1970s saw the Fisher-Clark thesis – that economic activity shifts from the primary, agricultural sector, into manufacturing industry, and subsequently into the tertiary, services sector – became well-established in the social science canon. In sociology it had been sufficiently well-demonstrated and debated to become an established phenomenon of sociological interest, if not consensus: see Bell (1973) Touraine (1974); Browning and Singlemann (1975); Gershuny (1978); Espring-Andersen (1993). Although it was recognised that economic/industrial sectors employ
Despite becoming a big issue in public debate, social mobility is one of the most misunderstood processes of our time. In this accessible and engaging text, Geoff Payne, one of Britain’s leading mobility analysts, presents up-to-date sociological research evidence to demonstrate how our politicians have not grasped the ways in which mobility works. The new social mobility argues for considering a wider range of dimensions of mobility and life chances, notably the workings of the labour market, to assess more accurately the causes and consequences of mobility as social and political processes. Bringing together a range of literature and research, it covers key themes of mobility analysis, and offers a critical and original approach to social mobility. This important book will challenge the well-established opinions of politicians, pressure groups, the press, academics and the public; it is also sufficiently comprehensive to be suitable for teaching and of interest to a broad academic audience.
way through very similar stages of economic and social development. This modernisation school of development theorists fed the Fisher–Clark thesis into political policy. As Browning and Singelmann (1978, 485) later objected in their more detailed analysis, the modernisation interpretation meant that the ‘Fisher–Clark 24 The new social mobility formulation is more than a classification scheme; it is also a model of development’. Noting that traditional – predominantly agrarian – societies tended to have low rates of mobility, and fearful of the spread of
