Word: socialized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bases his SQ-status quotient-mainly on money. Although the statement seems self-evident, it is the ingeniously established bottom line to Sociologists Richard Coleman and Lee Rainwater's study of class in America, what their statistical Mr. Mim, the man-in-the-middle, likes to call his social standing. Yet the deeper one gets into the data and analysis of this book, the clearer it becomes that how Americans rank themselves is not a subject cashed in too quickly...
...reason is that Mr. Mim is sensitive and a little ambivalent about his SQ. He knows with the intuitive self-consciousness of the upwardly mobile that occupation, education, ethnic background and the concepts of social identity and life-style also count. Of course money talks. Indeed it whistles, hums and croons through the tangled switchboard of class lines that bind the conflicting emotions most Americans have about their place in an open, competitive society. What money says is "This way to the good life," not good as in Plato, but good as in "a good house in a good neighborhood...
These and a two-car-garage load of other findings were rummaged up by Coleman and Rainwater in surveys of 900 residents of Boston and Kansas City. The study, which cut across all economic and social lines, was conducted in 1971-72. The length of time it took to analyze, write and publish the conclusions is undoubtedly due to the damnable complexity of the subject. This is evidenced in the book's colliding metaphors. The class structure in the United States is imagined either as a stepladder or as an escalator, a continuum without rungs. America's ethnic...
...practitioners of a parascience, the authors are rightly humble about confusing their models with immutable truths. They may not have the lively journalistic bounce of an Alvin Toffler or the fluid drive of a Vance Packard, but Social Standing's scholarship adds some fascinating discriminations. For example, though money is the basic yardstick people use to rank themselves, income is only a component of status, not its cause. Education is the prime means to higher income - which is then translated into higher status. But schooling that does not lead to a high-paying job earns few points...
...Social position derived from money tends to decrease as one's income approaches the higher brackets. Among Boston's Brahmins, what counts most is family history, civic activities and cultural connections. In Kansas City's gilded Mission Hills section, it is country clubs and friends: the closer one can get to "the local and regional-legend rich" - Royals Owner Ewing Kauffman, Hallmark Cards Founder Joyce Hall and the bank-owning Kempers - the higher one's esteem...