Archief – XL, 2010, 1-2

Measuring Social Stratification in Historical Research:
An Overview of Old Problems and New Methods

Introduction

Bart Van de Putte & Erik Buyst, Introduction: Occupational titles? Hard to eat, easy to catch. [7-31]

We present an overview of the historical critique on the use of occupational titles in stratification analysis and of recent methodological developments in historical research on social stratification. The chapters of this issue are presented in the light of this debate.

Part 1: The Production of Occupational Titles

Michel Oris, Back to the basis. Occupations and the meaning of occupational titles in 19th-century Belgium. [35-50]

This paper deals with occupation in 19th-century Belgium, more exactly with the occupational titles exactly as they are written in the original documents, before any codification. Changing meanings of occupation according to time and space (context) is the main focus.

Hannelore Vandebroek & Leen Van Molle, The era of the housewife? The construction of 'work' and the 'active' population in the Belgian population census (1947, 1961 & 1970). [51-83]

The 1950s are often considered the era of the housewife as both a practice and an ideology. The available statistics support this interpretation: very few married women worked during the 1940s and 1950s, and female employment increased rapidly from the 1970s onwards. However, a gender analysis of the language of the Belgian post-war censuses (1947, 1961 & 1970) and of the concepts behind those numbers reveals that the censuses tell us more about the contemporary definition of work, than about female labour participation.

Part 2: Comparing Different Classification Schemes

Andrew Miles & Bart Van de Putte, How to measure class from occupation. [87-109]

The classification of occupational information from historical records for use in comparative studies of stratification and mobility is discussed. SOCPO, which is a new scheme for coding such data based on an explicit conception of the economic sources of social power, is described. Its ability to predict class-linked characteristics is tested.

Richard L. Zijdeman & Paul S. Lambert, Measuring social structure in the past: a comparison of historical class schemes and occupational stratification scales on Dutch 19th and early 20th century data. [111-141]

To what degree are HISCO based measures of class (HISCLASS and SOCPO) and occupational stratification (HIS-CAM) comparable with each other and contemporary measures? Next to a large degree of congruency, we find considerable differences between the measures, raising questions concerning the comparability of occupation-based measures across studies.

Appendix (PDF)

Sarah Moreels, Classifying historical occupational titles of women in a social class scheme. The career mobility of fertile women living in Antwerp during 1846-1906. [143-175]

In this article a social class scheme that classifies all women (women with an occupational registration as well as housewives and women with no occupation) is proposed. This new social class scheme is applied to the career mobility of women living in the port city of Antwerp (Belgium) during the years 1846-1906.

Appendix (PDF)

Part 3: The Context Problem

Jord Hanus, Taxes & occupation. In search of social class in the sixteenth-century Low Countries. [179-214]

The study of (historical) social stratification, inequality and mobility offers many challenges. One important question centres on the relationship between occupation, income/wealth levels and 'big' social classes. In the case of sixteenth-century 's-Hertogenbosch, it appears that occupation and fiscal outcomes were poor predictors for one another.

Appendix (PDF)

Richard Paping, Taxes, property size, occupations and social structure: the case of the 18th- and 19th-century northern Dutch countryside. [215-248]

Individual tax data for Groningen indicates that a general social stratification scheme based on occupation only results in rather meaningless and overlapping social groups. Regionally based improvements can be made by adding information on investment, land use, other economic activities and the stage in the family lifecycle.

Appendix (PDF)

Bart Van de Putte & Patrick Svensson, Measuring social structure in a rural context. Applying the SOCPO scheme to Scania, Sweden (17th-20th century). [249-293]

The aim of this article is to discuss if, and how, occupational classification schemes can take contextual differences into account. In order to accomplish this we use the SOCPO (social power) scheme. Our results show that this scheme is applicable on rural contexts as well as urban and industrialised contexts.