Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A person may have status of a daughter, wife, mother, student, worker, church member and a citizen. The term "status set" was coined by Robert K. Merton in 1957. He made a clear distinction between a "role set" and a "status set". [1] Merton stated that status set is the set of statuses in a society while role set is the set of roles in a society
Status hierarchies depend primarily on the possession and use of status symbols. These are cues or characteristics that people in a society agree indicate how much status a person holds and how they should be treated. [10] Such symbols can include the possession of valued attributes, like being beautiful or having a prestigious degree.
It is the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. [1] An individual may belong to multiple social systems at once; [2] examples of social systems include nuclear family units, communities, cities, nations, college campuses, religions, corporations, and industries.
Status groups feature in the varieties of social stratification addressed in popular literature and in the academic literature, such as categorization of people by race, ethnic group, racial caste, professional groups, community groups, nationalities, etc. [7] These contrast with relationships rooted in economic relations, which Weber calls ...
A social class (or, simply, class), as in class society, is a set of subjectively defined concepts in the social sciences and political theory centered on models of social stratification in which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories, [5] the most common being the upper, middle, and lower classes.
Achieved status is distinguished from ascribed status by virtue of being earned through the set of accomplished tasks and/or goals. Many positions are a mixture of achievement and ascription. For instance, a person who has achieved the status of being a physician is more likely to have the ascribed status of being born into a wealthy family.
Ascribed status plays an important role in societies because it can provide the members with a defined and unified identity. No matter where an individual's ascribed status may place him or her in the social hierarchy, most has a set of roles and expectations that are directly linked to each ascribed status and thus, provides a social personality.
In 1950 sociologist Kingsley Davis proposed that status is ascribed to an infant as a consequence of the position of the socializing agents (usually the parents). Because of such subjective connection of the infant with people who already have a status in the social structure, it immediately gives the child membership in the society and a specific place in the system of social status.