Dissecting the ‘Fine Distinctions’ in America’s System of Social Stratification: Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb

Abstract

• General presuppositions and/or theoretical affiliations and influences: Karl Marx, Max Weber, Alexis de Tocqueville, Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills.

• Model/paradigm(s): system integration (as seen and interpreted through the subjective experience of the participants).

• Concepts: ethnic pockets, incongruity of status, relationship between freedom and dignity, credo of self-reliance, mass and elite, internalisation of class conflict/subjective dimension of class, authority and legitimacy, creation of moral symbols around work; divided self/search for equilibrium in life, individual transformation and integration.

• Empirical environment(s): Boston (late 1960s and early 1970s).