This essay will analyze a selection of characters from Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. Characterizations will be analyzed by using a Marxist theoretical framework, e.g., characters’ relations to Marxist concepts such as class struggle, alienation, and stratification will be studied. The purpose of this essay is to use Marxist concepts in order to understand Dickens’ satire and critique of capitalism. This is done by applying a theory criticizing capitalism, namely Marxist theory, to some of the novel’s characters and analyzing these characters according to their relations to the main features of Marxist theory. A few characters are selected for analysis, to distinguish characteristics or traits that satirize society. Moreover, the essay will investigate whether the author alludes to Marxist concepts when satirizing contemporary society. The characters portrayed in the novel are all exposed to a society characterized by hardship, inequality, and class struggle. These concepts are all features of a society that Marxism critiques. Accordingly, the thesis is that Marxist concepts are implicit in the text and do play a role in Dickens’ satirizing of his contemporary, capitalist, industrialized society, despitenot being mentioned explicitly.

The study of household wealth as a distinct dimension of social stratification is crucial to understand the main factors and mechanisms driving the intergenerational reproduction of inequalities in contemporary societies. This dissertation aims to contribute to the expanding literature on wealth inequalities by investigating the role played by parental wealth in shaping children’s educational opportunities. More specifically, the dissertation concentrates on three main research axes. First, it investigates the relevance of wealth gaps in education in Italy, a country that received little attention in the literature so far. In doing so, it evaluates wealth gaps in the attainment of upper secondary degrees, in the enrolment at university, and in the attainment of tertiary degrees. Second, it aims to clarify the various roles played by different levels and components of parental wealth in providing children with advantages in educational outcomes. In this regard, it provides a theoretical reflection linking potential wealth mechanisms to the combination of levels and components of wealth and it empirically evaluates their relevance in the transition to post-secondary education. Third, it explores whether and how wealth gaps in education vary across different national contexts. Broad international comparisons are still missing in the literature and single-country studies are hardly comparable. To this purpose, this dissertation aims at evaluating wealth gaps in the access to post-secondary education across 14 European countries while also accounting for the relative importance of different wealth components.

Educational credentials have a central role in contemporary societies. However, social origins continue to affect educational performances and transitions well before children enter compulsory school, thus threatening future outcomes and development. By interacting research streams from economics, psychology, and pedagogy, this dissertation locates within the literature on child development, early education, and social stratification, and it aims at further contributing to the sociological evidence on the mechanisms that lead to inequalities in skills. The core of this dissertation lies in the analysis of the characteristics of the early childhood educational system (ECE) and of the home learning environment (HLE), as growth-promoting or unfavourable contexts for the development of both cognitive and noncognitive skills. Adopting recent cross-national and longitudinal data, this dissertation asks (1) whether and how much ECE matters in the lives of children around Europe, leaving long-lasting traces on their achievements once adolescents; (2) whether and how much parental social position, beliefs, and other family and child characteristics play a role in the care selection process in Germany; and (3) whether and how much quality in HLE and ECE contributes at explaining differences in skills before entering primary school in Ireland.

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Despite being one of the few human-specific types of play that humans of various ages engage in, games are understudied in cross-cultural research. Games are not distributed randomly across cultures and vary with some socio-ecological aspects of human cultures. Previous observational studies suggest that the cooperativeness and egalitarianism of cultural groups is reflected in the games that are played across cultures, but this has yet to be studied using a breadth of method- ological approaches. In this dissertation, I investigate the relationship the cooperativeness of games may have with the cooperativeness of cultural groups and offer one potential avenue as to how and why games are distributed across cultures. This dissertation consists of two main parts. The first part (chapters 2 - 3) focuses on gathering and analyzing descriptions of historical games and cultural levels of cooperation from ethnolinguistic groups on the Austronesian language phylogeny. The second part (chapters 4 - 6) focuses on gathering games, cultural levels of cooperation, and investigating the relationship between games and cultural levels of cooperation by three modern-day cultural groups. In chapter two, I describe the making of the Austronesian Game Taxonomy, an open-access database of game descriptions as gathered from historical, ethnographic, and other sources. I also describe my goal structure coding scheme and apply it to the 907 games in the Austronesian Game Taxonomy. In chapter three, I test the relationship between the goal structure of games from the Austronesian Game Taxonomy and several proxies for cultural levels of cooperation in 25 ethnolin- guistic groups. I find that the cooperativeness of games is negatively related to cultural levels of intra-group conflict and positively related with inter-cultural conflict. The goal structure of games is not associated with the social structure of cultures, nor reliably correlate with measures of interdependence in subsistence. Chapter four provides a detailed description of the three cultures that are the focus of Part two of this dissertation: Hai||om and Ovambo in Namibia, and Germans in Leipzig, Germany. I use three semi-structured interviews to obtain information about the levels of social stratification, intra-group conflict, and inter-cultural conflict experienced by these three groups. Chapter five documents the games played by Hai||om and Ovambo children and adults during my research visit to Namibia. I describe a handful of games with variety of goal structures. I provide the interview used to gather this information for future cross-cultural game collection. In chapter six, I examine the relationship between the preference for games that are cooperative or competitive, and cultural levels of cooperation in three modern-day cultures. I also interview caretakers on their attitudes toward children’s play and games. I find cross-cultural variation in children’s game preferences, but adult game preferences do not vary across cultures. Game preferences do not systematically vary with predicted cultural levels of cooperation. In the general discussion, I discuss my research findings in terms of the relationship between games and cultural levels of cooperation and suggest further improvements for the field of cross-cultural game research. This dissertation provides some evidence that games relate with types of conflict, but not with levels of social stratification nor interdependence in subsistence.

The dissertation is looking into the diagnostics of student's understanding of the principals of society organisation in relation to thecontentof sociologicalcivic curriculumeducation and socialbasisin secondary schools. The teoretical part delimits basic sociological terms, especially social stratification, social mobility and social status. Concept of didactical content knowledge and didactical theory of curricullum reconstruction is described to connect sociological approach to school education. Current research at this area are also presented. In the practical part was implementeda research inquiry, which used semistructured depth interview for data collection. The Gathered data wereprocessedqualitatively. The measure of hierarchy in society, the cause of social stratification and social mobility options, were primarily watched in the research inquiry. Where possible, student's answers were compared to previous research inquiry results.

A proposta dessa dissertação é revisitar o tema para analisar o comportamento da mobilidade sócio-ocupacional brasileira no final do século XX e início do século XXI. O período de análise foi selecionado pela disponibilidade do suplemento de Mobilidade Sócio-ocupacional da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílio (PNAD) nos anos de 1996 e 2014. A partir da criação de uma medida de Status Sócio-econômico (SSE), que utiliza informações a respeito da ocupação, escolaridade e rendimento principal das pessoas, foi elaborada uma estrutura para as ocupações brasileiras, dividindo-as em seis estratos ocupacionais que variam do estrato alto ao estrato baixo-inferior. Para a análise dos movimentos dentro da estrutura obtida utilizamos matrizes de transição de status e medidas de mobilidade. A análise de trajetórias foi aplicada para identificar como o status sócio-ocupacional do pai afeta o status do filho em 2014. Os resultados obtidos mostram uma sociedade com elevada mobilidade sócio-ocupacional. No caso intergeracional, cerca de 67% dos indivíduos experimentou mobilidade nos dois períodos. A mobilidade intrageracional nos mostra que a grande maioria dos indivíduos de 2014, cerca de 75%, iniciou sua carreira em ocupações de estrato baixo. Na dinâmica da mobilidade brasileira dominam os movimentos de mobilidade circular. No caso intrageracional, a mobilidade estrutural aumentou, mas ainda não ultrapassa a mobilidade circular. A análise de trajetórias permitiu observar que a influência do status sócio-ocupacional do pai sobre o status do filho é maior por canais indiretos, como a educação do filho e o status da ocupação inicial. Utilizando a medida de status ocupacional foi possível abordar a inclusão de variáveis de background familiar do indivíduo na estimação de equações de rendimento e o seu papel na diminuição do viés nas estimativas da influência da educação na determinação da renda. A mobilidade social brasileira é um fenômeno forte na sociedade, porém a influência das características herdadas pelo indivíduo sobre as suas chances de mobilidade ainda é bastante alta, sendo necessário diminuí-la para que haja maior igualdade nas oportunidades de mobilidade. / The objective of this dissertation is to revisit the topic to analyze the behavior of the Brazilian socio-occupational mobility in the late 20th century and early 21st century. The analysis period was selected according to the availability of socio-occupational mobility supplements of the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) in 1996 and 2014. A structure for the Brazilian occupations was elaborated from the measurement of socioeconomic status (SSE), which comprises information about occupation, educational attainments and main income. Such structure was divided into six occupational strata ranging from high to inferior-low. The movements within the structure were analyzed through status transition matrices and mobility measurements. Path analysis was applied to identify how the father\'s socio-occupational status affects the child\'s status in 2014. The results demonstrated a society with high socio-occupational mobility. Regarding the intergenerational aspect, approximately 67% of the individuals experienced mobility in both periods. The intragenerational mobility showed that most individuals in 2014, about 75%, started their careers in low-stratum occupations. Circular mobility movements predominate in the Brazilian mobility dynamics. The structural mobility increased in the intragenerational case; however, it did not surpass the circular mobility. The path analysis showed that the influence of the father\'s socio-occupational status on the child\'s one is higher through indirect channels, such as the child\'s education and the initial occupation status. The measurement of the occupational status allowed the inclusion of family background variables in the earnings functions to analyze their role in the decrease of bias regarding the influence of education on income determination. The Brazilian social mobility is a strong phenomenon in the society; however, the influence of one\'s inherited characteristics on the mobility chances is still considerably high. Thus, the influence of such characteristics needs to be minimized to allow more equality in mobility opportunities.

A tese analisa a trajetória do Sistema de Profissões e os seus elos com o sistema de estratificação social no Brasil. Focaliza as configurações do estrato profissional e os movimentos de (i) mobilidade social que caracterizam o grupo de posições privilegiadas no topo da hierarquia ocupacional. Argumenta-se que o sistema de profissões deve ser visto como o resultado da interrelação histórica entre três sistemas institucionais autônomos: a divisão do trabalho, o sistema de ensino superior, e a regulamentação profissional. O Estado é tomado como um ator central não apenas porque regula a produção de credenciais e os monopólios, mas também porque o modo como organiza a atividade econômica e os serviços de bem-estar cria novos mercados, ao tempo em que demanda e legitima os serviços profissionais. A pesquisa empírica se valeu de fontes (legislação, documentos, microdados das pesquisas domiciliares do IBGE Censos e Pnads) e técnicas diversas (análise de conteúdo, técnicas de análise quantitativa, pesquisa historiográfica) e, como resultado, foram identificados três grandes períodos na história do sistema de profissões no Brasil. Um primeiro de formação e estabilização (até a década de 1940) quando foram se consolidando gradativamente as regras que associam o exercício profissional, os monopólios de mercado e o diploma de ensino superior; um segundo de expansão e diferenciação, quando o sistema de profissões se expande concomitantemente à extensão de privilégios às novas carreiras que surgiam da diferenciação da divisão do trabalho e do sistema de ensino superior (1950 a 1980); e um terceiro, inaugurado na década de 1990, marcado pela diminuição da associação entre a divisão especializada do trabalho, o sistema de ensino superior e a extensão dos monopólios de mercado, tornando o sistema de profissões mais instável e fragmentado. A configuração do sistema de profissões ao longo do tempo condiciona a mobilidade social na parte de cima do sistema de estratificação, por dois motivos em especial: i) o modo como diferentes tipos de diplomas de ensino superior proporciona a inserção no estrato profissional; ii) e a forma como Estado e mercado recrutam os profissionais. Sendo assim, reconfigura-se associação histórica entre o diploma de ensino superior e a mobilidade social ascendente, alterando o próprio significado da mobilidade social no Brasil. / This dissertation aims at analyzing the trajectory of the Brazilian system of professions and its linkages with the countrys social stratification system. It focuses on the changing configurations of the professional stratum, and the social mobility movements to and from this group of privileged positions at the top of the occupational hierarchy. My main argument is that the system of professions reflects the historical interplay between three autonomous institutional systems: the division of labor, the higher education system and professional regulation. The State is a central actor not just because it regulates the production of credentials and monopolies. But also, because the way it organizes the economic activity and the welfare services create new markets, constrain and legitimate the professional services. The empirical research builds on several sources (legislation, documents, microdata from IBGE\'s Census and household surveys) and different techniques (content analysis, quantitative analysis, historiographic research). As a result, three significant periods have been identified in the history of the system of professions in Brazil. A first one, of formation and stabilization (until the 1940s), when the rules that link professional practice, market monopolies and higher education diploma were consolidated; a second period of expansion and differentiation when the system of professions grew, sharing privileges with the new careers that arose in a moment of increasing division of labor and expansion of the higher education system (from the 1950s to the 1980s). A third period, inaugurated in the 1990s, marked by a decline in the association between the specialized division of labor, the higher education system and the extension of market monopolies, making the system of professions more unstable and fragmented. The configuration of the system of professions over time conditions social mobility at the top of the stratification system, for two particular reasons: i) the way different types of higher education diplomas provide the insertion in the professional stratum; ii) and the way the state and the market recruit professionals. Thus, it reconfigures a historical association between higher education diploma and upward social mobility, changing the very meaning of social mobility in Brazil.