The American Occupational Structure

by Peter M. Blau, Otis Dudley Duncan

Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan pen a classic source of empirical information on the patterns of occupational achievement in American society.

Based on an unusually comprehensive set of data, The American Occupational Structure is renowned for its pioneering methods of statistical analysis, as well as its far-reaching conclusions about social stratification and occupation mobility in the United States.

Presenting “sociology at its scientific best” ( Fortune), The American Occupation Structure received the Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association in recognition of its significant contribution to the social sciences.

Genres: Sociology, Education

544 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 1978

About the author

Peter Michael Blau was an Austrian and American sociologist and theorist. Born in Vienna, Austria, he immigrated to the United States in 1939. He completed his PhD doctoral thesis with Robert K. Merton at Columbia University in 1952, laying an early theory for the dynamics of bureaucracy. The next year, he was offered a professorship at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1953 to 1970. He also taught as Pitt Professor at Cambridge University in Great Britain, as a senior fellow at King's College, and as a Distinguished Honorary professor at Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences which he helped to establish. In 1970 he returned to Columbia University, where he was awarded the lifetime position of professor emeritus. From 1988 to 2000 he taught as the Robert Broughton Distinguished Research Professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in the same department as his wife, Judith Blau, while continuing to commute to New York to meet with graduate students and colleagues.