Book Review: Lemel and Noll, Changing Structures of Inequality

Yannick Lemel and Heinz-Herbert Noll, eds.
Changing Structures of Inequality: A Comparative Perspective
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, 461 pp.
$34.95 Paper (0-7735-2623-4), $85.00 Cloth (0-7735-2203-4)

The edited volume Changing Structures of Inequality represents the tenth installment in the series “Comparative Charting of Social Change.” The ambitious series, edited by Simon Langlois, uses the term “comparative” in two senses, i.e., both to refer to social trends over time within particular societies and to study specific issues across several nations over the past four decades. Lemel and Noll’s volume contains two complementary sections: 1) in-depth studies of social stratification within France, Germany, Quebec and Canada, Spain, and the United States; and 2) “substantial analyses” of specific dimensions of inequality in a cross-national context, including studies of income and wealth distributions, educational inequalities, status attainment, international migration, gender inequality, and the structuring effects of social classes. The editors summarize the key analytic foci accordingly (p. 2): “Are the traditional concepts of social class and social stratification still valid or are they becoming more and more obsolete due to significant changes in the economic and social structure? Is a trend towards individualization eroding the traditional structure of inequality? Are new forms of inequality replacing old ones?” Indeed, the editors offer a superb introductory chapter outlining the contours of the debate regarding the merits of traditional class analyses of modern societies and contemporary critiques of class and stratification as essential building blocks of sociological analyses of inequality.

The next five chapters examine the empirical research traditions of social inequality analyses across the aforementioned societies. Lemel’s chapter on France highlights the limitations of census data in evaluating Bourdieu’s three-class schema defined by such features as access to essential resources, lifestyle similarities, consumption patterns, social homogamy, and a shared ethos. Noll’s chapter on Germany provides an interesting historical glimpse of inequality studies, characterizing the 1950s and 1960s as the “golden age of stratification research (p. 49). Noll then outlines effectively the 1980s debate within Germany as to the relevance of traditional usages of “class” and “stratification” as the key ordering concepts of macro-sociological analysis, concluding that no final resolution has yet emerged. Langlois’ empirical chapter on social stratification within Quebec and Canada masterfully summarizes the research on social status, the classist approach, and pioneering studies of social mobility in Canada. In his chapter on social inequality in Spain, del Campo notes that the research in that country tended to be dominated by analysts with distinct ideological leanings, although several empirically-grounded surveys in recent years have helped document more clearly changing structures of stratification. Kingston’s chapter on the United States provides perhaps the most stimulating discussion of social class as the “conceptual lynchpin” for analyzing stratification systems, concluding that American research has focused primarily on changes in income, educational, and occupational distributions. Theodore Caplow’s chapter provides a sobering conclusion for neo-Marxists and others who defend social class as the conceptual lynchpin to sociological analysis: “I believe it can be inferred from the papers in this volume that consistency, compartmentation and persistence have declined so much in recent decades that no class scheme can now be accurately fitted to the entire population of any of these national societies.”

The second half of the book contains the several cross-national comparisons, including Glatzer and Hauser’s comparative analysis of income and wealth that highlights the relative uniformity and persistence of structured income inequalities across several countries. In contrast, Chauvel’s chapter on educational attainment and social outcomes provides evidence of a greater degree of comparative heterogeneity, as broader access to education does not necessarily ensure greater equality of future life opportunities. Such heterogeneity in cross-national context has even greater cogency in Lemieux and Möhle’s chapter on gender inequality, as well as Forsé and Lemel’s analysis of status consistency – or status inconsistency, depending on the context – of occupational, educational and economic positions. Bahr et al.’s fascinating discussion of international migration offers a compelling case that such migration “is fundamentally implicated in the production and continuance of inequality in modern states” (p. 325). Kingston et al. demonstrate that class structuration does exist to some degree within the societies considered, albeit with an attenuated impact over time and with a variable impact cross-nationally.

No serious student of stratification should ignore such a well-integrated and scholarly discussion of the issues confronted by this prominent array of scholars. In general, the volume does an outstanding job of locating the theoretical debates on social class analysis and, even more forcefully, of presenting a range of empirical evidence that highlights the persistence of structured forms of social inequality in a comparative context. The authors on the whole seriously – and yet with requisite modesty – engage in sustained discussions of their topics without ever straying too far from extant data. Just as important, the volume contains much valuable discussion of the methodological dilemmas and some proposed solutions in working with complex comparative data. The one limitation of the volume, though, might be the exclusive focus on quantitative evidence and the failure to examine historical-comparative evidence to delve more deeply into the contextual arguments on social stratification. Yet that criticism should not be overstated, for the editors and contributors clearly have committed to careful, scholarly evaluations of the structure of inequality in several societies over time and with the best available comparative evidence. Lemel and Noll conclude that the weight of that evidence defies the reductionistic tendencies of class analysts to focus on work and production as the defining features of stratification systems. Their conclusions that generations, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, and other social characteristics may be increasingly relevant to understanding structured inequalities in contemporary societies are well-founded. It is not that social class no longer has any relevance to the study of the persistence of structured forms of inequality, but rather that “the notion that sociology is a science with only on variable, class, will – although this has not been true in the past – certainly be less true in the future” (p. 439).

Joseph H. Michalski
King’s University College at The University of Western Ontario

Joseph Michalski is currently conducting studies of conflict management strategies in three contexts: among residential neighbours, within the workplace, and between intimate partners. He has been doing life course research on prisoners and university students to examine the extent to which family environments influence career pathways. He is also conducting research on knowledge as a marker of status, and a more general study of the state of Canadian sociology. He has previously reviewed for CJS Online: in 2000, Toby L. Parcel, ed..Research in the Sociology of Work v. 7: Work and Family, and in 2003, Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, eds., Restorative Justice and Family Violence.


	Canadian Journal of Sociology Online May-June 2005 Yannick Lemel and Heinz-Herbert Noll, eds. Changing Structures of Inequality: A Comparative Perspective McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, 461 pp. $34.95 Paper (0-7735-2623-4), $85.00 Cloth (0-7735-2203-4) The edited volume Changing Structures of Inequality represents the tenth installment in the series “Comparative Charting of Social Change.” The ambitious series, edited by Simon Langlois, uses the term “comparative” in two senses, i.e., both to refer to social trends over time within particular societies and to study specific issues across several nations over the past four decades. Lemel and Noll’s volume contains two complementary sections: 1) in-depth studies of social stratification within France, Germany, Quebec and Canada, Spain, and the United States; and 2) “substantial analyses” of specific dimensions of inequality in a cross-national context, including studies of income and wealth distributions, educational inequalities, status attainment, international migration, gender inequality, and the structuring effects of social classes. The editors summarize the key analytic foci accordingly (p. 2): “Are the traditional concepts of social class and social stratification still valid or are they becoming more and more obsolete due to significant changes in the economic and social structure? Is a trend towards individualization eroding the traditional structure of inequality? Are new forms of inequality replacing old ones?” Indeed, the editors offer a superb introductory chapter outlining the contours of the debate regarding the merits of traditional class analyses of modern societies and contemporary critiques of class and stratification as essential building blocks of sociological analyses of inequality. The next five chapters examine the empirical research traditions of social inequality analyses across the aforementioned societies. Lemel’s chapter on France highlights the limitations of census data in evaluating Bourdieu’s three-class schema defined by such features as access to essential resources, lifestyle similarities, consumption patterns, social homogamy, and a shared ethos. Noll’s chapter on Germany provides an interesting historical glimpse of inequality studies, characterizing the 1950s and 1960s as the “golden age of stratification research (p. 49). Noll then outlines effectively the 1980s debate within Germany as to the relevance of traditional usages of “class” and “stratification” as the key ordering concepts of macro-sociological analysis, concluding that no final resolution has yet emerged. Langlois’ empirical chapter on social stratification within Quebec and Canada masterfully summarizes the research on social status, the classist approach, and pioneering studies of social mobility in Canada. In his chapter on social inequality in Spain, del Campo notes that the research in that country tended to be dominated by analysts with distinct ideological leanings, although several empirically-grounded surveys in recent years have helped document more clearly changing structures of stratification. Kingston’s chapter on the United States provides perhaps the most stimulating discussion of social class as the “conceptual lynchpin” for analyzing stratification systems, concluding that American research has focused primarily on changes in income, educational, and occupational distributions. Theodore Caplow’s chapter provides a sobering conclusion for neo-Marxists and others who defend social class as the conceptual lynchpin to sociological analysis: “I believe it can be inferred from the papers in this volume that consistency, compartmentation and persistence have declined so much in recent decades that no class scheme can now be accurately fitted to the entire population of any of these national societies.” The second half of the book contains the several cross-national comparisons, including Glatzer and Hauser’s comparative analysis of income and wealth that highlights the relative uniformity and persistence of structured income inequalities across several countries. In contrast, Chauvel’s chapter on educational attainment and social outcomes provides evidence of a greater degree of comparative heterogeneity, as broader access to education does not necessarily ensure greater equality of future life opportunities. Such heterogeneity in cross-national context has even greater cogency in Lemieux and Möhle’s chapter on gender inequality, as well as Forsé and Lemel’s analysis of status consistency – or status inconsistency, depending on the context – of occupational, educational and economic positions. Bahr et al.’s fascinating discussion of international migration offers a compelling case that such migration “is fundamentally implicated in the production and continuance of inequality in modern states” (p. 325). Kingston et al. demonstrate that class structuration does exist to some degree within the societies considered, albeit with an attenuated impact over time and with a variable impact cross-nationally. No serious student of stratification should ignore such a well-integrated and scholarly discussion of the issues confronted by this prominent array of scholars. In general, the volume does an outstanding job of locating the theoretical debates on social class analysis and, even more forcefully, of presenting a range of empirical evidence that highlights the persistence of structured forms of social inequality in a comparative context. The authors on the whole seriously – and yet with requisite modesty – engage in sustained discussions of their topics without ever straying too far from extant data. Just as important, the volume contains much valuable discussion of the methodological dilemmas and some proposed solutions in working with complex comparative data. The one limitation of the volume, though, might be the exclusive focus on quantitative evidence and the failure to examine historical-comparative evidence to delve more deeply into the contextual arguments on social stratification. Yet that criticism should not be overstated, for the editors and contributors clearly have committed to careful, scholarly evaluations of the structure of inequality in several societies over time and with the best available comparative evidence. Lemel and Noll conclude that the weight of that evidence defies the reductionistic tendencies of class analysts to focus on work and production as the defining features of stratification systems. Their conclusions that generations, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, and other social characteristics may be increasingly relevant to understanding structured inequalities in contemporary societies are well-founded. It is not that social class no longer has any relevance to the study of the persistence of structured forms of inequality, but rather that “the notion that sociology is a science with only on variable, class, will – although this has not been true in the past – certainly be less true in the future” (p. 439). Joseph H. Michalski King’s University College at The University of Western Ontario Joseph Michalski is currently conducting studies of conflict management strategies in three contexts: among residential neighbours, within the workplace, and between intimate partners. He has been doing life course research on prisoners and university students to examine the extent to which family environments influence career pathways. He is also conducting research on knowledge as a marker of status, and a more general study of the state of Canadian sociology. He has previously reviewed for CJS Online: in 2000, Toby L. Parcel, ed..Research in the Sociology of Work v. 7: Work and Family, and in 2003, Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, eds., Restorative Justice and Family Violence. http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/inequality.html June 2005 © CJS Online Click here to download PDF file