Images of occupational prestige: a study in social cognition

Do people from different vantage points
Society see occupations in the same way?
Is there massive consensus about the rewards in
pay and prestige that should be given to
different occupational groups? Or are there
systematic differences in the perception and
evaluation of occupations: differences which
can only persist because occupational special isrn
is so great as to create effective barriers between
Occupational worlds?
In this book Anthony Coxon and Charles Jones
shed new light on these important questions,
challenging the assumptions underlying the
routine uses made of occupational information.
They combine sociol ogical and psychological
approaches to questions in social stratification
and mobility research. This is not just another
study of 'occupational prestige', indeed it
provides a thoroughgoing critique of the
occupational prestige industry in sociology, a
critique with considerable theoretical implica-
tions in such areas as the debate about
convergence between communist and capitalist
industrial societies.
The authors base their conclusions on a long
series of interviews on similarities and
differences between occupations, and also about
the
ounds for ordering some occupations
above others. The resulting data have both
qualitative and quantitative asects, and are
presented in novel ways which are designed to
intermesh them thoroughly. Detailed analyses
of individual belief systems are supplemented
by innovative uses of statistical method. The
authors apply scaling techniques recently
developed in the study of human cognition in
order to reveal systematic patterns in individual
differences of perceptions and evaluations of
occupations. The basic metaphor of the book is
that of 'cognitive map, conceived as a multi
dimensional, continuous, but systematically
distortable geometric space. The first half of
the analysis is devoted to establishing an overall
cultural cognitive map of which any individual's
OcCupational thinking is a special case. Detailed
anal ysis of individual cases and of group data
established the validity of this overall cognitive
map beyond any doubt.