“You Can Take the Boy Out of Dorchester, but You Can't Take Dorchester Out of the Boy”: Toward a Social Psychology of Mobility

Abstract

This article seeks to illuminate some of the social psychological correlates of social mobility. It proceeds from the observation that while a great deal is known about aggregate rates of mobility and the factors that inhibit or enhance persons' movement through social structures, far less is known about the way individuals define, interpret, comprehend, and give meaning to their own movement through social space. In-depth interview data from 25 professionals who grew up in working-or lower-class circumstances suggests that such a background deeply influences persons' perceptions and actions throughout their occupational lives. The professionals whose own words we will hear, all between 50 and 60 years of age. have "made it" in the occupational world. And they have done it by traversing great social distances. As the recount their stories of becoming doctors, lawyers, academics, and businesspersons, they also mention over and again how their motives, strategic occupational choices, and self-images are connected to the circumstances of their origins. Class and ethnic background is an important "frame" within which persons understand, experience, and create their careers.peers, some variant of the axiom "You can take the boy out of Dorchester, but you can't take Dorchester out of the boy." Such a proposition translated into sociological terms suggests that social class and ethnicity are "master attributes" (Hughes, 1958) that color one's life through its course. These aspects of biography are "sticky statuses" that persons never fully leave behind. This article asks just how a number of professionals have been influenced by their respective "Dorchesters" as they moved into "successful" professional positions. Employing Milton Gordon's (1964) useful notion, I explore how individuals' original "eth-class" memberships shape their interpretations of and responses to their present status as professionals.Eth-class is the subsociety created by the intersection of social class position and ethnicity. I will show that those who break with their eth-class via social mobility must continuously cope with the task of creating and sustaining a "coherent self' that integrates older and newer social identities. Describing the social psychological importance of eth-class Gordon (1964) writes:With a person of the same social class but of a different ethnic group, one shares behavioral similarities but not a sense of peoplehood. With those of the same ethnic group but of a different social class, one shares the sense of peoplehood but not behavioral similarities. The only group that meets both of these criteria are people of the same ethnic group and same social class. With these "birds of a feather" we truly share a sense o f . . . "consciousness of k i n dwith these particular members of the human race and no others we can really relax andparticipate with ease and without strain. (p. 54, emphasis added)

Sociology as a vocation: Reputations and group cultures in graduate school

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Social advocates and action learning: The discontent dancing with hope

“…Social psychologists and political scientists have grappled for years with fundamental questions of empowerment and control among disadvantaged populations. The evidence has typically been bleak (for instance, Berger and Neuhaus, 1977;Cook, 1983;Freire, 1968;Gore and Rotter, 1963;Karp, 1986;Ledrer, 1986;McPhail, 1971;Mitchell, 1984;Piven and Cloward, 1977;Runciman, 1966;Shingles, 1981;Vanneman and Pettigrew, 1971). For the most part, political and social activism has been viewed as arising from feelings of deprivation (either real, relative, or perceived), tempered by degrees of feelings of control.…”