Positive and negative consequences of social mobility. Positive and negative consequences of social mobility. "Social status and social role"
Classes and caste. The nature of mobility processes in many societies and social groups is varied and depends on the characteristics of the structure of society or the Group. Some societies have established social structures that prevent different types of social mobility, others more or less freely admit both social lifts and social drops. In open class societies, each of their member may rise and descend on the statuses constituting the structure based on their own efforts and abilities. In closed class societies, each social position is prescribed by an individual from birth, and whatever efforts by neither, society eliminates the achievable social lift or social drop for it. Obviously, both of these societies are the ideal types of structures and in real life currently do not exist. However, there are social structures close to ideal open and closed class societies. One of the societies close to closed was a caste society in ancient India. It was divided into a series of castes, each of which possessed its own social structure and occupied a strictly defined place among other castes.
Castes. Castes refer to social systems in which the occupation of the individuals of the positions is based on the origin and excludes any possibility of achieving higher statuses in strict rules prohibiting marriages between representatives of different castes. These rules are enshrined in consciousness with religious beliefs. In the tree of India, for example, social barriers between the castes were very significant and transitions of individuals from one caste to another were extremely rare. Each caste had specific types of professions, used individual roads for movement, and also created their types of internal relationships. The rank place of the caste in society was strictly observed. Thus, representatives of the highest caste, "brahmans", as a rule, possessed wealth and high level of education. However, even if the representative of this higher caste became bankrupt or for some reason he remained illiterate, he could still not fall into the lower Casta.
Modern societies as a whole cannot be organized by caste type in a number of social and economic reasons, which are primarily among the needs of society in qualified and competent performers, in capable people to solve the tasks of managing complex social, political and economic processes.
But even in modern societies there are social groups of "closed" type, very resembling castes. Thus, in many countries, such a relatively closed group is the elite - the top layer of social structure, which has advantages in the occupation of the highest social statuses and, to be the advantages in the distribution of social product, the authorities, obtaining the best education, etc.
So, in societies there are some social status groups, vertical mobility in which is extremely difficult due to their closers and barriers created on the path of representatives of other social groups. At the same time, no matter how the group is closed, there is still at least a small number of members of other groups penetrating it. Apparently, there are certain paths of vertical social mobility, which is almost impossible to block, and representatives of the lower layers always have a chance to penetrate into the highest layer.
Channels Social, Mobility. The availability of ways for social mobility depends on both the individual and the structure of society in which he lives. Individual ability means a bit if society distributes remuneration based on prescribed roles. On the other hand, Open Society helps a little individual who is not prepared for the struggle for promoting the highest statuses. In some societies, the ambitions of young people can find one or two possible, opened channels of mobility. At the same time, in other societies, young people can take advantage of hundreds of ways to achieve higher status. Some ways to achieve top status can be closed due to ethnic or socio-class discrimination, others due to the fact that the individual is simply not able to apply their talents due to Indi-Vidal features.
However, in order to completely change social status, individuals often arise the problem of entering the new subculture of the group with higher status, as well as the associated problem of interactions with representatives of a new social environment. To overcome the cultural barrier and the barrier of communication, there are several ways to which individuals are somewhat resorted in the process of social mobility.
- Change lifestyle.It is not enough just to earn and spend big money in that. The case when the individual was equal in income with representatives of a higher social layer. To assimize the new status level, it needs to take a new material standard that corresponds to this level. Device apartment, buying books, televisions, cars, etc. - Everything must correspond to a new, higher status. Material consumer culture is, it may be not very noticeable, but a very significant method of admission to a higher status level. But the material lifestyle is only one of the moments of admission to a new status and by itself, without changing other components of culture, there is a little bit.
- Development of typical status behavior. Vertical mobility-oriented personality will not be adopted in a higher socio-class layer until the samples of the behavior of this layer are so in order to follow them without any effort. The graduate student, becoming gradually a professor, or the performer, turning into the director, must change his behavior to be adopted in a new environment for himself. Samples of clothing, verbal speed, leisure, manner communicate - everything is subjected to revision and should be the usual and only possible type of behavior. Children are often prepared specifically to absorb behavior characteristic of the high socio-class layer, teaching their music, dancing and good manners. True, not all aspects of the subculture of the social layer or group can be mastered as a result of deliberate training and conscious imitation, but such efforts can accelerate the process of acceptance by the Individual subculture of a higher social layer.
- Changes in social environment. This method is based on low-lived contacts with individuals and associations (social groups, social circles) of the status layer in which a mobile individual is socialized. The ideal condition for entering the new layer is the position when the individual is completely surrounded by representatives of that layer where he seeks to get. In this case, the subculture is mastered very quickly. However, the positive point of the establishment of connections is always the fact that a new acquaintance (individuals, associations) can create a favorable public opinion in favor of the novice.
- Marriage with a higher status layerat all times, it served as the best means to overcome barriers facing social mobility. First, such a marriage can largely contribute to the manifestation of talents, if it gives material well-being. Secondly, it provides an individual with the possibility of rapid lifting, often bypassing several status levels (everything, of course, remembers the rapid vertical mobility of Cinderella to the highest sectors of society). Thirdly, marriage with a representative or a representative of higher status largely resolves the problems of the social environment and the rapid development of samples of the culture of the highest status layer. This kind of marriage allowed people to overcome the most difficult social barriers in the caste society, as well as penetrate the elite layers. But such a marriage can only be useful if the individual from the lower status layer is prepared for the rapid assimilation of new samples of behavior and the lifestyle of the new social environment for him. If he cannot quickly assimilate new cultural statuses and standards, then this marriage will not give anything, since the representatives of the highest status layer will not consider the individual's individual.
The conviction is that social mobility is useful and necessary, serves as an integral part of culture in any modern democratic society. The society with closed social groups prevents the manifestation of human individuality and does not give talented people to actively participate in public life. And society with open borders between social groups gives a person a chance to rise, but it also gives rise to it fear of social fall.
Voltage When making new social roles. Ascending vertical social mobility leads not only to obtain new products and privileges, but also to the emergence of greater responsibility and to new restrictions. It happens that some people reject the proposed rise in status only because when a new position has been occupied, additional tensions and new responsibilities arise that increase the dissatisfaction with themselves and their position. Nervous trembling, stress among newly appointed for higher positions - no exception. In addition, the voltage arises due to a rather difficult process of learning samples new for the Individual subculture: new manners, etiquette, types of relationships. The process of adaptation to the new subculture is very complex.
Social mobility breaks primary connections With colleagues at work, with friends, many relatives, can break families, put barriers between fathers and children. Many primary groups disintegrate due to social mobility. If in a friendly circle of workers, one of them becomes a master or senior master and begins to lead the actions of his friends, then friendly communications stop immediately. Even confrontation is possible. It was because of the cessation of primary relations, the Soviet practice of the 60s were crashed. Appointments by masters of production sites only from among the working leaders.
In general, the social mobility of society is a controversial process. If a complex society allows individuals with respect to freely to avoid barriers between social groups and layers, this does not mean that every individual with talents and motivation may be painless and easy to move along the steps of the social climbing stairs. Mobility is always difficult to postpone all individuals, as they have to adapt to a new subculture, establish new ties and deal with fear lose their new status. At the same time, for a complex society, an open path is upstairs, a large number of statuses achieved is the only way of development, for otherwise social stresses and conflicts arise. Not by chance, therefore, P.A. Sorokin emphasized that where there is powerful vertical mobility, there is life and movement. Mobility attenuation generates stagnation and dangerous accumulation of social activity of people.
Nowadays, as before, the initial stage of social mobility acts similar to all people: at birth, the child receives the social status of its parents, the so-called ascriptive, or prescribed, status. Parents, relatives and family close to the family are conveyed to the child of the TCs of the behavior, ideas about the proper and prestigious, which dominate their environment. However, in an active period of life, a person is often caught by the situation in his layer, seeking more. In this case, the researchers say that a person changes its former status and acquires a new achieved status. Thus, he joined the processes of ascending mobility.
We highlight cases where representatives of social groups have a prescribed status, which cannot be changed one by one by one after the desire (separation of people in sex, racial, age sign). For representatives of such groups, social mobility is often difficult due to social discrimination enshrined in this society. In this situation, members of the Group may seek the changes in public stereotypes towards themselves and through initiative shares to require expanding the channels of their social mobility.
At the same time, in modern society, many people carry out upward professional mobility through the choice of a profession, the achievement of a high level of qualifications and vocational education, through the change of profession and care to a highly paid labor area or a prestigious work, through moving to a new job in another city. or in another country. There are many cases when people change their status outside the professional sphere - ascending mobility can be implemented through a change in their marital status, support for relatives and friends.
Along with this, sociologists allocate downward social mobility.In this case, we are talking about the loss of many advantages of the previous status and about the transition of a person in a lower social group. With this type of mobility, people face, as a rule, due to adverse or inevitable circumstances, for example, when retirement age achieved, as well as due to illness, disability loss, etc. The situation of downward mobility is regarded by society as unwanted for a person, therefore within Families and state institutions are developed by many ways to smooth its acute, reduce the scale - related support, social insurance system and pension, social welfare and guardianship.
In addition to the highlighted two types of social mobility, which are called titles vertical(directed or up or down), in science there is a number of other types of its species. Let's point to horizontalmobility associated with a variety of work works, place of residence, posts, but without changing the status rank. In this case, an important form of social mobility is also carried out, which allows you to solve, for example, some personal problems, expands the social capabilities of people with an eye on the future, enriches their professional experience.
The types of social mobility considered above may exist both in the form of chaotic individual displacements and in the form of directional collective group transformation . In other words, in some conditions, individual mobility takes place, often acquiring a random or chaotic character, in the others it is implemented as similar collective movements. During the period of radical transformations, all layers and social groups change their social status, demonstrating the so-called structural mobility, which is prepared and occurs under the action of many factors, spontaneously, through the transformation of the entire society. Thus, European revolutions were accompanied by care from the social scene of the old aristocracy, which opened the wide opportunity to show their activity of the bourgeoisie, intellectual elite. Under the conditions of evolutionary development in the 60-80s. In the USSR, a number of socio-professional layers experienced a gradual status transformation. Some of them lost their positions (teachers, engineers, scientists), others have increased (employees of the banking and service sector, lawyers), which found a vivid manifestation in the dynamics of the professional orientation of young people of these decades 2. The decline in status positions in some groups and the increase in others responded with indicators of structural mobility, testified of hidden shifts in the social structure, which sooner or later should have manifested themselves in the transformation of the entire public organism.
Closely related to individual and collective-group movements for two more types of social mobility: mobility based on voluntary movements of people inside groups and between groups, as well as mobility objectively inevitable, as necessary, caused by structural shifts in various fields of social practice - in the economy, In political practice, in demography.
Finally, it should be stopped on intreneerial (intra-oxole) and intergerative (inter-flow) mobility, which indicate a change in social status both in various age-related cohort and parents to children. Changes in this kind are determined by traditions, a historical situation that determines one or another large shift in this society, the geopolitical position of the country. Thus, with other things being equal, intergenerational mobility in modern English society is more slowed than in the United States, which is explained by the unequal role of traditions to preserve the young generation belonging to his class, layer. At the same time, the identification of social mobility processes in the United States has always been determined by a large-scale flow of immigrants from old light and other regions of the world. In Japan, inter-flow status positions over the past 50 years are transformed rapidly than in the second half of XIX., Which is associated with the active inclusion of the country into modern world dynamic development.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Yakovlev I.A. Social institutions and Russia. // Socis., № 5, 1993.
1. Kravchenko A.I. Sociology. Dictionary: Tutorial for university students. M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 1997.
2. Radugin A.A., Radugin K.A. Sociology: course of lectures. M.: Center, 1999
3. Tishchenko J.T. Sociology. General course. M.: Prometheus, 1994.
4. Frolov S.S. Basics of sociology: Tutorial. - M.: Lawyer, 1997.
Positive:
Promotion of an individual Up contributes to the implementation of his personal qualities, if the movement occurs down, then it helps the production of more realistic self-assessment and, accordingly, a more realistic choice of target.
The possibility of creating new social groups, the emergence of new ideas, acquiring new experience.
Negative:
Loss by the individual of its former group affiliation, the need to adapt to its new group. This can lead to tensions in relations with the surrounding people;
Breaking social ties;
Status worrying both in individuals and in society as a whole - a change can occur for the worse.
To overcome this barrier, there are several ways to be resorted to individuals in the process of social mobility:
1) lifestyle change, adopting a new material status standard (buying a new, more expensive car, moving to another, more prestigious area, etc.);
2) the development of typical status behavior (change in the manner of communication, the absorption of new verbal revolutions, new ways to leisure and so on);
3) Changes in the social environment (the individual tries to surround himself by representatives of the social layer in which he seeks to get).
Marginality.
Social mobility leads to the fact that some people turn out to be at the junction of some social groups, while experiencing serious psychological difficulties. Their position is largely determined by the inability or reluctance for any reason to adapt in a new social group.
This phenomenon of person finds between two cultures associated with its movement in social space is called marginality. The individual system of values \u200b\u200bof suchness is so stable that it is not amenable to outstanding with new standards, principles, rules.
Their behavior is distinguished by extremes: they are either excessively passive, or very aggressive, easily step over moral norms and are capable of unpredictable actions.
Among marginal distinguishes: etioariginal - people who have fallen into someone else's environment as a result of migration; political Marginals are people who are not satisfied with legal opportunities and legitimate rules of the social and political struggle: religious Marginals are people standing outside the confession or not decisive to make a choice between them, etc.
Social norms.
In the process of its vital activity, people constantly interact with each other. A significant part of social relations is characterized by the contradictory interests of their participants. The result of such contradictions are social conflicts arising between members of society. One way to coordinate the interests of people and smoothing the conflict arising between them and their associations is regulatory regulation - regulation of individual behavior with certain norms.
Social mobility is called the movement of individual individuals or social groups from one position in the hierarchy of social stratification to another.
Sociologists allocate several types of social mobility. First, depending on the cause of the movement, the mobility caused by the voluntary movement of individuals within the social hierarchy of society, and mobility dictated by the structural changes occurring in society are distinguished. An example of the latter may be social mobility caused by the industrialization process: one of the consequences of the industrialization process was the increase in the number of people of workers professions and a decrease in the number of people engaged in agricultural production. Secondly, mobility is inter-floor and intracole. Inter-flow mobility is called moving children to a higher or low step compared to parents. Within the framework of intra-column mobility, the same individual has changed its social position over life. Finally, allocate the mobility is individual and group. About individual mobility they say when moving inside the society occurs from one person, regardless of others. With group mobility of movement, collectively occur (for example, after the bourgeois revolution, the class of feudalists is inferior to the dominant position of the bourgeoisie class).
The reasons allowing the person to move from one social group to another are called social mobility factors. Sociologists identify such factors several.
The first factor of social mobility is education. It played a decisive role in the process of social mobility in some ancient states. In particular, in China, only a person who passed a special exam could apply for the state post.
An important factor in social mobility is also the social status of the family to which a person belongs. Many families in various ways - from marriages to support in the business sphere - help to promote their members to higher strata.
The system of social device affects the level and nature of social mobility: in open society, in contrast to the closed type society, there are no formal limitations of mobility and almost absent are informal. In the closed society, mobility is limited and quantitatively, and qualitatively.
Another factor that facilitates social mobility is the changes occurring in the technology of social production: they lead to new professions that require high qualifications and considerable training. These professions are better paid and are more prestigious.
In addition to economic changes, the strengthening of the social mobility process can also be facilitated by social shocks, such as warriors and revolutions, leading, as a rule, to the change of the elite of society.
In the quality of an additional factor of social mobility, a different birth rate can be noted in different crates - lower in the upper and higher in the lower the well-known "vacuum" on top and contributes to moving up the outputs from the bottom.
Moving between the strata is carried out on special channels ("elevators"), the most important of which are social institutions such as army, family, school, church, property.
The army functions as a channel that provides vertical mobility in both military and peacetime. However, during periods of wars, the process of "rise up" is faster: large losses among the command formulation lead to the filling of vacancies by people of lower ranks that distinguished themselves due to their talent and courage.
The church in the past was the second after the army by the channel of vertical mobility, especially in relation to the middle strata. As a result of the ban on the Catholic clergy, the transfer of church inheritance fees was excluded, and after the death of church believers, their position was filled with new people. Significant advances in the bottom up appeared during periods of becoming new religions.
The powerful channel of social circulation in the modern world are schools. Receiving education in the most prestigious schools and universities automatically provides a person belonging to a specific strategy and a fairly high social status.
The family becomes a channel of vertical mobility in cases where people who have different social status come to marriage. So, at the end of the XIX - early XX century. In Russia, there was a fairly common phenomenon, there was plentyful, but titled brides with representatives of a rich, but no doubtful merchant. As a result of such a marriage, both partners moved along the social staircase, having received what each of them wanted. But such a marriage can only be useful in that case, if an individual from the lower strata is prepared for the rapid assimilation of new samples of behavior and lifestyle for him. If he cannot quickly learn new cultural standards, then such a marriage will not give anything, since representatives of the highest status layer will not be considered an individual
Finally, the most fast channel of vertical mobility is the property, as a rule, in the form of money - one of the most simple and efficient ways to move upwards.
Social mobility in the open society generates a number of phenomena, both positive and negative.
Promotion of an individual up contributes to the realization of his personal qualities. If the movement occurs down, it helps the production of more realistic self-esteem and, accordingly, a more realistic choice of target. Also, social mobility provides opportunities for creating new social groups, the emergence of new ideas, acquiring new experience.
The negative results of mobility (both vertical and horizontal) refer to the loss of the individual of their previous group affiliation, the need to adapt to their new group. Such identification of behavior has its consequence tensions in relations with the surrounding people and often leads to alienation. To overcome this barrier, there are several ways to be resorted to individuals in the process of social mobility:
1) lifestyle change, adopting a new material status standard (buying a new, more expensive car, moving to another, more prestigious area, etc.);
2) the development of typical status behavior (change in the manner of communication, the absorption of new verbal revolutions, new ways to leisure and so on);
3) Changes in the social environment (the individual tries to surround himself by representatives of the social layer in which he seeks to get).
The positive and negative effects of social mobility are affected not only on the individual, but also in society. The promotion of people is closely related to economic development, intellectual and scientific progress, the formation of new values \u200b\u200band social movements; Moving down leads to the release of higher layers from low-oral elements. But the most important thing is that reinforced mobility contributes to the destabilization of society in all its parameters. By providing individuals the opportunity to change their social status, the Open Society creates the so-called status concern from its individuals - because the status change may occur for the worse. Social mobility often contributes to the rupture of social relations in primary social groups, for example, in families in which parents belong to the lower strata, and children could break upstairs.
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