SOCIAL-STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY IN THE WORLD-SYSTEM - DIFFERENT APPROACHES AND RECENT RESEARCH

This article briefly reviews earlier as well as recent approaches to w orld social stratification and highlights changes in paradigms similar to those in national stratification research. One reason for conceptu al similarities in both fields is increasing social differentiation, w hich triggered reconceptualizations. In reviewing different approaches , the article focuses on the innovative contributions of network analy sis, which entered world stratification research in the 1980s, and out lines its main findings. A major concern of the authors lies in the in tegration of these theoretical explanations of successful or failed ef forts in late development, explanations which are either situated on t he level of the international or the national stratification system. S tarting from the fact of the remarkably different economic performance of the semiperipheral countries like Taiwan and South Korea, as compa red to Mexico and Brazil, the article explains such differentiation by - among other things - the interplay of internal stratification and w orld economic position, an interplay subsumed under the authors' conce pt of 'the world market for protection and social order'.