Social status
Social status, in sociology, describes the social position that an individual occupies within a society or in a social group of people. Social status is the relative respect, competence, and difference accorded to individuals, groups, and organizations in a society. These beliefs about who is more or less valued (for example, honorable, respectable, intelligent) are widely shared among members of a society. As such, people use status hierarchies to decide who has the ability to 'control', who is worthy.
Origin and perception of social status
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We can classify social status by its origin, inherited or ascribed status and acquired or meritocratic status, and by its recognition or perception, objective or of subjective or social recognition:
Ascribed or assigned status: inheritance
The status whose origin is due to previous social factors that have traditionally been inherited: family with economic, social or noble status, although also when the status comes from a condition alien to the individual himself and derived from his origin: white color, social class, country of birth, mother tongue, etc.
In the inherited status the individual cannot choose his position since it is given to him from birth. Her status can be changed if she moves from a social group where her status changes.
Acquired status: meritocracy
Acquired status results from being assigned to the individual for their merits and actions. Typical example is one who succeeds or economic, social, intellectual or artistic success. For example. music stars, actors, athletes, scientists, etc., but the status achieved by performing new social roles can also be included: mother, father, boss, bachelor, graduate, doctor, etc.; They are all those positions that the individual acquires throughout his life, which are not linked to his birth.
Status are determined by society, therefore they can vary from time to time or characteristics such as culture, values and norms determined as their own, and can be different from other societies, as well as being useful as a way of giving merit to those people who have contributed values, knowledge, or significant advances to said society.
A certain degree or level of prestige is also associated with status. In societies, prestige is distributed differentially according to the social status that the person has. By way of example, a doctor has more prestige than a street sweeper. However, social status inconsistency can occur when there is a discrepancy between how status is valued in one area in relation to another. A typical example is that of the teacher, since although he can be highly valued as an educator and socializing agent at school and before the educational community in terms of the rewards that society grants him, understand salary and working conditions, they can be very low in relation to said social valuation.
Objective status: social recognition
Status assigned by society, culture or by the particular group in which the person operates and which is acquired by fulfilling one or more of the criteria that determine it (wealth, what is done in society, the impact and the power of knowledge, occupation or activity, physical characteristics, etc.) or other taxes by each group.
Subjective status: misperception of status
Status that a person believes they have without possessing any social or cultural approval and without meeting any criteria that support the status they boast of. That is to say, the subjective status would entail a frustration, more or less important, due to the lack of recognition.
Status in different societies
Status refers to the relative rank an individual possesses; this includes concomitant rights, duties and lifestyle, in a social hierarchy based on honor or prestige.
In modern societies, occupation is generally considered the primary determinant of status, but other memberships or affiliations (such as ethnicity, religion, gender, voluntary associations, hobbies) may play a role. Acquired status can be achieved through education, occupation, and marital status. Your place within the stratification structure is determined by the standard of society, which often judges success, be it financial, academic, political, etc. America most commonly uses this status form associated with work. The higher you are in rank, the better off you are and the more control you have over your coworkers.
In pre-modern societies, the differentiation of status was very varied. In some cases it could be quite rigid and class-based, as in the case of the Indian caste system. In other cases, the status exists classlessly and/or informally, as is the case with some hunter-gatherer societies such as the Khoisan and some Australian Indigenous societies. In these cases, the status is limited to specific personal relationships. For example, a Khoisan man is expected to take his wife's mother very seriously, even though the mother-in-law has no 'status'; special about no one except his son-in-law, and only in specific contexts. All societies have some form of social status.
Status is an important idea in social stratification. Max Weber distinguishes status from social class, although some contemporary empirical sociologists combine the two ideas to create a socioeconomic status or SES, usually operationalized as a simple index of income, education, and occupational prestige.
The status in non-human animals
Social status or dominance hierarchies have been documented in a wide range of animals: apes, baboons, wolves, cows/bulls, chickens, fish, and ants. Natural selection produces status-seeking behavior because animals tend to have more surviving offspring when they raise their status in their social group. Such behaviors vary widely because they are adaptations to a wide range of environmental niches. Some social dominance behaviors tend to increase reproductive opportunities, while others tend to raise the survival rates of an individual's offspring. Neurochemicals, particularly serotonin, cause social dominance behaviors without the need for an organism to do so. have abstract conceptualizations of status. The social dominance hierarchy emerges from individual survival-seeking behaviors.
Social mobility
Status can be changed through a process of social mobility. Social mobility is change of position within the stratification system. A movement in status can be up (up mobility) or down (down mobility). Social mobility allows a person to move to another social status than the one in which they were born. Social mobility is more frequent in societies where achievement rather than affiliation is the main basis of social status.
Social mobility was especially prominent in the United States in the late 20th century, with an increasing number of women entering jobs outside the home, as well as a steady increase in the number of full-time college students. This increase in education, as well as the massive increase in income from multiple households, has contributed greatly to the increase of social mobility. With this upward mobility; however, comes the philosophy of comparing yourself with your neighbor. This poses a problem because millions of people are in credit card debt due to conspicuous consumption and the purchase of goods for which they do not have the money to pay.
Social stratification
Main article: Social stratification
Social stratification describes the way people are placed or "stratified" in society. It is associated with the ability of people to comply with a set of ideals or principles considered important by society or by some social group within it. Members of a social group interact primarily within their own group and, to a lesser degree, with those of higher or lower status in a recognized system of social stratification. Such ties between people are often fluid and amorphous. Some of the more common bases for such classification include:
- Wealth / income (the most common): links between people with similar personal income
- Gender: links between same sex and sexuality
- Political state: links between people of the same view / political state
- Religion: links between people of the same religion
- Race/ethnic origin: links between persons of the same ethnic/racial group
- Social class: links between people born in the same economic group
Max Weber's Three Dimensions of Stratification
Main article: Three-component theory of stratification
German sociologist Max Weber developed a theory proposing that stratification is based on three factors that have become known as "the three Ps of stratification": property, prestige, and power. He asserted that social stratification is the result of the interplay of wealth, prestige, and power.
- Reputation is an important factor in determining the place of one in the stratification system. Property will not always ensure power, as there are often people with prestige and little ownership.
- Property refers to the material possessions of one and its opportunities in life. If someone has control of the property, that person has power over others and can use the property for their own benefit.
- Power is the ability to do what one wants, regardless of the will of others. (Domination, a closely related concept, is the power to make the behavior of others fit to the commands of one). This refers to two different types of power, which are power possession and power exercise. For example, some people in government administration have a huge amount of power and, however, they don't make much money.
Max Weber developed various ways in which societies are organized into hierarchical systems of power. These forms are social state, class power and political power.
- Class power: this refers to unequal access to resources. If you have access to something other person needs, that can make you more powerful than the person in need. The person with the resource has thus the power to negotiate on the other.
- Social state (social power): if you see someone as a social superior, that person will have power over you because you think that person has a higher status than you.
- Political Power: Political power can influence the hierarchical system of power because those who can influence which laws are passed and how they apply can exercise power over others.
There has been a debate about how the three dimensions of Weber's stratification are more useful for specifying social inequality than more traditional terms such as socioeconomic status.
Status Group
Max Weber developed the idea of "status group," which is a translation of the German Stand (pl. Stände). Status groups are communities that are based on ideas of lifestyles and honor that are affirmed by the status group and bestowed by others. Status groups exist in the context of beliefs about relative prestige, privilege, and honor, and can be both positive and negative. People in status groups are only supposed to associate with people of similar status, and in particular, marriage within or outside of the group is discouraged. Status groups can include professions, club-like organizations, ethnicity, race, and other groups for which the employer association is used.
Pierre Bourdieu's theory of distinction
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu developed theories of social stratification based on aesthetic taste in his work La Distinction. Bourdieu claims that the way one chooses to present their own social space to the world, their aesthetic dispositions, represents their status and distances themselves from lower groups. Specifically, Bourdieu hypothesizes that these dispositions are internalized at an early age and guide young people toward their appropriate social positions, behaviors that are appropriate for them, and an aversion to other lifestyles.
Bourdieu theorizes that class fractions teach aesthetic preferences to their youth. Class fractions are determined by a combination of the various degrees of social, economic, and cultural capital. Society incorporates "symbolic goods, especially those considered as attributes of excellence, as the ideal weapon in the strategies of distinction". Those attributes that are considered excellent are determined by the interests of the ruling class. He stresses the dominance of cultural capital early on by stating that "differences in cultural capital mark differences between classes."
Aesthetic dispositions are the result of social origin rather than accumulated capital and experience over time. The acquisition of cultural capital depends to a large extent on "early, imperceptible learning, carried out within the family from the first days of life". Bourdieu hypothetically guarantees that the opinions of young people are those into which they are born., the "accepted definitions that their elders offer them".
Affirms the primacy of social origin and cultural capital by stating that social capital and economic capital, even if they accumulate over time, depend on it. Bourdieu asserts that "one must take into account all the characteristics of social status that are (statistically) associated from early childhood with the possession of high or low income and that tend to shape the tastes adjusted to these conditions" #34;.
According to Bourdieu, tastes in food, culture, and presentation are indicators of class, because trends in consumption appear to correlate with an individual's fit in society. Each fraction of the ruling class develops its own aesthetic criteria. A multitude of consumer interests based on differing social status requires that each fraction "have its own artists and philosophers, newspapers and critics, just like its hairdresser, interior decorator or tailor".
Bourdieu is not completely ignorant of the importance of social capital and economic capital in the formation of cultural capital. In fact, the production of art and the ability to play an instrument "presuppose not only dispositions associated with a long establishment in the world of art and culture, but also financial means... and free time". Regardless of one's ability to act on one's preferences, however, Bourdieu specifies that "respondents should only express a state-induced familiarity with...legitimate culture."
"Taste functions as a kind of social orientation, a 'sense of place,' guiding the occupants of a given... social space to the social positions adjusted to their properties, and towards the practices or goods that correspond to the occupants of that position". Therefore, the different modes of acquisition produce differences in the nature of preferences.
These "cognitive structures... are internalized, 'embodied' social structures', becoming a natural entity to the individual. Different flavors are considered unnatural and shunned, resulting in "horrifying disgust or visceral intolerance ('sick';) to the taste of others".
Bourdieu himself believes that class distinction and preferences are "most marked in the ordinary choices of everyday existence, such as furniture, clothing, or cooking, which are particularly revealing of ingrained dispositions and long duration because, outside the reach of the educational system, they have to be confronted, so to speak, by naked taste". In fact, Bordieu believes that "the strongest and most indelible mark of child learning" it would probably be in the tastes of the food. Bourdieu thinks that meals served on special occasions are "an interesting indicator of the mode of self-presentation adopted to 'exhibit' a lifestyle (in which furniture also plays a role)". The idea is that their likes and dislikes should reflect those of their class fractions.
Children at the bottom end of the social hierarchy are predicted to choose "heavy and fatty foods, which are also cheap," rather than foods that are "original and exotic." the social hierarchy", which contrasts with the "convivial indulgence" characteristic of the lower classes. Demonstrations of tastes for luxury (or freedom) and tastes for necessity reveal a distinction between social classes.
The degree to which social origin affects these preferences exceeds both educational and economic capital. In fact, at equivalent levels of educational capital, social origin continues to be an influential factor in determining these dispositions. How one describes one's social environment is closely related to social background because the instinctive narrative emerges from the earliest stages of development. Also, through the divisions of labor "economic constraints tend to relax without any change. fundamental in the spending pattern". This observation reinforces the idea that social origin, more than economic capital, produces aesthetic preferences because, regardless of economic capacity, consumption patterns remain stable.
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