Events

Abstract: This talk introduces Positional Sociology as a theoretical framework and methodological approach built around the concept of positional distance, i.e., the degree of separation between an actor's position and a reference point in social space. The theoretical framework unifies a wide range of topics, from social mobility to status inconsistency, relative deprivation, or peer effects. These and other classical sociological topics share not only an interest in positional distance but also a fundamental methodological challenge, namely the need to deal with a system of linear dependencies (a problem demographers know from the analysis of age-period-cohort effects). The talk also introduces a set of methodological tools for Positional Sociology (described in more detail by Fosse and Pfeffer 2025 in SRM; https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241251358895). To illustrate what we can learn from them about the dynamic aspects of inequality, we apply these tools to the analysis of intergenerational social class mobility and its relationship to a wide range of individual outcomes using data from the U.S. General Social Survey.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Trinity Term is convened by Jasmin Abdel Ghany and Nontokozo Langwenya. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.