Acta Sociologica

This is a study of the intergenerational occupational class mobility of cohorts born 1936—75 in Finland and of the role of the changes in educational attainment. The data are taken from the Finnish Census Panel, from which mobility tables for 5-year cohorts that have reached the age of 25 have been constructed at 7 time-points: 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2000. The period change in social fluidity appears to be towards greater openness for both men and women. However, the cohort differences are more significant. Class origins and destinations are more strongly associated with the youngest cohorts than with the cohorts born in 1951—65, suggesting a strengthening of social inheritance. The period change can be explained by the changes in educational attainment. However, although the changes in the origin—education association play some role in reducing cohort differences, controlling education-related variation does not change them very much. The findings suggest that, in order to explain the cohort differences, it might be worthwhile considering institutional factors other than education.

The end of communism in Eastern Europe ushered in an era of markets and modernity. Post-communist capitalism has also wrought stratification with intensified upward and downward socio-economic mobility. Examining the case of Latvia, we offer an analysis of one of post-communist capitalism’s most apparent effects: the creation of a broad and diverse mass of economically disadvantaged inhabitants. While numerous writers have framed their analyses in terms of the ‘winners and losers’ of change, most research has treated these categories as exclusive entities and has paid little attention to the sociological relationship between them or the diversity within them. This work elaborates the relationship between the economically disadvantaged and both post-communist capitalism and the upper socio-economic rungs of society. As well, we offer three ideal-typical categories for description and analysis of post-communism’s economically disadvantaged masses.

On a descriptive level, the article points out that Western populations have experienced an increase in possibilities for self-realization, but also that the rise in options has led to a paradoxical increase in different forms of psychic distortion. On a more normative level, it has become clear that the neo-liberal idea of freedom, which seems to state that a free market will facilitate all forms of self-realization options, is incomplete. Application of the neo-liberal idea of freedom makes it clear in two ways that the recognition—graduation semantics are twisted in such a manner that individuals cannot cognitively make sense of what can and cannot be an object of recognition, and that intersubjective recognition relations are eroding to such an extent that commonly shared pathological development tendencies are in danger of being suppressed by the lacking ability to join in a collective will-formation. It seems that the neo-liberal idea of freedom is creating a cognitive discrepancy between a promise for more and more self-realization options through deregulation and the actual stable possibilities for individual self-realization. What is becoming evident is that no secure self-realization options are offered, but rather that the individual has to have options in order to gain recognition.

To what extent can conventional organizational theories help us understand changes in local voluntary associations? Using unique data from all associations in a Norwegian county, the article explores hypotheses concerning how size and age affect change behaviour. The results show that high organizational age increases the probability of core change, but decreases the occurrence of peripheral change. The average age of the field in which the organization is active is negatively related to both types of change. The findings suggest that old voluntary organizations are more tenacious than for-profit actors; they choose to attempt change rather than disband if becoming obsolete or pressured by the environment. The degrees of freedom are greater in new, non-institutionalized fields than within fields with a long history. Size has a weakly positive effect on both change indicators. Stronger data and theory-building efforts are needed if we are to extend our knowledge of this under-researched, but immensely important, organization type.