Group Status

4 Key excerpts on "Group Status"

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  eBook - ePub

  Status

  Why Is It Everywhere? Why Does It Matter?

  • Cecilia L. Ridgeway(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Russell Sage Foundation

    (Publisher)

  multilevel relation that implies actors at one level who are nested within an encompassing group that shares a particular, socially defined standard of value. Once again, this is true for both individuals in an interpersonal group and status rankings among groups in society.

  If status is a social ranking of self compared to another, according to a group standard, then an actor’s status is fundamentally dependent on the evaluations and reactions of others.19 Understanding this is central to understanding status dynamics. As the classic sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out long ago, status cannot be seized or possessed like material goods.20 Instead, status is more like a reputation. A person can take actions to claim it, but it must be granted by others in the group or context through their reactions to that claim. In Bales’s groups, for instance, an individual could take the initiative to speak up and make a claim on the group’s attention, but others had to react positively to his claim by listening with approval to what he said and accepting his arguments. That status is given, not taken, is one of its fundamental features.

  Therefore, when two actors judge their status in relation to one another, they do so by drawing on a shared group standard. This standard is, in effect, a cultural belief shared by the group or surrounding society, so that status rankings are inherently based on sociocultural processes of shared beliefs and evaluations. Furthermore, since the actors have a shared recognition of the group standard by which they are compared, both the higher-status actor and the lower-status actor also share their recognition of the social fact of their relative rank. They understand how they are viewed by the group or community. In the status hierarchy of high school, for instance, both the prom queen and Suzie Glutz know where each other stands. In this sense, status hierarchies are consensual

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  eBook - ePub

  Theories of Small Groups

  Interdisciplinary Perspectives

  • Marshall Scott Poole, Andrea B. Hollingshead, Marshall Scott Poole, Andrea B. Hollingshead(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  institutional mechanisms or rules that assign the right to make a decision, the right to enforce a decision, or the right to private information that grants advantage. Typically, those institutional mechanisms support Person A’s rights and punish those who do not recognize A’s rights. As we note later, there are other institutional rules that are important for defining characteristics of groups as well as the kinds of power relations that emerge within groups (see Crawford & Ostrom, 1995, for an excellent discussion of the grammar of institutional rules).

  Status

  Intimately related to power is status. Status is defined as a position in a social network. This is a purposely broad definition because it includes status such as mother or sister as well as status such as socioeconomic status or minority status. It is important to see that these statuses involve beliefs about the social worth of the individuals who occupy them, called status beliefs , such that a person who occupies one position is “better than” a person who occupies another position (e.g., Sewell, 1992).

  Status often provides an “organization” function for groups in that it defines a structure in which power use (and the lack of power use) is acceptable. The acceptable use of power can make a group function relatively smoothly but may at the same time generate an acceptance of inequality. In addition, power use can generate negative sentiment and interrupt the process by which power use translates to status (or further status distinctions, see Lovaglia & Houser, 1996; Walker et al., 2000; Willer, Troyer, & Lovaglia, 2001).

  Many social scientists (e.g., Weber) have suggested that status significance is acquired through resources. In a well-developed articulation of one process through which nominal characteristics, such as race and sex category, might acquire status value and status beliefs, Ridgeway (1991) developed and then tested aspects of status construction theory. This theory posits one mechanism through which a characteristic previously not status-valued might acquire status value. According to the theory, members differ in the level of material resources they possess, they differ on an unordered nominal characteristic, and resources are correlated with the “state” or category of the characteristic (Ridgeway, 1997).

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  Max Weber on Economy and Society (Routledge Revivals)

  • Robert Holton, Bryan Turner, Bryan S. Turner(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Status groups may emerge as a consequence of their life-style, especially where their life-style is associated with the development of a vocation or a profession, or through the basis of an hereditary charisma (for example, traditional Islamic saints) or through the monopolistic possession of certain political or hierocratic powers (Weber 1978:305–6). In short, status groups are communal groups which, through various means, enjoy certain forms of privileged access to scarce resources, especially where these scarce resources are of a cultural, moral or symbolic character. These status groups are ranked in terms of negative or positive privilege systems. Furthermore, status groups typically have their origin in some strategy of usurpation; they involve a collective struggle to improve access to esteem through usurpatory strategies. A typical example of this would be from the Indian caste system, whereby the adoption of certain high-caste activities brings about an improvement in status; this process has been referred to as ‘sanskritization’ (Srinivas 1952; 1966). Srinivas defined the process of sanskritization as one involving the claim of a low-caste tribal or other group to the status and privileges of a high or twice-born caste. As a general rule these changes in status are followed by a claim to a higher niche in the caste system than that conventionally conceded to the claimant group by the local village community. Finally, in this section defining the formal characteristics of status and status groups, Weber argued that, depending on the currently prevailing system of stratification, it is possible to speak of either ‘status society’ or a ‘class society’. Whereas class societies are at least formally characterized by an open competition for economic benefits without reference to traditional or charismatic forms of authority, status societies depend very heavily on the successful imposition of traditional or charismatic forms of authority

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  Elementary Forms of Social Relations

  • Theodore D. Kemper(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Finally, it is an inexorable fact that in any group some members receive more status than others. These status-stars display characteristics and conduct that Elementary forms 15 many or most members regard as worthy of attention and regard. One con- sequence of being selected for high status is that such leaders become reference groups, the fount of widely-held opinions and over what is thought, believed and done by lower status members. They may actually know less than some other members, but it is part of the high status accorded to them that lower status members also defer to and adopt their opinions and outlooks. This is crucial for what gets passed on from the environing pool of the culture. Opinions, facts and standards are transmitted in this manner (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955). Reference group dynamics Our main hopes for status depend on our relations with our reference groups. We realize that only by doing their bidding—executing their plans and pursuing the objectives they have set forth for us—will they grant us attention, respect, recog- nition, praise, support and so on. And, if we do not do what they want us to do, we can expect them to frown, withhold, turn away and otherwise use power on us. Why, then, does it happen that sometimes we don’t do what our reference groups desire or demand of us? Or so it would seem. The crucial fact here is that we always do the bidding of one reference group or another. And, if it is not the reference group that observers think it should be, it is another. The business executive who turns down a promotion to switch careers and teach in an urban school is not acting in disregard of his or her reference groups. The fact, rather, is that he or she is now heeding the demands of a different reference group, one that has a stronger status-power appeal. This may strike some as opportunistic, departing from the influence one reference group for the larger status-power offer of another reference group.

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