This page lists upcoming events in the field of social stratification. If you are a member of the TASA Social Stratification Thematic Group and would like to add an event to this page, please contact one of the convenors of the group.
Time and date: 12.30 - 1.30 pm, Thursday, December 3, 2009 (during lunchtime)
Place: Seminar Room D, Coombs Building, Australian National University, Canberra
A business meeting for the TASA Social Stratification Thematic Group has been organised for the time and place mentioned above. As a group, we need to talk about what activities we could potentially do during the year ahead and which of these activities we should concentrate our efforts on. Please come along and help shape the future of the group.
Since the meeting will be held during lunchtime, the TASA 2009 Conference organisers have offered to deliver lunches to the meeting. To organise this, however, we will need to know how many people would like their lunches delivered (and any special dietary requirements they might have). If you would like your lunch delivered to you at the meeting, please let James Rice know as soon as possible. His email address is:
Time and date: 3.30 - 5.00 pm, Thursday, December 3, 2009
Place: Seminar Room E, Coombs Building, Australian National University, Canberra
Chair: Sonia Martin, University of Melbourne and Brotherhood of St Laurence
Has the Effect of Parents' Education on Child's Education Changed over Time?
Jenny Chesters, University of Queensland
This paper examines whether the expansion of higher education has reduced inequality by providing more opportunities for students from less privileged backgrounds or further entrenched existing inequalities. Using father's education and mother's education to indicate class membership, I examine the salience of Maximally Maintained Inequality theory and Relative Risk Aversion theory with respect to the likelihood of having a university degree. Having a university educated parent is used as a proxy for being a member of the privileged class based on the assumption that the children of university educated parents are more likely to take advantage of opportunities to acquire higher education. I find that the expansion of higher education has had little impact on the association between parent's education and child's education. Respondents with a university educated parent continue to be more likely to have a university degree than other respondents. Expansion has, however, improved the odds for women with respect to higher education.
Do Private Schools Produce More Active Citizens?
Lawrence J Saha, Australian National University
The focus of this paper is whether type of Australian school attended makes a difference in student engagement in political and civic culture. Recently religious schools have been said to 'undermine cohesion' in Australian society. Yet it was argued over a decade ago that Australian private schools have skimmed the elite students from the government sector and now 'impart to their pupils values and preferences of the culture from which they are drawn', namely the dominant culture. Using data from the first Youth Electoral Study (YES) survey, this analysis examines whether students in government, Catholic and Independent schools differ in four political domains: voting commitment, political knowledge, political activism, and civic volunteer behaviour. At the bivariate level, students in private schools generally show higher levels of political engagement than students in government schools. However, when family and school variables are controlled, there are no differences between these students in voting commitment, political knowledge and volunteer behaviour. However students in Catholic schools show significant difference in political activism. The effects of Independent schools disappear for all four political domains. Explanations for this pattern of outcomes, particularly for students in Catholic schools, are explored.
The Myth of the Reflexive Worker
Will Atkinson, University of Bristol
Western societies are said to be characterised by a relentless individualization in which identities, lifestyles and life paths have been opened up to a new process of reflexive decision-making. One concept argued to have fallen victim to this sweeping and undiscriminating shift and withered away is social class. No longer do its constraints or cultural habituations guide or constrain action, argue the individualization theorists, and this applies as much to Australia and New Zealand as to the European nations. This paper reports the key findings of a research project designed to subject these claims to comprehensive and direct empirical scrutiny in the same spirit as the Affluent Worker team confronting embourgeoisement forty years earlier. Starting out from a Bourdieusian theoretical position, it examined the life histories of 55 individuals from Bristol in the UK - a conurbation typical of Western cities - through qualitative interviews examining life histories, tastes and perceptions. The overall conclusion is that, contrary to what the individualization theorists hold, class clearly continues to exert its influence over life courses in the way a Bourdieusian might expect, but that this is specified by a new social context not dissimilar to that described by Beck and the others.
The Rise of Individualization within the Faculty of Advocates, Scotland
Angela Melville, University of Manchester
This paper investigates changes in the structure of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland through the lens of Ulrich Beck's theory of individualization. Traditionally, advocates possessed an unchallenged monopoly over audience rights to the Higher Courts in Scotland, and admission to the Faculty was largely limited to white, middleclass men, generally from Scottish Protestant backgrounds. In recent years, this monopoly has been broken, and advocates from non-traditional backgrounds have encroached the Faculty. Advocates are increasingly dependent on previous professional networks to build their client base, and their workload has become increasingly specialised.
We drawn on interviews with members of the Faculty and analysis of biographical data to argue that these changes have resulted from the unintended consequences of the move from simple to reflexive modernity, including increasing access to higher education, extending legal aid, and exposing the Faculty to greater market competition. These changes have not only impacted upon the structure of the Faculty, and the move into reflexive modernity appears to have altered the cognitive structures of its members, who appear to be pervaded by a sense of certainty and insecurity.
Time and date: 1.00 - 2.30 pm, Friday, December 4, 2009
Place: Seminar Room E, Coombs Building, Australian National University, Canberra
Chair: Catherine Doherty, Queensland University of Technology
Low Paid Employment, Fair Work and Class Politics
Helen Masterman-Smith, Charles Sturt University
The functionalist notion that employment is a precondition for personal wellbeing and social inclusion is almost sacrosanct in Australian culture. In contrast, this paper offers a class analysis of low paid employment based on a careful examination of the working and living conditions of Australia's low paid workers. In a field dominated by quantitative data, this paper brings the everyday lives of Australia's working class into view. Further, this paper considers what the new Fair Work Act means for the working conditions and rights of low paid workers and the role the state plays in the disorganisation of labour in the context of contemporary Australian capitalism.
A Means to an End or an End in Itself? Job Satisfaction in the Australian Workforce
Jenny Chesters and Janeen Baxter, University of Queensland
This paper examines levels of job satisfaction amongst Australian employees. Previous research has suggested that women generally have higher levels of job satisfaction than men and that occupation is related to job satisfaction, however, there is no clear relationship between extrinsic job rewards and levels of satisfaction. We explore these issues further using two recent surveys, one that covers the Australian workforce as a whole, and a second that focuses on two low-paid service sector occupations, childcare workers and dental assistants. Our aim is to differentiate between three kinds of job satisfaction - intrinsic, extrinsic and overall job satisfaction. Extrinsic job satisfaction concerns levels of satisfaction with issues such as job security, level of pay, hours worked and flexibility. Intrinsic job satisfaction concerns the level of freedom in job activities, public perception of the occupation, and levels of job stress. We expect intrinsic satisfaction to be higher than extrinsic satisfaction amongst childcare workers and dental assistants, and also that women will score higher than men on intrinsic and overall job satisfaction. We present a number of models for these different groups examining the factors leading to variations in job satisfaction.
Self-Employment - Determinants and Rewards in 33 Countries
Joanna Sikora, Australian National University
This paper explores the cross-national variation in patterns of self-employment using data from World Inequality Study, a database compiled from high quality, representative national samples from 33 nations. Our main goal is to evaluate the 1) marginalization and 2) family embeddedness theories in light of empirical evidence for a broad array of countries and historical periods.
We first examine the heterogeneity of self-employment in various national and historical settings and next turn to the analysis of labour market returns to small scale entrepreneurship. Our analysis considers a broad range of labour market characteristics and addresses the question of whether the self-employed enjoy above-average financial returns or tend to be outcasts of the world of waged employment.
Multilevel probit models accounting for economic development; basic features of political regimes and a range of respondents' family and labour market characteristics show that economic development is associated with a lower proportion of small scale entrepreneurs which is in line with linking self-employment to growth.
The marginalization thesis receives little support as the self-employed, particularly in post-communist nations, enjoy somewhat higher earnings than waged employees and can be found across a range of occupational positions. However, this is not the case everywhere. The family embeddedness of self-employment is manifested in the positive relationship between father's and children's own self-employment which holds more for sons' than daughters'. Marriage significantly increases the likelihood of running a business everywhere. In several nations the boost for women is twice as large as for men, which suggests that female self-employment may be more strongly family-embedded.
Trends in Inequality in Wages and Salaries in Seven Capitalist Countries
James Rice, Australian National University
Rising income inequality has been a major feature of social change in many countries since the late 1970s. These changes in inequality have largely been driven by rising inequality in the incomes wage and salary workers receive through employment. At the same time, in many countries substantial changes have taken place in the institutions that regulate labour markets. This paper analyses the developments that have occurred in inequality in wages and salaries between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s in seven capitalist countries (the United States, Canada, Australia, West Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway). The paper first describes the developments that have occurred in wage and salary inequality at the macrosociological level and then links these developments to more microsociological factors, in particular changes in wage and salary differentials based on education, occupation, age, and gender. The paper concludes by examining the relationship between these macrosociological and microsociological developments and the changes that have occurred in these countries in the institutions that regulate labour markets, in particular those associated with the extent of government employment, the use of active labour market policies, trade union density rates, and the nature of collective bargaining.
Time and date: 7.00 pm, Tuesday, December 1, 2009 (following the conference Reception Mixer Night)
Place: Asian Cafe, 32 West Row, Melbourne Building, Canberra City
Members of the TASA Social Stratification Thematic Group will be gathering for dinner at the time and place mentioned above. Please come along and join us!
The Asian Cafe is a Chinese and Malaysian restaurant a short walk from the Australian National University. The price of entrees ranges from about $4 to $12, while mains range in price from about $10 to $24. Plenty of vegetarian options are available and kids are welcome.
On the night, some of us will be walking from the conference Reception Mixer Night to the Asian Cafe, so getting to the restaurant itself should be a straightforward affair.
If you will be in Canberra on December 1 and would like to come along, please RSVP before 5.00 pm, Monday, November 23, by emailing James Rice at:
All welcome!
Dates: December 1-4, 2009
Place: Australian National University, Canberra
More information: Conference website
Dates: July 11-17, 2010
Place: Gothenburg, Sweden
More information: Sessions webpage