This essay tries to look at social mobility from the other end of the telescope. It looks back to an Anglo-American world where people started off with the opposite assumption from that of today’s journalists: not that we should be surprised that people follow their parents into their jobs but that we should accept that as the natural state of affairs. It focuses on a group of thinkers who tried to grapple with the emerging problem of social mobility — but whose first instinct was not to look at social forces but at individual characteristics. Why do some people climb up the social ladder while others stay put? What personal characteristics account for the fact that some people “get ahead” in life and others fall behind?
Read the rest of Adrian Wooldridge’s essay on theories of success.
[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]
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