Theoretical Elaborations

Abstract

In the first two chapters of this book, we set out our formal methods in the context of the genealogy of formal theory in sociology. Then, in the third chapter, we discussed the multidimensional conceptualization of stratification in modern sociology before going on to discuss how sociologists have examined class consciousness in empirical studies that have led to abstract empirical generalizations. Then we went on to the first of our major tasks for this book, namely to construct an axiomatic theory that specifies a recursive generating process such that, in equilibrium, the derived panoply of stable images of stratification corresponds to a key empirical generalization, namely that perspective on the space varies with position in it. After demonstrating a number of other properties of the panoply of stable images, in the following two chapters we proceeded to further studies of the consequences of the theory in terms of two other key problems pertaining to images of stratification. First, in Chapter 4 we derived propositions about self-location labeling by adding an axiom that pertains to how actors map their self-location in their stable images into labels supplied by investigators. Second, in the previous chapter, we went on to study how actors acquire not only an image of the basic structure of a class system but also an image of its shape, such as diamond or pyramid.