“Discuss social mobility in open and closed system.” (2022, 2008, 1989)
The type of stratification decides the form mobility takes, not just how much of it there is. In a closed system rank is fixed at birth, so movement is exceptional, collective and needs justifying. In an open system rank is won, so movement is expected, individual and routine. Pitirim A. Sorokin (Social Mobility, 1927) named the “channels of vertical circulation”: the army, the church, the school, political and economic organisations, and marriage. Both kinds of system have them, but they are much narrower in closed systems.
Mobility in closed systems
- Slavery: exit came through manumission, self-purchase or military service. The Mamluks of Egypt were slave-soldiers who became a ruling dynasty, and in the Delhi Sultanate slave-generals such as Qutb-ud-din Aibak and Iltutmish became sultans.
- Estates: in medieval Europe, ennoblement by the crown, entry into the celibate clergy, knighthood through war service, guild wealth and marriage opened limited routes upward.
- Caste: mobility is mainly of groups, not individuals:
- Sanskritisation: M. N. Srinivas showed low castes adopting twice-born ritual, diet and ideology to claim higher rank over one or two generations.
- Conquest and Kshatriya claims: successful rulers acquired Kshatriya genealogies, as in the Maratha case.
- Hypergamy, migration to new frontiers, and exit through the Bhakti sects or, later, B. R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism (1956).
- Features: slow, needs prior economic or political gain, and phrased in the idiom of the dominant group. Srinivas called the result positional change, not structural change.
Mobility in open systems
- Channels: education, occupation, the market, electoral politics and free marriage choice. Movement is individual, and can be inter- or intragenerational.
- Structural mobility: industrialisation adds white-collar posts that must be filled from below.
- Modes: Ralph H. Turner (1960) contrasted American contest mobility, an open race kept going as long as possible, with English sponsored mobility, where elites pick recruits early.
- Evidence: Seymour Martin Lipset and Reinhard Bendix (Social Mobility in Industrial Society, 1959) found broadly similar total mobility rates across industrial nations, so America was not uniquely open. Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan (1967) showed that education carries most of the effect of father’s status on son’s.
- Limits: David Glass (1954) found mostly short-range movement in Britain and an elite that largely recruited itself.
How the two differ
| Dimension | Closed | Open |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Group | Individual |
| Pace | Generational, slow | Within a career, faster |
| Legitimation | Imitation of higher status | Merit and credentials |
The two combine in India
India runs both logics at once. Rajeshwari Deshpande and Suhas Palshikar’s four-generation study of Pune (2008) found caste only weakly tied to occupational mobility in general, but important for upward mobility. Maratha-Kunbis and Dalits moved up most, by different routes, while many OBCs lagged. Reservation is sponsored mobility built into a formally open, contest-based system.
Conclusion
Closed systems allow mobility that leaves the hierarchy in place, and open systems allow mobility that rarely changes who starts ahead. In contemporary societies the two principles are mixed rather than opposed.