“”No society can either be absolutely open or absolutely closed.” Comment.” (2015)
The statement restates a conclusion of Pitirim A. Sorokin in Social Mobility (1927): history shows neither strata that were entirely sealed nor movement that was entirely free. “Open” and “closed” are best read as ideal types in Max Weber’s sense, the two ends of a continuum along which real societies vary.
Why no society is absolutely closed
- Demographic and political pressure: elites often fail to reproduce themselves, and wars, conquest and new occupations create vacancies that must be filled from below. Sorokin treated this as a universal source of vertical mobility.
- Caste: M. N. Srinivas showed ranks being renegotiated through Sanskritisation, Kshatriya claims by successful rulers, and the rise of dominant castes. The caste–tribe continuum also let groups such as Bhils and Gonds enter the caste order.
- Estates and slavery: the medieval Church recruited clergy from commoners, and manumission freed slaves.
- Built-in contradiction: a closed system still needs talent for war, administration and trade. That need opens side doors, which the hierarchy then legitimates after the fact.
Why no society is absolutely open
- Inheritance: property and cultural capital pass down families. Pierre Bourdieu showed how schools mistake inherited cultural competence for talent.
- Closure in class societies: Frank Parkin described professions and property-owners excluding others through credentials and ownership.
- Stable relative odds: the hypothesis of David L. Featherman, F. Lancaster Jones and Robert M. Hauser (1975), later tested by Robert Erikson and John H. Goldthorpe in The Constant Flux (1992), holds that relative mobility is broadly similar across industrial nations, whatever their egalitarian ideology.
- Ascription persists: race, gender and religion still shape life chances in formally achievement-based societies.
India as a mixed case
The Constitution abolishes untouchability and guarantees equality of opportunity, yet the Census 2027, notified in June 2025, will enumerate caste. The state still needs birth-based categories to track and correct unequal mobility. Reservation itself uses an ascribed identity to widen access to achieved positions. Openness and closure run through the same society, and each depends on the other.
A qualification
The statement is true but can understate real differences. André Béteille distinguishes hierarchical societies, which value inequality, from egalitarian ones, which condemn it. The norm matters: it decides whether mobility is illegitimate or expected, and whether claims for redress are heard.
Conclusion
Every society mixes ascription and achievement. The useful sociological question is how open a society is, and for whom, measured by relative mobility rather than by its official ideology.