Occupational mobility in Australia : a career and generational study based on birth and marriage records of New South Wales

Abstract

All societies, even the simplest, must maintain themselves through func tional skills transmitted from each generation to the next.

In broad configuration, skills may be called occupations. The characteristics of the transmission process differ among societies and the process of occupational transmission has been a topic of considerable interest for scholars in several disciplines. Historical and contemporary patterns of occupational

transmission have been present ed by some scholars in terms of a broad caste-open class model which illustrates polar forms of social organisation. As an ideal type, the caste system consists of social aggregates in a fixed order of social superiority. Each caste has its own traditional rights and duties, including occupations, and each caste is self-recruiting . Such a system is workable only in a static society and traditional India most closely approximated caste social organisation. Show more