FREE ESSAY ON SOCIAL MOBILITY

SOCIAL MOBILITY

Social Mobility: A Case Study
In a world where it is hard to get ahead, some people do manage to do it. Most of us
spend our lives within our strata in the stratifications system because it is very
difficult to move up in the world, as we know it today. While it is quite easy to move
down a strata it can also require some effort to just maintain a strata. But for some
people, moving up a strata is bound to happen, whether it is a result of structural
mobility, or just positional mobility as read about in Chapter 5, they seem able to
accomplish a surmountable wall in search of the American dream. 
Although moving up a strata is very rare in today's society it can be done. A good
example is Steve Case, a CEO for America Online, who happens to be the subject of a
Newsweek article called Case Study by Jared Sandberg. Steve Case grew up with his family
in Honolulu in part of the old white Anglo establishment. Some of his earliest marketing
experiments included the Case Company in which he used his paper route to gain access to
his neighbors' houses so he could sell them anything from seeds, to personalized
Christmas cards. In college he kept it up with anything for limos to rock concert
tickets. Now he is CEO for one of the World's largest Internet access companies while it
deals with Time-Warner in a possible merger of the two companies. Making him worth an
estimated $1.4 billion.
Social mobility is defined as movement through the stratification system, particularly as
a result of changes in occupation, wealth or income. There are two types of social
mobility; there is intergenerational mobility and intragenerational mobility. In this
article over Steve Case, his is a case of intragenerational mobility, because it has
happened within his lifetime, as defined by the definition of intragenerational mobility.
Steve Case obtained his strata jump as a result of both structural mobility and
positional mobility. Structural mobility is defined as movement through the
stratification system that results from changes in the occupational structure of a
society. It played a part in his social mobility because at the time when the Internet
was first getting started he started a revolutionary internet service provider that
became a multibillion dollar company of worldwide access to the internet through ease of
use of AOL, when the economy was quickly expanding in a race of Internet Service
Providers to provide easy and fast access to the electronic web. 
Positional mobility played a bigger part in his social mobility from strata to strata
than anything else. Positional mobility, as defined in chapter 5, is movement through the
stratification system from individual efforts, accomplishments, or luck rather than from
changes in the occupational structure. Steve Case's movement up through the strata came
from as much individual effort and accomplishments as anything else. Through his early
experiences in marketing anything from new towelettes for Procter & Gamble to developing
new kinds of pizzas for Pizza Hut, his accomplishments helped to carry him up through the
strata with help from his individual effort as much as anything.
Social mobility is often seen in today's society. With every passing day people are
moving either up a strata or down a strata as a result of either positional mobility, in
the case of Steve Case, or as a result of structural mobility. Either way social mobility
plays an important role in our life and study of sociology because it explains how we
obtained our status in society from a sociological perspective. 
Bibliography
Newsweek