Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

Item

Title

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

Author

Diewald, Martin

Research Area

Class, Status and Power

Topic

Social and Economic Inequality

Abstract

Despite lacking a commonly shared definition, social mechanisms have recently received considerable attention in sociology. Social inequality research has been a trailblazer in providing examples of how social mechanism can further, theoretically and methodologically, progress. Two different understandings of social mechanisms are reflected in the literature. One refers to theoretical and methodological precision when describing the causal chains that lead from specific antecedents to specific outcomes. The other is a program designed to articulate a complete taxonomy of a limited number of mechanisms as abstract ideas to explain social inequalities. I discuss both approaches how they can fruitfully refer to each other. In the final section, I discuss social mechanisms in the view of a new challenge to social inequality research, that is, a growing interdisciplinary interest in gene–environment interference. By superseding the old and fruitless nature‐versus‐nurture debate, new fields of social inquiry emerge, but pose also the question what it can add to a better understanding of inequality‐generating social mechanisms. As I will show, the inclusion of genetic information in social science explanations does not threaten sociology as a discipline, but will potentially enrich both the currently proposed mechanistic approaches in social inequality research.

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extracted text

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the
Formation of Social Inequalities
MARTIN DIEWALD

Abstract
Despite lacking a commonly shared definition, social mechanisms have recently
received considerable attention in sociology. Social inequality research has been a
trailblazer in providing examples of how social mechanism can further, theoretically
and methodologically, progress. Two different understandings of social mechanisms
are reflected in the literature. One refers to theoretical and methodological precision
when describing the causal chains that lead from specific antecedents to specific
outcomes. The other is a program designed to articulate a complete taxonomy of
a limited number of mechanisms as abstract ideas to explain social inequalities.
I discuss both approaches how they can fruitfully refer to each other. In the
final section, I discuss social mechanisms in the view of a new challenge to social
inequality research, that is, a growing interdisciplinary interest in gene–environment
interference. By superseding the old and fruitless nature-versus-nurture debate,
new fields of social inquiry emerge, but pose also the question what it can add to a
better understanding of inequality-generating social mechanisms. As I will show,
the inclusion of genetic information in social science explanations does not threaten
sociology as a discipline, but will potentially enrich both the currently proposed
mechanistic approaches in social inequality research.

THE GROWING INTEREST OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN SOCIAL
MECHANISMS
Over the past two decades or so, mechanisms and mechanism-based
explanations have received increased attention in the fields of philosophy
and science. This is also true of sociology, a discipline in which mechanisms
are advocated as an alternative to both descriptive empiricism without
causal relevance and untestable, highly abstract grand theory (Hedström
& Swedberg, 1998). On one hand, mechanism-based explanations should
avoid empiricism, in which correlations between variables can be mistaken
for proof of generative processes. Correlations can be distorted by endogeneity and unmeasured confounders, making observed correlations merely
spurious instead of actually bringing about a specific outcome under defined
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

conditions (Elster, 2007). An often cited example for causality problems in
correlational research is the indeed existing positive correlation between
storks and childbirths in the same region. On the other hand, the search
for covering-law explanations is also seen as a fruitless effort. Universally
valid explanations for social phenomena by means of strictly deductive,
universally valid laws in a strict sense do not appear to be possible. There
is nothing like the law of gravity in physics, working in the same way all
over the world. The same can be said of grand theory, for example, systems
theory, which is more philosophical than scientific in that it purports to
explain everything but cannot be tested empirically.
What can the mechanisms approach offer to avoid all the problems and
pitfalls that plague these other approaches? Though there is no unitary definition of social mechanisms, one common denominator is the conviction that
there is a more promising intermediate level of generality and abstraction.
Such an intermediate degree of generalizability is derived from a proven
robustness that specific antecedents regularly produce a specific effect under
particular conditions, though maybe not, or to a much lesser degree, under
other conditions. As an example, there is a universal predisposition of
humans to prefer similar humans as interaction partners. However, whether
this predisposition leads indeed to such relations is largely dependent on
structural opportunities and constraints to get acquainted with similar or
dissimilar others (Blau, 1974). If in addition possible confounding elements
are ruled out or controlled effectively, mechanisms may be conceived of as
laws that have some restricted generality (Elster, 2007, p. 44). On the basis of
this common ground, two very distinct mechanistic agendas have emerged
in the social sciences.
SOCIAL MECHANISM AS STYLE OF THEORIZING AND MODELING
The first refers to concrete mechanisms as real, existing phenomena, as concrete and observable causal chains. In this case, the mechanisms approach is
no more than a commitment to a number of principles of conducting social
research in order to explain human agents’ behavior and its consequences.
Indispensable requirements are minimizing spurious correlations and confounders to make causal inference as reliable as possible. Theoretically, as
especially analytical sociology insists, generative processes must be traced
back to agents and their actions (Hedström, 2005). However, compared to
the former concentration of rational decision-making, now attention should
be paid to more sophisticated ideas about how individual actions aggregate
to form stable patterns of agency among individual and collective actors
(Kalter & Kroneberg, 2014). In a similar vein, Gross (2009, p. 369) advocates
a “pragmatist theory of mechanisms,” also with an emphasis on “chains or

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

3

aggregations of actors, problem situations, and habitual responses—always
with the possibility, greater in some circumstances than [in] others, that a
novel way of responding to a problem could emerge for any of the actors
involved, potentially altering the workings of the mechanism.” However,
opinion is divided over how far one should go to reach a deeper understanding of the “cogs and wheels” involved (Elster, 2007, p. 7). For Hedström,
reducing behavior to extrasocial forces such as neuronal processes or genetics
should be avoided by such stopping rules. Reskin (2003, p. 6) already rejects
motive-based explanations because they themselves must be explained by
social forces and therefore are not at the left side of the equation.
TOWARD ABSTRACT, THEORETICAL MECHANISMS
The second agenda considers mechanisms as analytical constructs, or
abstractions from real processes. It goes beyond the fairly imprecise notion
that mechanisms have “some generality” or regularity (Hedström &
Swedberg, 1998, p. 19). These constructs are theoretical creations, or ideas,
about how a certain outcome is produced, leading in the end to a complete
taxonomy of mechanisms that shape the social world, which admittedly is
only imaginable as a long-term project of social inquiry. Which taxonomy, as
a “grammar of the social,” will be successful in the end is an open project.
It will depend not only on whether highly abstract mechanisms can be
successfully traced back to a number of convincing, more specific empirical
substantiations of this general mechanism but also on whether the persuasiveness of the theoretical idea provides an overarching general mechanism.
Thus, concrete and abstract mechanisms are not independent of one another.
Rather, concrete mechanisms can, by way of analogies and abstractions, be
categorized from the bottom up into abstract mechanisms that then have
a higher degree of generalizability, are less bound to certain contextual
circumstances, and can be related to a wider range of social phenomena. Yet
the discussion about properly defining a defined set of mechanisms can also
influence the operationalization of substantive concrete mechanisms from
the top down, as I will show for the case of mechanisms that create social
inequality.
MECHANISMS IN SOCIAL INEQUALITY RESEARCH
Social inequality research may be the field of social inquiry in which the
mechanisms approach has received most attention in order to overcome
a merely descriptive account of unequal distributions of outcomes, such
as Gini coefficients for the income distribution, and earnings inequality
between, say, women and men in the labor market. Maybe due to rising

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inequality in the Western world the interest in how, by which “cogs and
wheels,” unequal chances and distributions come about and change over
time was strengthened. I will trace the contribution of mechanism-based
explanations by referring in an exemplary way to three prominent developments in social inequality research: revitalized mainly by Tilly (1998)
the attempt to define theoretical mechanisms of high generality and the
long-term project of outlining a classification of highly abstract theoretical
inequality-generating mechanisms; at a more concrete but still medium
level of generality the role of perceptions and evaluations; and as research
field where both abstract and concrete mechanisms are tried to relate to
each other research on relational inequalities in work organizations with a
specific focus on gender.
TOWARD ABSTRACT-THEORETICAL MECHANISMS GENERATING INEQUALITY
Defining and referring to abstract, inequality-generating mechanisms as
having a high degree of generality is motivated by the goal to overcome
the often disparaged fragmentation, or “balkanization” (Reskin, 2003, p. 5),
of social-inequality research into highly specialized theories confined to
particular domains that lessen the scientific and sociopolitical significance
of inequality research. Among such mechanisms, Marx’s exploitation
and Weber’s social closure theories have a long-standing tradition in
social-inequality research, partly under other labels, such as “ascription.”
In addition, in many cases, the new surge of interest in the mechanisms
approach within inequality research is stimulated by these theories, as evidenced by Tilly’s Durable Inequality and the “Symposium on Class Analysis”
in the American Journal of Sociology (2000), during which A. Sørensen made an
influential suggestion about not only how to bridge the gap between these
two mechanisms as unrelated alternatives but also how to overcome the
different viewpoints in sociology and economics concerning wage-setting
mechanisms.1
There are only few attempts in the literature to extend these two classical theoretical mechanisms to a more comprehensive taxonomy of
inequality-generating mechanisms. One is provided by Tilly (1998) himself
in terms of two additional abstract mechanisms, which he calls emulation and
adaptation. These mechanisms are thought to give attention to the important
point of how inequalities endure over time and spread within a society.
1. Exploitation occurs in cooperative relationships when the more powerful party is in a position to
secure a disproportionate share of the value created through cooperation. Social closure is the monopolization of access to positions, resources, and market opportunities. An example is the exclusion of competitors
for jobs due to characteristics that have nothing to do with a differential ability for these jobs, like sex and
ethnicity. Reducing competition then enhances bargaining power which offers the greatest opportunity
for exploitation.

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

5

Emulation, according to Tilly, refers to a transfer of existing organizational
forms and practices of exploitation or opportunity-hoarding, which is
largely identical with Weber’s social closure, from one social context to
another; adaptation means the embedding of inequalities in daily rules,
routines, and rituals, which make such inequalities appear ubiquitous if not
“natural.” These mechanisms stabilize patterns of inequality both within
organizations and across different social contexts. In other words, they are
conceived as general generic mechanisms but whose effect is contingent on
specific conditions.
Therborn (2006) and Diewald and Faist (2011) have tried instead to identify additional mechanisms complementary to social closure and exploitation. Therborn defines distantiation as the rules of competition that yield
a winner–loser gap (e.g., the Matthew effect). By hierarchization Therborn
means the structure of institutionalized roles and positions with their respective unequal rights and resources. Diewald and Faist distinguish between
exclusion and opportunity hoarding as two different degrees of social closure. While exclusion refers to the access to informal (networks) of formal
(organizations) modes of cooperation, opportunity hoarding refers to practices
of privileging or disadvantaging certain groups within these social spheres,
for example, in career ladders. Moreover, Diewald and Faist include the perception and appraisal of different groups as important precondition of the
generation of inequality, though they must not have a direct bearing on the
generation of social inequalities.
PERCEPTIONS AND EVALUATIONS
The decision of including group-related perceptions and evaluations reacts
to a renewed interest in social psychological mechanisms, which seem
especially relevant for interaction in highly diversified societies. It corresponds moreover to the shifting interest from individual rational action
to interaction, bargaining, and chains of social action mentioned earlier.
Unlike rational-action theories, social–psychological concepts point to the
often unconscious perception of groups along easily observable, more or
less familiar attributes that automatically lead to stereotypes and prejudices
or, more generally, expectations about group members’ performance and
status in society. If, for example, women are regularly observed to work in
lower status occupations compared to men, then they are easily assigned
less competence than men simply by being female (Ridgeway, 2011), which
then influences interaction generating social inequality. Similarly, boundary
drawing, mostly along easily observable characteristics such as ethnicity
or gender, leads to perceptions of strangeness (“us” vs “them”), and then

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inferiority, which shapes interaction patterns as well and contributes to legitimizing inequality: “Heterogeneities are always perceived and appraised,
there is always a historical backdrop of cultural representations and practices
for dealing with them, and they are always invoked or engendered by actors
in the generation of inequality” (Diewald & Faist, 2011, p. 16). Such perceptions and immediately (and mostly unconsciously) linked evaluations are
generic mechanisms in the sense of social mechanisms with a high level of
generality. In essence, they are universal, but their strength, and the salience
of certain attributes compared with others are contingent and subject to a
variety of conditions, which in this research field are not least the conditions
of work organizations and their embeddedness in cultural and institutional
environments. Therefore, the relevance of being male or female, native or
migrant, varies considerably between workplaces in different countries
(Avent-Holt & Tomascovic-Devey, 2012).
RELATIONAL INEQUALITIES IN WORK ORGANIZATIONS
Organizational inequality research is perhaps the research field where mechanistic approaches have developed farthest. This applies both to an ever more
fine-graded, methodologically advanced identification of concrete, substantial mechanisms as well as the attempt to formulate a limited number of
generic, abstract-theoretical mechanisms at a high level of generality. Not
least organizational research applied sophisticated inquiries into intergroup
perceptions and evaluations and action motivations.
When looking at generic abstract-theoretical mechanisms, an implicit
assumption about selfish motivation is inherent to the system. TomaskovicDevey (2014), for example, offers two more “core organizational” abstract
mechanisms: claims-making and resource-pooling. The mechanism of
resource-pooling directs attention to the fact that within-organization
groups try to exploit and hoard for themselves the resources that flow
into the organization. Organizations vary greatly in the amount of these
resources minus investments and in the structure of the resource flow
(e.g., profit centers). The struggle over the distribution of these resources
among different within-firm groups or actors is referred to as claims-making.
Claims-making can take place as part of taken-for-granted practices and
formal rules, including industrial relations that extend beyond a given
organization, and it can be mobilized through individual actions such as
applying for a better job or voicing a perceived discrimination. Both mechanisms are seen as generic but are contingent on different organizational
conditions.

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

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In other words, the degree to which a given categorical distinction gets
activated first at the level of perception and evaluation, and then perpetuated in different interaction contexts, is in the sphere of gainful employment
determined by formal rules and practices within work organizations. Organizations often make reference to existing categorical distinctions in society.
However, whether or not a work organization adheres to such existing beliefs
is contingent on organizational and environmental conditions. In sum, the
investigation of these processes made organizational inequality research to
a major driving force to establish the social mechanism approach in social
inequality research.
With regard to concrete, substantial mechanisms, it is important to
note that these studies try to move away from assigning significance to
organization variables—which usually are less-than-appropriate measures
for any mechanism—to measuring within-firm practices that are shared,
disputed, or bargained among coworkers, supervisors, and upper management, and to note how they are framed by organizational conditions.
This approach comes closest to what was defined as the core feature of
substantive mechanisms derived earlier: the “nuts and bolts” processes
by which cause-and-effect relationships come about are seen as “chains or
aggregations of problem situations and the effects that ensue as a result of
the habits actors use to resolve them” (Gross, 2009, p. 375). Consequently, in
this view, “inequality is not lodged in positions, occupations, or even jobs
but in the relationships between positions within organizations [ … and
… ] similarly not lodged in people, races, or genders but in the relationships
between people and between status categories” (Tomaskovic-Devey, 2014,
p. 52, emphases in the original). The increasing availability of high-quality,
information-rich employer–employee data provides us with unprecedented
opportunities to properly define such contingent constraints that enable or
prevent mechanisms from becoming effective.
GENDER INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS
However, sometimes inequality-generating mechanisms are not simply
located in one sphere of life but refer to interdependencies between different
spheres. Recent research in sociology and economics has revealed a key
mechanism behind gender earnings inequality in the disproportionality of
rewards for long, and particularly irregular, working hours, which usually
affect men more than women. Such nonlinear pay with respect to hours
worked seems to account for most of the residual differences in earnings
based on gender (Cha & Weeden, 2014; Goldin, 2014). This effect was
strongest in occupations in which “long work hours are especially common
and the norm of doing extra work is deeply embedded in organizational

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

practices and occupational cultures” (Cha & Weeden, 2014, p. 457). To be
sure, employers’ expectations concerning overtime work and irregular
working hours appear to be gender-neutral, as are the monetary rewards
for such extra work. In addition, a third study confirmed this mechanism
by investigating the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in
the United States. It had the advantage that employees’ performance (which
is very difficult to measure) could be assessed on the basis of criteria that
were unequivocally accepted and highly transparent: the number of hours
billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated (Azmat
& Ferrer, 2015). In both respects, male lawyers considerably outperformed
their female counterparts. Again, the gender difference in pay could not be
explained by the classical modes of workplace discrimination, as the “cogs
and wheels” that serve to explain this difference is the factor of motivation
for long and irregular working hours, namely the aspiration to become a
partner in the law firm.
However, it is striking that neither of these studies interprets the results as
a final argument against any discrimination hypothesis. Instead, they point
out that it is, indirectly, the unequal obligations of men and women with
respect to unpaid domestic work and childcare that has caused the discrepancy between organizational practices and the ability to require employees
to do extra work and work irregular hours. In the lawyer study, the presence of preschool children proved to influence the gender performance gap,
though of only to a moderate degree when compared with the factor of differential aspirations. Although this study by Azmat and Ferrer effectively rules
out the possibility of contemporaneous reverse causality during an individual’s working life, it does not explain what might have caused differences
in aspirations between men and women earlier in their lives, and whether
anticipated future childcare obligations might contribute to it.
This leads to questions about whether to increase women’s capability and
willingness to do extra work and/or to work irregular hours or to revise the
way jobs are structured and remunerated as a way of improving temporal
flexibility and doing away with disproportionate rewards. At first glance,
these studies merit the following conclusions: discriminatory workplace
characteristics do not explain gender-related differences in pay, at least
not in the first place, whereas performance differences are a major factor;
differences in aspirations contribute to performance differences and may
also affect employees’ willingness to do extra work and work irregular
hours. However, this is not to be taken to mean that discrimination plays
no role at all when it comes to gender differences in pay. Organizational
practices that disproportionately compensate for extra work and irregular
working hours are gender-neutral only if they do not take into account
unequal obligations at home that are relevant for gender differences in

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

9

motivation. This is why Reskin (2003) generally denies the use of motives for
explaining inequality. I agree with this verdict if understood as cause, but
motivation can be important to disentangle the “nuts and bolts” between
cause and effect, as can be seen in these examples.
These three studies give a striking example of how difficult it may be to
identify inequality-generating social mechanisms, as at first glance nondiscriminatory, gender-neutral practices can nevertheless play a part in “chains
or aggregations of actors, problem situations, and habitual responses” cited
earlier, that in the end create inequality by discrimination.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Whether a more or less consensual “generative social grammar of inequality”
(Therborn, 2006, p. 1), generalizable throughout different areas of society, is
a reasonable long-term objective is still debated (Diewald & Faist, 2011). The
taxonomies of Therborn and of Diewald and Faist have both shown that it is
difficult to arrive at such common acceptance of a handful of general abstract
mechanisms that are theoretically well developed and also fully distinguishable from one another. Maybe it would appear more promising to stay with
the classical mechanisms (i.e., exploitation and social closure) and to elaborate on them by defining a small set of variations of these very abstract
mechanisms. The major advantage of these two classical mechanisms is that
they provide a comprehensive and in the same time parsimonious account
of how inequality is generated by cooperation (exploitation) and by excluding others from cooperation (social closure). To take the taxonomy presented
by Diewald and Faist (2011, p. 12) as a starting point for further development, other abstract mechanisms could be allocated as variants of these two.
For example, stereotyping and prejudices can easily be conceived of as variants of social closure at the levels of perception and evaluation instead of
being independent additional mechanisms. The same is true for inclusion
versus exclusion and opportunity-hoarding, whereas hierarchization could
be linked to exploitation.
As already realized in the taxonomy suggested by Diewald and Faist
(2011), a second important specification of mechanisms is to break them
down according to different levels of social context—in this case, between
informal interactions in families and social networks, formal organizations,
and societal institutions. In general, these context-specific mechanisms
should have an intermediate level of abstraction between the few highly
abstract mechanisms at the top and the many specific, substantive mechanisms for specific situations. Such a differentiation between abstract,
inequality-generating mechanisms is thought to be only the starting point
for a much more comprehensive endeavor, namely to determine, across

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

different relational groups and different contexts, whether the same mechanisms work for the same relational groups in the same way (e.g., men vs
women, or within different age groups or ethnicities).
There are two other complementary ideas that could add to such a taxonomy of abstract mechanisms. One is to include mechanisms that show
how inequality is not only generated but equalized, a method that would
be preferable to the use of inequality-generating mechanisms alone in integrating, among others, the paramount role of modern welfare states. DiPrete
(2002) and Diewald (2016) elaborated on this aspect as risk compensation.
The other idea takes into account the social dynamics of inequality in Tilly’s
mechanisms of emulation and adaptation. Although a temporal dimension
is already inherent in these two mechanisms, they refer mostly to spillovers
between different social contexts without addressing their temporal order.
Literature on cumulative advantage and disadvantage could complement
the view concerning social dynamics in the generation of inequality and the
processes that make these dynamics durable, by addressing the development
of inequality over the life course, as well as its stability and change through
risks and risk compensation under different circumstances.
GENETIC INFORMATION FOR SOCIAL MECHANISMS?
One of the challenges now arising in social-inequality research is the
inclusion of genetic information when attempting to define the mechanisms
that produce social inequality, whether in the form of behavioral genetic
modeling or in the form of molecular genetic information. Whether or not
this might benefit social inquiry in general, and the study of the mechanisms
that create social inequality in particular, is still very much a subject of
debate. On the other hand, it would be inappropriate for the social sciences
to ignore the challenges posed by emerging doubts (in other disciplines
as well as in public debate) that certain social mechanisms (such as social
closure against children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds that prevents access to higher education or, later, to well-paid jobs) are in fact due
to genetic variation between these groups rather than to social mechanisms
of social closure against lower social origin, as social-inequality research
would insist.
So how does including genetics in mechanistic explanations of social
inequality improve our understanding of this phenomenon? In keeping
with the two agendas for the mechanisms approach outlined earlier, this
question has two answers. For the first goal, which is to define and operationalize the causal chains of substantive mechanisms as reliably as possible,
the use of molecular genetic information or behavioral genetic modeling
is simply a powerful methodological tool to control for possible genetic

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

11

confounding of social effects (Johnson, Turkheimer, Gottesman, & Bouchard,
2010)—in other words, to get “purer” social effects that are not suspected of
being caused by genetic factors. Thus, heritability serves as a placeholder for
unmeasured genetically shaped characteristics that affect the outcome under
investigation (Freese & Shostak, 2009). Without controlling for the genetic
resemblance of parents and children, a correlation between parents and
children cannot be seen simply as “prima facie evidence for sociocultural
causal mechanisms” alone (Turkheimer, 2000, p. 162; see Avinun & Knafo,
2014 for the role of gene–environment correlation). If there is heritability
in ability and schooling (which is indeed the case), any assessment of how
social origin influences education and of how education influences social
outcomes will be severely biased owing to unobserved genetic heterogeneity
(Diewald, Baier, Schulz, & Schunck, 2015).
In general, genetic confounding of social effects may be due to an unequal
distribution of relevant alleles among related groups (e.g., lower-class
children have less favorable genetic propensities than higher-class children)
or by gene–environment covariance, which means that measured social
effects are partly genetic effects, because genetic propensities lead us to select
ourselves into different social environments and the social environment’s
responses to us are induced in part by genetically influenced characteristics.
It is important to note, however, that in this view heritability and molecular
genetic variation play no role in the definition of social mechanisms; the
point is that we need to measure social mechanisms more properly. Because
virtually “everything is heritable” to some degree (Turkheimer, 2000), the
advantage of controlling for genetic influences is ubiquitous, also for seemingly quite “distal” outcomes, such as wealth and socioeconomic status.
Therefore, at least in this sense, Hedström’s verdict that one should not refer
to ever more finely graded causal “nuts and bolts” outside the realm of the
social sciences is unconvincing.
It is, however, a completely different question whether genes, or heritability, should play a role in the formulation of abstract social mechanisms in the
sense that genetic variation has a substantive, theoretically embedded place
in the explanation of social inequality. A first—and rather obvious—idea
would be to complement social origin with genetic origin as a starting
point for studies on the emergence of social inequality over the course of
individuals’ lives. Yet the theoretical meaning would then, in my view, be
opposite to the way heritability is usually interpreted in behavioral genetic
modeling of status attainment processes, namely as unmeasured achievement characteristics, in contrast to a shared environment as a placeholder for
social origin characteristics (Branigan, McCallum, & Freese, 2013; Nielsen,
2006). As regards ascription versus achievement, this explanation is difficult
to understand. Are genes less ascribed than the social characteristics of

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

one’s parents? The answer is: certainly not. This interpretation becomes
more questionable the more achievement is interpreted in the sense of a
meritocratic ideal.
However, it is reasonable to interpret heritability, or specific alleles, as
individuality in the sense of an individual’s potential, as given propensities
for unequal life chances, and as a starting point for an analysis of what a
society does with its members from the very beginning of their lives. We
know from existing research that such genetic propensities are far from being
deterministic and that, to a considerable degree, genetic expression is shaped
socially. This understanding benefits from, and at the same time inspires, the
flourishing research on gene–environment interaction. Such methodological
and theoretical inclusion of genetic variation in social-inequality research
provides valuable insights into causal chains, from origin to unequal life
course outcomes, namely how favorable characteristics such as cognitive
and noncognitive skills are developed from the genome by different degrees
of improvement, and how the development of unfavorable characteristics
such as antisocial behavior and aggression is enabled by triggering or is
inhibited by compensation or social control in different social contexts
(Shanahan & Hofer, 2005).
There is also the possibility that the same alleles are transformed culturally
into favorable or unfavorable characteristics and behaviors according to the
social class into which individuals are born. For example, the same genetic
propensity for aggression “lands you in prison if you’re from the ghetto, but
in the boardroom if you’re to the manor born,” as an adage cited by Conley
(2009, p. 238) says. In a similar way, genetic information benefits the study
of abstract social mechanisms by adding to the social explanation of inequality. It, again, does not suggest that we think of genetics as falling under the
interdisciplinary stopping rule. Blocking the potential for favorable characteristics and releasing the potential for unfavorable characteristics can easily
be conceived of as a variant of social closure.
CONCLUSION
Both understandings of social mechanisms have certainly helped to advance
social inequality research. Most visible is this maybe in organizational
inequality research where both elaborated methodologies and discussions
about theoretical mechanisms of some generality play a prominent role.
Especially in the growing interdisciplinary discourse about causes of
social inequality the mechanism-related methodological reflection seems
almost necessary. Moreover, even the reflection about generic theoretical
mechanisms may profit from interdisciplinary discourse. Stopping rules
regarding the role of nonsocial explanations make sense, if the inclusion of,

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

13

for example, biological information does not enhance our understanding
of how social forces work. However, the contentious goal of a grammar of
a limited number of inequality-generating theoretical mechanisms can be
reached only in a long-term perspective, if at all.
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Azmat, G., & Ferrer, R. (2015). Gender gaps in performance: Evidence from young lawyers.
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of educational attainment: An international meta-analysis. Social Forces, 92(1),
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Cha, Y., & Weeden, K. A. (2014). Overwork and the slow convergence in the gender
gap in wages. American Sociological Review, 79(3), 457–484.
Conley, D. (2009). The promise and challenges of incorporating genetic data into
longitudinal social science surveys and research. Biodemography and Social Biology,
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Shanahan, J. T. Mortimer & M. Kirkpatrick Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of life course
(Vol. II, pp. 677–687). New York, NY: Springer.
Diewald, M., Baier, T., Schulz, W., & Schunck, R. (2015). Status attainment and social
mobility: How can genetics contribute to an understanding of their causes? Kölner
Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 67(Suppl. 1), 371–395.
Diewald, M., & Faist, T. (2011). From heterogeneities to inequalities: Looking at social mechanisms as an explanatory approach to the generation of social inequalities. DFG Research
Center (SFB) 882 “From Heterogeneities to Inequalities,” Bielefeld.
DiPrete, T. (2002). Life course risks, mobility regimes, and mobility consequences:
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Sociology, 108, 267–309.
Elster, J. (2007). Explaining social behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social sciences.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Freese, J., & Shostak, S. (2009). Genetics and social inquiry. Annual Review of Sociology,
35, 107–128.
Goldin, C. (2014). A grand gender convergence: Its last chapter. American Economic
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Gross, N. (2009). A pragmatist theory of social mechanisms. American Sociological
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Hedström, P. (2005). Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Hedström, P., & Swedberg, R. (1998). Social mechanisms: An introductory essay. In P.
Hedström & R. Swedberg (Eds.), Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social
theory (pp. 1–31). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, W., Turkheimer, E., Gottesman, I. I., & Bouchard, T. J. Jr., (2010). Beyond
heritability: Twin studies in behavioral research. Current Directions in Psychological
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Kalter, F., & Kroneberg, C. (2014). Between mechanism talk and mechanism cult:
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Nielsen, F. (2006). Achievement and ascription in educational attainment: Genetic
and environmental influences on adolescent schooling. Social Forces, 85(1),
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Reskin, B. F. (2003). Including mechanisms in our models of ascriptive inequality:
2002 presidential address. American Sociological Review, 68(1), 1–21.
Ridgeway, C. L. (2011). Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern
world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Shanahan, M. J., & Hofer, S. M. (2005). Social context in gene–environment interactions: Retrospect and prospect. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological
Sciences and Social Sciences, 60(special issue 1), 65–76.
Sørensen, A. B. (2000). Symposium on class analysis: Toward a sounder basis for class
analysis. American Journal of Sociology, 105(6), 1523–1558.
Therborn, G. (2006). Inequalities of the world: New theoretical frameworks, multiple empirical approaches. London, England: Verso.
Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tomaskovic-Devey, D. (2014). The relational generation of workplace inequalities.
Social Currents, 1(1), 51–73.
Turkheimer, E. (2000). Three laws of behavior genetics and what they mean. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5), 160–164.

MARTIN DIEWALD SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Martin Diewald has been a professor of sociology at Bielefeld University
since 2004. He is also a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin. Beginning in October 2015 (until September
2016), he convened a research group on “Genetic and Social Causes of Life
Chances” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Bielefeld. Since
2011, he has been a coordinator of the DFG Collaborative Research Center
(SFB) 882 “From Heterogeneities to Inequalities” at Bielefeld University, and
in 2010 he became a member of the Scientific Council for Family Issues at the
Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth. He
was an Alfred Grosser visiting professor at Sciences Po (2012) and a visiting

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

15

scholar at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme and at the École
des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (1998).
Mr. Diewald has published widely in the areas of social stratification; the
transformation of former socialist countries; the life course, family, and social
networks; early life pathways to inequality; and employment relationships,
including the work–life interface. His current research focuses on the role of
genetic and social forces in the shaping of life chances, and, together with
Rainer Riemann and Frank M. Spinath, he launched the longitudinal behavioral genetic study TwinLife.

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The Role of Social Mechanisms in the
Formation of Social Inequalities
MARTIN DIEWALD

Abstract
Despite lacking a commonly shared definition, social mechanisms have recently
received considerable attention in sociology. Social inequality research has been a
trailblazer in providing examples of how social mechanism can further, theoretically
and methodologically, progress. Two different understandings of social mechanisms
are reflected in the literature. One refers to theoretical and methodological precision
when describing the causal chains that lead from specific antecedents to specific
outcomes. The other is a program designed to articulate a complete taxonomy of
a limited number of mechanisms as abstract ideas to explain social inequalities.
I discuss both approaches how they can fruitfully refer to each other. In the
final section, I discuss social mechanisms in the view of a new challenge to social
inequality research, that is, a growing interdisciplinary interest in gene–environment
interference. By superseding the old and fruitless nature-versus-nurture debate,
new fields of social inquiry emerge, but pose also the question what it can add to a
better understanding of inequality-generating social mechanisms. As I will show,
the inclusion of genetic information in social science explanations does not threaten
sociology as a discipline, but will potentially enrich both the currently proposed
mechanistic approaches in social inequality research.

THE GROWING INTEREST OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN SOCIAL
MECHANISMS
Over the past two decades or so, mechanisms and mechanism-based
explanations have received increased attention in the fields of philosophy
and science. This is also true of sociology, a discipline in which mechanisms
are advocated as an alternative to both descriptive empiricism without
causal relevance and untestable, highly abstract grand theory (Hedström
& Swedberg, 1998). On one hand, mechanism-based explanations should
avoid empiricism, in which correlations between variables can be mistaken
for proof of generative processes. Correlations can be distorted by endogeneity and unmeasured confounders, making observed correlations merely
spurious instead of actually bringing about a specific outcome under defined
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

conditions (Elster, 2007). An often cited example for causality problems in
correlational research is the indeed existing positive correlation between
storks and childbirths in the same region. On the other hand, the search
for covering-law explanations is also seen as a fruitless effort. Universally
valid explanations for social phenomena by means of strictly deductive,
universally valid laws in a strict sense do not appear to be possible. There
is nothing like the law of gravity in physics, working in the same way all
over the world. The same can be said of grand theory, for example, systems
theory, which is more philosophical than scientific in that it purports to
explain everything but cannot be tested empirically.
What can the mechanisms approach offer to avoid all the problems and
pitfalls that plague these other approaches? Though there is no unitary definition of social mechanisms, one common denominator is the conviction that
there is a more promising intermediate level of generality and abstraction.
Such an intermediate degree of generalizability is derived from a proven
robustness that specific antecedents regularly produce a specific effect under
particular conditions, though maybe not, or to a much lesser degree, under
other conditions. As an example, there is a universal predisposition of
humans to prefer similar humans as interaction partners. However, whether
this predisposition leads indeed to such relations is largely dependent on
structural opportunities and constraints to get acquainted with similar or
dissimilar others (Blau, 1974). If in addition possible confounding elements
are ruled out or controlled effectively, mechanisms may be conceived of as
laws that have some restricted generality (Elster, 2007, p. 44). On the basis of
this common ground, two very distinct mechanistic agendas have emerged
in the social sciences.
SOCIAL MECHANISM AS STYLE OF THEORIZING AND MODELING
The first refers to concrete mechanisms as real, existing phenomena, as concrete and observable causal chains. In this case, the mechanisms approach is
no more than a commitment to a number of principles of conducting social
research in order to explain human agents’ behavior and its consequences.
Indispensable requirements are minimizing spurious correlations and confounders to make causal inference as reliable as possible. Theoretically, as
especially analytical sociology insists, generative processes must be traced
back to agents and their actions (Hedström, 2005). However, compared to
the former concentration of rational decision-making, now attention should
be paid to more sophisticated ideas about how individual actions aggregate
to form stable patterns of agency among individual and collective actors
(Kalter & Kroneberg, 2014). In a similar vein, Gross (2009, p. 369) advocates
a “pragmatist theory of mechanisms,” also with an emphasis on “chains or

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

3

aggregations of actors, problem situations, and habitual responses—always
with the possibility, greater in some circumstances than [in] others, that a
novel way of responding to a problem could emerge for any of the actors
involved, potentially altering the workings of the mechanism.” However,
opinion is divided over how far one should go to reach a deeper understanding of the “cogs and wheels” involved (Elster, 2007, p. 7). For Hedström,
reducing behavior to extrasocial forces such as neuronal processes or genetics
should be avoided by such stopping rules. Reskin (2003, p. 6) already rejects
motive-based explanations because they themselves must be explained by
social forces and therefore are not at the left side of the equation.
TOWARD ABSTRACT, THEORETICAL MECHANISMS
The second agenda considers mechanisms as analytical constructs, or
abstractions from real processes. It goes beyond the fairly imprecise notion
that mechanisms have “some generality” or regularity (Hedström &
Swedberg, 1998, p. 19). These constructs are theoretical creations, or ideas,
about how a certain outcome is produced, leading in the end to a complete
taxonomy of mechanisms that shape the social world, which admittedly is
only imaginable as a long-term project of social inquiry. Which taxonomy, as
a “grammar of the social,” will be successful in the end is an open project.
It will depend not only on whether highly abstract mechanisms can be
successfully traced back to a number of convincing, more specific empirical
substantiations of this general mechanism but also on whether the persuasiveness of the theoretical idea provides an overarching general mechanism.
Thus, concrete and abstract mechanisms are not independent of one another.
Rather, concrete mechanisms can, by way of analogies and abstractions, be
categorized from the bottom up into abstract mechanisms that then have
a higher degree of generalizability, are less bound to certain contextual
circumstances, and can be related to a wider range of social phenomena. Yet
the discussion about properly defining a defined set of mechanisms can also
influence the operationalization of substantive concrete mechanisms from
the top down, as I will show for the case of mechanisms that create social
inequality.
MECHANISMS IN SOCIAL INEQUALITY RESEARCH
Social inequality research may be the field of social inquiry in which the
mechanisms approach has received most attention in order to overcome
a merely descriptive account of unequal distributions of outcomes, such
as Gini coefficients for the income distribution, and earnings inequality
between, say, women and men in the labor market. Maybe due to rising

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inequality in the Western world the interest in how, by which “cogs and
wheels,” unequal chances and distributions come about and change over
time was strengthened. I will trace the contribution of mechanism-based
explanations by referring in an exemplary way to three prominent developments in social inequality research: revitalized mainly by Tilly (1998)
the attempt to define theoretical mechanisms of high generality and the
long-term project of outlining a classification of highly abstract theoretical
inequality-generating mechanisms; at a more concrete but still medium
level of generality the role of perceptions and evaluations; and as research
field where both abstract and concrete mechanisms are tried to relate to
each other research on relational inequalities in work organizations with a
specific focus on gender.
TOWARD ABSTRACT-THEORETICAL MECHANISMS GENERATING INEQUALITY
Defining and referring to abstract, inequality-generating mechanisms as
having a high degree of generality is motivated by the goal to overcome
the often disparaged fragmentation, or “balkanization” (Reskin, 2003, p. 5),
of social-inequality research into highly specialized theories confined to
particular domains that lessen the scientific and sociopolitical significance
of inequality research. Among such mechanisms, Marx’s exploitation
and Weber’s social closure theories have a long-standing tradition in
social-inequality research, partly under other labels, such as “ascription.”
In addition, in many cases, the new surge of interest in the mechanisms
approach within inequality research is stimulated by these theories, as evidenced by Tilly’s Durable Inequality and the “Symposium on Class Analysis”
in the American Journal of Sociology (2000), during which A. Sørensen made an
influential suggestion about not only how to bridge the gap between these
two mechanisms as unrelated alternatives but also how to overcome the
different viewpoints in sociology and economics concerning wage-setting
mechanisms.1
There are only few attempts in the literature to extend these two classical theoretical mechanisms to a more comprehensive taxonomy of
inequality-generating mechanisms. One is provided by Tilly (1998) himself
in terms of two additional abstract mechanisms, which he calls emulation and
adaptation. These mechanisms are thought to give attention to the important
point of how inequalities endure over time and spread within a society.
1. Exploitation occurs in cooperative relationships when the more powerful party is in a position to
secure a disproportionate share of the value created through cooperation. Social closure is the monopolization of access to positions, resources, and market opportunities. An example is the exclusion of competitors
for jobs due to characteristics that have nothing to do with a differential ability for these jobs, like sex and
ethnicity. Reducing competition then enhances bargaining power which offers the greatest opportunity
for exploitation.

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

5

Emulation, according to Tilly, refers to a transfer of existing organizational
forms and practices of exploitation or opportunity-hoarding, which is
largely identical with Weber’s social closure, from one social context to
another; adaptation means the embedding of inequalities in daily rules,
routines, and rituals, which make such inequalities appear ubiquitous if not
“natural.” These mechanisms stabilize patterns of inequality both within
organizations and across different social contexts. In other words, they are
conceived as general generic mechanisms but whose effect is contingent on
specific conditions.
Therborn (2006) and Diewald and Faist (2011) have tried instead to identify additional mechanisms complementary to social closure and exploitation. Therborn defines distantiation as the rules of competition that yield
a winner–loser gap (e.g., the Matthew effect). By hierarchization Therborn
means the structure of institutionalized roles and positions with their respective unequal rights and resources. Diewald and Faist distinguish between
exclusion and opportunity hoarding as two different degrees of social closure. While exclusion refers to the access to informal (networks) of formal
(organizations) modes of cooperation, opportunity hoarding refers to practices
of privileging or disadvantaging certain groups within these social spheres,
for example, in career ladders. Moreover, Diewald and Faist include the perception and appraisal of different groups as important precondition of the
generation of inequality, though they must not have a direct bearing on the
generation of social inequalities.
PERCEPTIONS AND EVALUATIONS
The decision of including group-related perceptions and evaluations reacts
to a renewed interest in social psychological mechanisms, which seem
especially relevant for interaction in highly diversified societies. It corresponds moreover to the shifting interest from individual rational action
to interaction, bargaining, and chains of social action mentioned earlier.
Unlike rational-action theories, social–psychological concepts point to the
often unconscious perception of groups along easily observable, more or
less familiar attributes that automatically lead to stereotypes and prejudices
or, more generally, expectations about group members’ performance and
status in society. If, for example, women are regularly observed to work in
lower status occupations compared to men, then they are easily assigned
less competence than men simply by being female (Ridgeway, 2011), which
then influences interaction generating social inequality. Similarly, boundary
drawing, mostly along easily observable characteristics such as ethnicity
or gender, leads to perceptions of strangeness (“us” vs “them”), and then

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inferiority, which shapes interaction patterns as well and contributes to legitimizing inequality: “Heterogeneities are always perceived and appraised,
there is always a historical backdrop of cultural representations and practices
for dealing with them, and they are always invoked or engendered by actors
in the generation of inequality” (Diewald & Faist, 2011, p. 16). Such perceptions and immediately (and mostly unconsciously) linked evaluations are
generic mechanisms in the sense of social mechanisms with a high level of
generality. In essence, they are universal, but their strength, and the salience
of certain attributes compared with others are contingent and subject to a
variety of conditions, which in this research field are not least the conditions
of work organizations and their embeddedness in cultural and institutional
environments. Therefore, the relevance of being male or female, native or
migrant, varies considerably between workplaces in different countries
(Avent-Holt & Tomascovic-Devey, 2012).
RELATIONAL INEQUALITIES IN WORK ORGANIZATIONS
Organizational inequality research is perhaps the research field where mechanistic approaches have developed farthest. This applies both to an ever more
fine-graded, methodologically advanced identification of concrete, substantial mechanisms as well as the attempt to formulate a limited number of
generic, abstract-theoretical mechanisms at a high level of generality. Not
least organizational research applied sophisticated inquiries into intergroup
perceptions and evaluations and action motivations.
When looking at generic abstract-theoretical mechanisms, an implicit
assumption about selfish motivation is inherent to the system. TomaskovicDevey (2014), for example, offers two more “core organizational” abstract
mechanisms: claims-making and resource-pooling. The mechanism of
resource-pooling directs attention to the fact that within-organization
groups try to exploit and hoard for themselves the resources that flow
into the organization. Organizations vary greatly in the amount of these
resources minus investments and in the structure of the resource flow
(e.g., profit centers). The struggle over the distribution of these resources
among different within-firm groups or actors is referred to as claims-making.
Claims-making can take place as part of taken-for-granted practices and
formal rules, including industrial relations that extend beyond a given
organization, and it can be mobilized through individual actions such as
applying for a better job or voicing a perceived discrimination. Both mechanisms are seen as generic but are contingent on different organizational
conditions.

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

7

In other words, the degree to which a given categorical distinction gets
activated first at the level of perception and evaluation, and then perpetuated in different interaction contexts, is in the sphere of gainful employment
determined by formal rules and practices within work organizations. Organizations often make reference to existing categorical distinctions in society.
However, whether or not a work organization adheres to such existing beliefs
is contingent on organizational and environmental conditions. In sum, the
investigation of these processes made organizational inequality research to
a major driving force to establish the social mechanism approach in social
inequality research.
With regard to concrete, substantial mechanisms, it is important to
note that these studies try to move away from assigning significance to
organization variables—which usually are less-than-appropriate measures
for any mechanism—to measuring within-firm practices that are shared,
disputed, or bargained among coworkers, supervisors, and upper management, and to note how they are framed by organizational conditions.
This approach comes closest to what was defined as the core feature of
substantive mechanisms derived earlier: the “nuts and bolts” processes
by which cause-and-effect relationships come about are seen as “chains or
aggregations of problem situations and the effects that ensue as a result of
the habits actors use to resolve them” (Gross, 2009, p. 375). Consequently, in
this view, “inequality is not lodged in positions, occupations, or even jobs
but in the relationships between positions within organizations [ … and
… ] similarly not lodged in people, races, or genders but in the relationships
between people and between status categories” (Tomaskovic-Devey, 2014,
p. 52, emphases in the original). The increasing availability of high-quality,
information-rich employer–employee data provides us with unprecedented
opportunities to properly define such contingent constraints that enable or
prevent mechanisms from becoming effective.
GENDER INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS
However, sometimes inequality-generating mechanisms are not simply
located in one sphere of life but refer to interdependencies between different
spheres. Recent research in sociology and economics has revealed a key
mechanism behind gender earnings inequality in the disproportionality of
rewards for long, and particularly irregular, working hours, which usually
affect men more than women. Such nonlinear pay with respect to hours
worked seems to account for most of the residual differences in earnings
based on gender (Cha & Weeden, 2014; Goldin, 2014). This effect was
strongest in occupations in which “long work hours are especially common
and the norm of doing extra work is deeply embedded in organizational

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

practices and occupational cultures” (Cha & Weeden, 2014, p. 457). To be
sure, employers’ expectations concerning overtime work and irregular
working hours appear to be gender-neutral, as are the monetary rewards
for such extra work. In addition, a third study confirmed this mechanism
by investigating the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in
the United States. It had the advantage that employees’ performance (which
is very difficult to measure) could be assessed on the basis of criteria that
were unequivocally accepted and highly transparent: the number of hours
billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated (Azmat
& Ferrer, 2015). In both respects, male lawyers considerably outperformed
their female counterparts. Again, the gender difference in pay could not be
explained by the classical modes of workplace discrimination, as the “cogs
and wheels” that serve to explain this difference is the factor of motivation
for long and irregular working hours, namely the aspiration to become a
partner in the law firm.
However, it is striking that neither of these studies interprets the results as
a final argument against any discrimination hypothesis. Instead, they point
out that it is, indirectly, the unequal obligations of men and women with
respect to unpaid domestic work and childcare that has caused the discrepancy between organizational practices and the ability to require employees
to do extra work and work irregular hours. In the lawyer study, the presence of preschool children proved to influence the gender performance gap,
though of only to a moderate degree when compared with the factor of differential aspirations. Although this study by Azmat and Ferrer effectively rules
out the possibility of contemporaneous reverse causality during an individual’s working life, it does not explain what might have caused differences
in aspirations between men and women earlier in their lives, and whether
anticipated future childcare obligations might contribute to it.
This leads to questions about whether to increase women’s capability and
willingness to do extra work and/or to work irregular hours or to revise the
way jobs are structured and remunerated as a way of improving temporal
flexibility and doing away with disproportionate rewards. At first glance,
these studies merit the following conclusions: discriminatory workplace
characteristics do not explain gender-related differences in pay, at least
not in the first place, whereas performance differences are a major factor;
differences in aspirations contribute to performance differences and may
also affect employees’ willingness to do extra work and work irregular
hours. However, this is not to be taken to mean that discrimination plays
no role at all when it comes to gender differences in pay. Organizational
practices that disproportionately compensate for extra work and irregular
working hours are gender-neutral only if they do not take into account
unequal obligations at home that are relevant for gender differences in

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

9

motivation. This is why Reskin (2003) generally denies the use of motives for
explaining inequality. I agree with this verdict if understood as cause, but
motivation can be important to disentangle the “nuts and bolts” between
cause and effect, as can be seen in these examples.
These three studies give a striking example of how difficult it may be to
identify inequality-generating social mechanisms, as at first glance nondiscriminatory, gender-neutral practices can nevertheless play a part in “chains
or aggregations of actors, problem situations, and habitual responses” cited
earlier, that in the end create inequality by discrimination.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Whether a more or less consensual “generative social grammar of inequality”
(Therborn, 2006, p. 1), generalizable throughout different areas of society, is
a reasonable long-term objective is still debated (Diewald & Faist, 2011). The
taxonomies of Therborn and of Diewald and Faist have both shown that it is
difficult to arrive at such common acceptance of a handful of general abstract
mechanisms that are theoretically well developed and also fully distinguishable from one another. Maybe it would appear more promising to stay with
the classical mechanisms (i.e., exploitation and social closure) and to elaborate on them by defining a small set of variations of these very abstract
mechanisms. The major advantage of these two classical mechanisms is that
they provide a comprehensive and in the same time parsimonious account
of how inequality is generated by cooperation (exploitation) and by excluding others from cooperation (social closure). To take the taxonomy presented
by Diewald and Faist (2011, p. 12) as a starting point for further development, other abstract mechanisms could be allocated as variants of these two.
For example, stereotyping and prejudices can easily be conceived of as variants of social closure at the levels of perception and evaluation instead of
being independent additional mechanisms. The same is true for inclusion
versus exclusion and opportunity-hoarding, whereas hierarchization could
be linked to exploitation.
As already realized in the taxonomy suggested by Diewald and Faist
(2011), a second important specification of mechanisms is to break them
down according to different levels of social context—in this case, between
informal interactions in families and social networks, formal organizations,
and societal institutions. In general, these context-specific mechanisms
should have an intermediate level of abstraction between the few highly
abstract mechanisms at the top and the many specific, substantive mechanisms for specific situations. Such a differentiation between abstract,
inequality-generating mechanisms is thought to be only the starting point
for a much more comprehensive endeavor, namely to determine, across

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

different relational groups and different contexts, whether the same mechanisms work for the same relational groups in the same way (e.g., men vs
women, or within different age groups or ethnicities).
There are two other complementary ideas that could add to such a taxonomy of abstract mechanisms. One is to include mechanisms that show
how inequality is not only generated but equalized, a method that would
be preferable to the use of inequality-generating mechanisms alone in integrating, among others, the paramount role of modern welfare states. DiPrete
(2002) and Diewald (2016) elaborated on this aspect as risk compensation.
The other idea takes into account the social dynamics of inequality in Tilly’s
mechanisms of emulation and adaptation. Although a temporal dimension
is already inherent in these two mechanisms, they refer mostly to spillovers
between different social contexts without addressing their temporal order.
Literature on cumulative advantage and disadvantage could complement
the view concerning social dynamics in the generation of inequality and the
processes that make these dynamics durable, by addressing the development
of inequality over the life course, as well as its stability and change through
risks and risk compensation under different circumstances.
GENETIC INFORMATION FOR SOCIAL MECHANISMS?
One of the challenges now arising in social-inequality research is the
inclusion of genetic information when attempting to define the mechanisms
that produce social inequality, whether in the form of behavioral genetic
modeling or in the form of molecular genetic information. Whether or not
this might benefit social inquiry in general, and the study of the mechanisms
that create social inequality in particular, is still very much a subject of
debate. On the other hand, it would be inappropriate for the social sciences
to ignore the challenges posed by emerging doubts (in other disciplines
as well as in public debate) that certain social mechanisms (such as social
closure against children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds that prevents access to higher education or, later, to well-paid jobs) are in fact due
to genetic variation between these groups rather than to social mechanisms
of social closure against lower social origin, as social-inequality research
would insist.
So how does including genetics in mechanistic explanations of social
inequality improve our understanding of this phenomenon? In keeping
with the two agendas for the mechanisms approach outlined earlier, this
question has two answers. For the first goal, which is to define and operationalize the causal chains of substantive mechanisms as reliably as possible,
the use of molecular genetic information or behavioral genetic modeling
is simply a powerful methodological tool to control for possible genetic

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

11

confounding of social effects (Johnson, Turkheimer, Gottesman, & Bouchard,
2010)—in other words, to get “purer” social effects that are not suspected of
being caused by genetic factors. Thus, heritability serves as a placeholder for
unmeasured genetically shaped characteristics that affect the outcome under
investigation (Freese & Shostak, 2009). Without controlling for the genetic
resemblance of parents and children, a correlation between parents and
children cannot be seen simply as “prima facie evidence for sociocultural
causal mechanisms” alone (Turkheimer, 2000, p. 162; see Avinun & Knafo,
2014 for the role of gene–environment correlation). If there is heritability
in ability and schooling (which is indeed the case), any assessment of how
social origin influences education and of how education influences social
outcomes will be severely biased owing to unobserved genetic heterogeneity
(Diewald, Baier, Schulz, & Schunck, 2015).
In general, genetic confounding of social effects may be due to an unequal
distribution of relevant alleles among related groups (e.g., lower-class
children have less favorable genetic propensities than higher-class children)
or by gene–environment covariance, which means that measured social
effects are partly genetic effects, because genetic propensities lead us to select
ourselves into different social environments and the social environment’s
responses to us are induced in part by genetically influenced characteristics.
It is important to note, however, that in this view heritability and molecular
genetic variation play no role in the definition of social mechanisms; the
point is that we need to measure social mechanisms more properly. Because
virtually “everything is heritable” to some degree (Turkheimer, 2000), the
advantage of controlling for genetic influences is ubiquitous, also for seemingly quite “distal” outcomes, such as wealth and socioeconomic status.
Therefore, at least in this sense, Hedström’s verdict that one should not refer
to ever more finely graded causal “nuts and bolts” outside the realm of the
social sciences is unconvincing.
It is, however, a completely different question whether genes, or heritability, should play a role in the formulation of abstract social mechanisms in the
sense that genetic variation has a substantive, theoretically embedded place
in the explanation of social inequality. A first—and rather obvious—idea
would be to complement social origin with genetic origin as a starting
point for studies on the emergence of social inequality over the course of
individuals’ lives. Yet the theoretical meaning would then, in my view, be
opposite to the way heritability is usually interpreted in behavioral genetic
modeling of status attainment processes, namely as unmeasured achievement characteristics, in contrast to a shared environment as a placeholder for
social origin characteristics (Branigan, McCallum, & Freese, 2013; Nielsen,
2006). As regards ascription versus achievement, this explanation is difficult
to understand. Are genes less ascribed than the social characteristics of

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

one’s parents? The answer is: certainly not. This interpretation becomes
more questionable the more achievement is interpreted in the sense of a
meritocratic ideal.
However, it is reasonable to interpret heritability, or specific alleles, as
individuality in the sense of an individual’s potential, as given propensities
for unequal life chances, and as a starting point for an analysis of what a
society does with its members from the very beginning of their lives. We
know from existing research that such genetic propensities are far from being
deterministic and that, to a considerable degree, genetic expression is shaped
socially. This understanding benefits from, and at the same time inspires, the
flourishing research on gene–environment interaction. Such methodological
and theoretical inclusion of genetic variation in social-inequality research
provides valuable insights into causal chains, from origin to unequal life
course outcomes, namely how favorable characteristics such as cognitive
and noncognitive skills are developed from the genome by different degrees
of improvement, and how the development of unfavorable characteristics
such as antisocial behavior and aggression is enabled by triggering or is
inhibited by compensation or social control in different social contexts
(Shanahan & Hofer, 2005).
There is also the possibility that the same alleles are transformed culturally
into favorable or unfavorable characteristics and behaviors according to the
social class into which individuals are born. For example, the same genetic
propensity for aggression “lands you in prison if you’re from the ghetto, but
in the boardroom if you’re to the manor born,” as an adage cited by Conley
(2009, p. 238) says. In a similar way, genetic information benefits the study
of abstract social mechanisms by adding to the social explanation of inequality. It, again, does not suggest that we think of genetics as falling under the
interdisciplinary stopping rule. Blocking the potential for favorable characteristics and releasing the potential for unfavorable characteristics can easily
be conceived of as a variant of social closure.
CONCLUSION
Both understandings of social mechanisms have certainly helped to advance
social inequality research. Most visible is this maybe in organizational
inequality research where both elaborated methodologies and discussions
about theoretical mechanisms of some generality play a prominent role.
Especially in the growing interdisciplinary discourse about causes of
social inequality the mechanism-related methodological reflection seems
almost necessary. Moreover, even the reflection about generic theoretical
mechanisms may profit from interdisciplinary discourse. Stopping rules
regarding the role of nonsocial explanations make sense, if the inclusion of,

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

13

for example, biological information does not enhance our understanding
of how social forces work. However, the contentious goal of a grammar of
a limited number of inequality-generating theoretical mechanisms can be
reached only in a long-term perspective, if at all.
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Hedström, P. (2005). Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
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MARTIN DIEWALD SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Martin Diewald has been a professor of sociology at Bielefeld University
since 2004. He is also a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin. Beginning in October 2015 (until September
2016), he convened a research group on “Genetic and Social Causes of Life
Chances” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Bielefeld. Since
2011, he has been a coordinator of the DFG Collaborative Research Center
(SFB) 882 “From Heterogeneities to Inequalities” at Bielefeld University, and
in 2010 he became a member of the Scientific Council for Family Issues at the
Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth. He
was an Alfred Grosser visiting professor at Sciences Po (2012) and a visiting

The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities

15

scholar at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme and at the École
des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (1998).
Mr. Diewald has published widely in the areas of social stratification; the
transformation of former socialist countries; the life course, family, and social
networks; early life pathways to inequality; and employment relationships,
including the work–life interface. His current research focuses on the role of
genetic and social forces in the shaping of life chances, and, together with
Rainer Riemann and Frank M. Spinath, he launched the longitudinal behavioral genetic study TwinLife.

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