It is a different question that has nothing to do with the class structure. You can have a society with all class barriers abolished (line in x-communist countries) and still have a dysfunctional anti- social element surviving mainly by sponging off their relatives and engaging in all kinds of delinquent behavior. So if you have the same kind of outcome under very different structural conditions, structure dos not do a very good job explaining those outcomes, no?
Again, that has little to do with the fact that some social structures create more obstacles to upward mobility than others - which is an altogether different issue that you first brought to this discussion, if I am not mistaken.
Stated differently, the fact that structural conditions create barriers to upward mobility may explain why there is a certain level of poverty and dysfunctionality in society, but it does not explain why that poverty and dysfunctionality stays "in the family" so to speak, that is, affects some people with same background more than other with the same background.
> Apparently, you completely missed my list of books where I detail the ways
> in which three of them do exactly that. Why you think that most of the
No I did not. I know some of them from grad school, but since I read them quite a while ago, I would need to re-read them to have an intelligent discussion. Most of that would qualify as anthropology or "thick description" which is not exactly my kind cup of tea. I am not swayed by long narratives designed to familiarize the reader with a particular sub-culture because I cannot help but think of them as advocacies. I prefer case studies in which short descriptions are used for analytical purposes and hypothesis testing. I understand from my qualitative methods seminar back at Rutgers that this is a big divide between more descriptively oriented anthropologists/ sociologists and more analytically oriented social scientists.
> Same thing with the 'left writers suck' trope and the 'left publications
> are ugly' trope. I'd like to know _exactly_ which ones and why the speaker
> thinks they are ugly.
>
I will make a note of it when I see it and post to the list. What I had in mind was mainly the reaction to the culture of poverty argument which became the punching boy or a "Fonda Jane" for the left - because it dared to stipulate that ghetto dwellers are not "innocent victims of the system" as the party line claimed. Again I would need tore-read some of this stuff to have a more intelligent discussion - which at this point I do not think would be the best use of my time.
Wojtek