequences of each mechanism (sequentially introduced) and to test these consequences against French aggregate individual-level survey data. The paper's main result is that ability and subjective perceptions of education benefits, no matter how intensely differentiated across agent groups, are not sufficient on their own to generate the actual stratification of educational choices across educational backgrounds existing in France at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By computational counterfactual manipulations, the paper proves that network-based interdependencies among educational choices are instead necessary, and that they contribute, over and above the differentiation of ability and of benefit perceptions, to the genesis of educational stratification by amplifying the segregation of the educational choices that agents make on the basis of purely private ability/benefit calculations.

Purpose – In order to study how religious behaviour is evolving in contemporary societies, the chapter looks at the relation between the individuals' position in social stratification and their participation to the weekly mass, and at its evolution in contemporary Italy.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The data come from the Italian National Election Study (ITANES) database, including national representative surveys from 1968 to 2006, and are analyzed with logit models.

Findings – Weekly mass participation has decreased from 1968 to 2006. The trend was rapid in the 1960s and 1970s, has slowed in the 1980s, but it has started again in the 1990s. Ceteris paribus, the upper class, shows a consistently more religious behaviour than the intermediate and the lower ones, and that the least educated are more religious. There is also evidence of a strong and consistent cohort effect, persisting across the considered period. Each cohort does not change much its participation to the weekly mass over time, but each new cohort shows a lower level of participation.

Research limitations/Implications – The findings give support to the classical secularization thesis, despite the many critiques addressed to it since the 1990s. Given that Italy is one of the most religious Western countries, this is a quite important finding. Some support is also given to the hypothesis of religion as an ‘instrumentum regni’, according to which it is in the interest of the higher social strata to be more religious, as religion supports and legitimates existing patterns of social inequality. Findings concerning cohorts point to socialization as the actual mechanism changing behaviours and attitudes.

The current state of globalization is aggravating the inequalities within globalized cities and is generating a high degree of conflict. If we seek to find out to what extent ghettos, agents in conflict or if there is a situation of unsustainable imbalance caused by this degree of inequality, we should consider the objective data and the social consciousness of stratification enclosed in social interaction of the people living in neighborhoods in global cities. This chapter explains how we can study this topic with an example: a town in the Metropolitan Area of Madrid in 2012, with a theoretical perspective that asks about how the human space is today and how everybody builds his social identification, and a methodology that uses the problem-centered interview to collect data. From this perspective, it is discussed whether the new urban social structure tends to be dual or fragmented. When social awareness is studied, it may be understood that urban people tend to develop fragmented identities today based on leisure and family that bond everyone with other by small groups or weak bonds. However, into a poor urban area, there are other boundaries that a lot of people recognize based on class and ethnic differences that mean polarization and conflict, but these ones work only in particular problematic situations. So, the image of system of stratification in large cities appears to be a dynamic thing, under the influence of a series of different factors which are not only global but also local.

In the growing field of nonviolent social movement studies, questions of power are often layered in inquiries into drivers of mobilization and dynamics of success, from the individual to the societal level. The different ways marginalized groups utilize power are not adequately theorized, however. Here I address paradigmatic approaches to understanding power in nonviolent movements, identifying conceptual limitations to explaining stratification among nonviolent resisters. In response, I develop a framework for better understanding the socially constructed origins of nonviolent power among different mobilized groups. I first provide a sociology of knowledge survey of common theories of power in nonviolent mobilization. I also review literature on mobilization among marginalized populations to identify valuable insights lacking in nonviolent movements studies. I then explore one case of marginalized nonviolent resistance, that of the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo who mobilized for an end to the Argentine Dirty War. Through this case, I develop a social constructionist framework that can be generalized to better understand how stratification shapes nonviolent resistance differently for different actors. I conclude by proposing a general framework of inquiry, guiding scholars to pay attention to four dimensions of conflict and resistance when examining the power dynamics of nonviolent movements: the temporal context of conflict, the degree of repression, actor status and positionality, and how nonviolent strategies and tactics correspond to each of these dimensions.

This chapter documents how eugenics, scientific racism, and hereditarianism survived at Harvard well into the interwar years. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Thomas Nixon Carver and Frank W. Taussig published works in which they established a close nexus between an individual’s economic position and his biological fitness. Carver, writing in 1929, argued that social class rigidities are attributable to the inheritance of superior and inferior abilities on the respective social class levels and proposed an “economic test of fitness” as a eugenic criterion to distinguish worthy from unworthy individuals. In 1932, Taussig, together with Carl Smith Joslyn, published American Business Leaders – a study that showed how groups with superior social status are proportionately much more productive of professional and business leaders than are the groups with inferior social status. Like Carver, Taussig and Joslyn attributed this circumstance primarily to hereditary rather than environmental factors. Taussig, Joslyn, and Carver are not the only protagonists of our story. The Russian-born sociologists Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin, who joined the newly established Department of Sociology at Harvard in 1930, also played a crucial role. His book Social Mobility (1927) exercised a major influence on both Taussig and Carver and contributed decisively to the survival of eugenic and hereditarian ideas at Harvard in the 1930s.

The paper argues for a comprehensive method of sociological deconstruction and reconstruction that includes: (i) de-subjectifying interpretation, (ii) re-subjectifying explanation, (iii) de-objectifying understanding, and (iv) re-objectifying conceptualization.

Both methodological and substantive arguments are guided by the constructive principle of mediating interpenetration of polar opposites.

Status groups and class interests are conceived as major categories of sociological differentiation mediating between the abstractions of individuals and society. Three types of class formation are discovered in Weber’s legacy beyond Marx’s property one. Sorokin’s work in a two-dimensional social stratification and mobility is found to have major significance for developing the concept of social classes and for reconciling divergent ideas of social stratification. The principle of concept formation by mediation of interpenetrating polar opposites is found to be of greater complexity and effectiveness than Hegel’s logical principle of transcendental supersession.

The comprehensive method of sociological deconstruction and reconstruction seamlessly integrates qualitative and quantitative methods in sociology as well as concept formation and research.

The association between religion and material well-being is fundamental to research on inequality and stratification. Broadly considered, this association includes questions about how religious affiliation and religiosity are associated with work behaviors, education, income, wealth, and related family processes. Early social sciences debated if and how these traits and outcomes are related and offered important insight into the mechanisms that might explain empirical patterns (Simmel, 1997; Sombart, 1911; Weber, 1905/1930). However, the religious landscape and the mechanisms creating religion and well-being have both changed dramatically since the early days of the social sciences. The proliferation of Protestant denominations, the changing role of Catholics, and the increased presence of other religious traditions are beyond the scope of these early works. Moreover, the relationship between religion and stratification is no longer a function of large-scale shifts in the mode of production but rather reflects changing individual and group approaches to human capital, work, and saving. In the 1960s, sociologists revived these debates, but empirical challenges and a narrowing of the discussion to focus on Protestant–Catholic differences weakened and ultimately ended the literature's momentum (Broom & Glenn, 1966; Glenn & Hyland, 1967; Laumann, 1969; Lazerwitz & Rowitz, 1964; Lenski, 1961).