Occupational Heterarchy: Diverse Logics of Prestige in the U.S. Labor Market

• In Event: 2263 - Jobs, Occupations, and Professions II

Abstract

How do people perceive the status hierarchy? Scholars and theorists have long assumed that everyone perceives the status hierarchy the same way, as a homoarchy. However, an emerging perspective from cultural and cognitive sociology posits that our view of the status hierarchy is shaped by our position within that hierarchy – as a heterarchy. This study provides the first test of these two frameworks using a classic measure of social status: occupational prestige. Through a Latent Class Regression technique, I analyze nationally-representative data from the 2012 General Social Survey module on occupational prestige judgments, linking these to individual-level characteristics from the GSS as well as federal occupation-level data. Results provide strong support for the existence of occupational heterarchy: I find evidence for five distinct ways of constructing the hierarchy of occupations in the U.S. Furthermore, which hierarchy a person perceives is a function of their location in social space.

Author

• Lauren Valentino, Duke University