hroughout the many eras such as the Byzantine, the Elizabethan, the Romantic, and many more, the ideas of a social hierarchy system have remained the same. However, the mobility between classes has dramatically changed through various time periods. Throughout this journal, authors Marco H.D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas discuss their historical research on social mobility and structure, as well as the shifts in the social imbalance in earlier years and what factors caused these outcomes. Marco H.D. van Leeuwen is an honorary research associate at the International Institute of Social History as well as a Professor of Historical Sociology in Utrecht. Ineke Maas is a Professor at the Department of Sociology at the Universiteit Amsterdam and studies trends in mobility throughout generations, in careers, as well as in marital situations. Due to their many qualifications, Leeuwen and Maas act as an exceptionally reliable source for my topic. This article connects to the Status Mobility and Reactions to Deviance and Subsequent Conformity journal by Elihu Katz, William L. Libby Jr., and Fred L. Strodtbeck because they both discuss the differences of social mobility throughout various eras.

Zollman, Kevin James Spears. “Social Structure and the Effects of Conformity.” Synthese, vol.
172, no. 3, 2010, pp. 317–340. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40496044

Conforming to the rules and standards of one’s society can cause harmful or beneficial effects on a person, depending on the severity of the situation. Throughout this journal article, author Kevin James Spears Zollman discusses the overall effects conformity has on a person, and more specifically what effects conformity has on different obdurate social networks and their structure. By analyzing a mathematical model of the conformist behavior, Zollman was able to distinguish the positive effects conformist behavior has on individual reliability and the negative effects it has on a group’s reliability. Due to Zollman’s familiarity and research focus on game theory — the study of mathematical models of calculated reactions between reasonable decision makers — and his profession as an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, he serves as an extremely credible source on this topic. In Voltaire’s Candide, Candide is influenced by his wealth and confidence about what lies ahead. It isn’t until Candide is throw out of his home that he realizes the hardships other people encounter and that he was wrong to be optimistic. This journal article written by Kevin James Spears Zollman has provided me an extensive amount of effective information on the positive and negative effects conformity has on a person or group, as well as how these effects are reflected in social structures.