Social status status set. Social and personal status of the individual

And accordingly, the owner of many different statuses. The entire set of human statuses is called status set. The status that the person himself or those around him consider to be the main one is called main status. This is usually professional or family status or status in the group where the person has achieved the greatest success.

Statuses are divided into prescribed(obtained by birth) and achieved(which are purchased purposefully). The freer a society, the less important the prescribed statuses become and the more important the achieved ones.

A person can have different statuses. For example, his status set could be as follows: man, unmarried, candidate of technical sciences, computer programming specialist, Russian, city dweller, Orthodox, etc. A number of statuses (Russian, man) were received by him from birth - these are prescribed statuses. He acquired a number of other statuses (candidate of sciences, programmer) after putting some effort into it - these are achieved statuses. Let's assume that this person identifies himself primarily as a programmer; therefore, programmer is his main status.

Social prestige of a person

The concept of status is usually associated with the concept of prestige.

Social prestige - this is a public assessment of the significance of the position that a person occupies in.

The higher the prestige of a person’s social position, the higher his social status is assessed. For example, the professions of economist or lawyer are considered prestigious; education received in a good educational institution; high post; specific place of residence (capital, city center). If they talk about the high importance not of a social position, but of a specific person and his personal qualities, in this case they mean not prestige, but authority.

Social role

Social status is a characteristic of a person’s inclusion in the social structure. In real life, a person's status is manifested through the roles he plays.

Social role represents a set of requirements that society places on individuals occupying a specific social position.

In other words, if someone occupies a certain position in society, they will be expected to behave accordingly.

A priest is expected to behave in accordance with high moral standards, while a rock star is expected to act scandalously. If a priest begins to behave scandalously, and a rock star begins to read sermons, this will cause bewilderment, dissatisfaction and even condemnation of the public.

In order to feel comfortable in society, we must expect people to fulfill their roles and act within the rules prescribed by society: a university teacher will teach us scientific theories, not; the doctor will think about our health, not his earnings. If we did not expect others to fulfill their roles, we would be unable to trust anyone and our lives would be filled with hostility and suspicion.

Thus, if social status is a person’s position in the social structure of society with certain rights and responsibilities, then a social role is the functions performed by a person in accordance with his status: the behavior that is expected from the holder of this status.

Even with the same social status, the nature of the roles performed can vary significantly. This is due to the fact that the performance of roles is personal, and the roles themselves can have different versions of performance. For example m with r. the owner of such a social status as the father of the family can treat the child in a demanding and strict manner (play his role in an authoritarian manner), can build relationships in the spirit of cooperation and partnership (democratic style of behavior) or can let events take their course, giving the child a wide degree of freedom (permissive style). In exactly the same way, different theater actors will play the same role in completely different ways.

Throughout life, a person's position in the social structure may change. As a rule, these changes are associated with the transition of a person from one social group to another: from unskilled workers to specialists, from rural residents to city dwellers, etc.

Features of social status

Status - this is a social position that includes a given type of profession, economic status, political leanings, and demographic characteristics. For example, the status of citizen I.I. Ivanov is defined as follows: “salesman” is a profession, “a wage worker receiving an average income” is an economic trait, “member of the LDPR” is a political characteristic, “a man aged 25” is a demographic quality.

Each status, as an element of the social division of labor, contains a set of rights and obligations. Rights mean what a person can freely afford or allow in relation to other people. Responsibilities prescribe the status holder with some necessary actions: in relation to others, at his workplace, etc. Responsibilities are strictly defined, recorded in rules, instructions, regulations, or enshrined in custom. Responsibilities limit behavior to certain limits and make it predictable. For example, the status of a slave in the ancient world implied only duties and did not contain any rights. In a totalitarian society, rights and responsibilities are asymmetrical: the ruler and senior officials have maximum rights and minimum responsibilities; Ordinary citizens have many responsibilities and few rights. In our country during Soviet times, many rights were proclaimed in the constitution, but not all of them could be realized. In a democratic society, rights and responsibilities are more symmetrical. We can say that the level of social development of a society depends on how the rights and responsibilities of citizens are related and respected.

It is important that the individual’s duties presuppose his responsibility for their high-quality fulfillment. Thus, a tailor is obliged to sew a suit on time and with high quality; if this is not done, he must be punished somehow - pay a penalty or be fired. The organization is obliged under the contract to supply products to the customer, otherwise it incurs losses in the form of fines and penalties. Even in Ancient Assyria there was such a procedure (fixed in the laws of Hammurabi): if an architect built a building that subsequently collapsed and crushed the owner, the architect was deprived of his life. This is one of the early and primitive forms of manifestation of responsibility. Nowadays, the forms of manifestation of responsibility are quite diverse and are determined by the culture of society and the level of social development. In modern society, rights, freedoms and responsibilities are determined by social norms, laws, and traditions of society.

Thus, status- the individual’s position in, which is connected with other positions through a system of rights, duties and responsibilities.

Since each person participates in many groups and organizations, he can have many statuses. For example, the mentioned citizen Ivanov is a man, a middle-aged man, a resident of Penza, a salesman, a member of the LDPR, an Orthodox Christian, a Russian, a voter, a football player, a regular visitor to a beer bar, a husband, a father, an uncle, etc. In this set of statuses that any person has, one is the main, key one. The main status is the most characteristic for a given individual and is usually associated with his main place of work or occupation: “salesman”, “entrepreneur”, “researcher”, “bank director”, “worker at an industrial enterprise”, “housewife”, etc. P. The main thing is the status that determines the financial situation, and therefore the lifestyle, the circle of acquaintances, and the manner of behavior.

Specified(natural, prescribed) status determined by gender, nationality, race, i.e. characteristics given biologically, inherited by a person against his will and consciousness. Advances in modern medicine make some statuses changeable. Thus, the concept of biological sex, socially acquired, appeared. With the help of surgical operations, a man who has played with dolls since childhood, dressed like a girl, thought and felt like a girl, can become a woman. He finds his true gender, to which he was psychologically predisposed, but did not receive it at birth. Which gender—male or female—should be considered natural in this case? There is no clear answer. Sociologists also find it difficult to determine what nationality a person whose parents are of different nationalities belongs to. Often, when moving to another country as children, emigrants forget old customs and their native language and are practically no different from the native inhabitants of their new homeland. In this case, biological nationality is replaced by socially acquired nationality.

New Status is a status that a person receives under certain conditions. Thus, the eldest son of an English lord after his death inherits this status. The kinship system has a whole set of acquired statuses. If innate statuses express consanguinity (“son”, “daughter”, “sister”, “brother”, “nephew”, “uncle”, “grandmother”, “grandfather”, “aunt”, “cousin”), then non-consanguineous ones relatives have acquired status. So, having married, a person can receive all his wife’s relatives as relatives. “Mother-in-law,” “father-in-law,” “sister-in-law,” “brother-in-law” are acquired statuses.

Achieved status - socially acquired by a person through his own efforts, desire, luck. Thus, a person acquires the status of a manager through education and perseverance. The more democratic a society is, the more statuses are achieved in the society.

Different statuses have their own insignia (symbols). In particular, the uniform of the military sets them apart from the mass of the civilian population; In addition, each military rank has its own differences: a private, a major, a general have different badges, shoulder straps, and headdresses.

Status image, or image, is a set of ideas about how a person should behave in accordance with his status. To correspond to a status image, a person must “not allow himself too much,” in other words, look the way others expect from him. For example, the president cannot oversleep a meeting with the leader of another country, university professors cannot sleep drunk in the entrance, as this does not correspond to their status image. There are situations when a person undeservedly tries to be “on an equal footing” with a person who has a different rank status, which leads to the manifestation of familiarity (amicoshonism), i.e. unceremonious, cheeky attitude.

Differences between people due to ascribed status are noticeable to varying degrees. Usually, each person, as well as a group of people, strives to occupy a more advantageous social position. Under certain circumstances, a flower seller can become the deputy prime minister of the country, a millionaire. Others do not succeed because their assigned status (gender, age, nationality) interferes.

At the same time, some social strata are trying to improve their status by uniting in movements (women's movements, organizations such as the “union of entrepreneurs”, etc.) and lobbying their interests everywhere. However, there are factors that hinder the attempts of individual groups to change their status. These include ethnic tensions, attempts by other groups to maintain the status quo, lack of strong leaders, etc.

Thus, under social status in sociology, we understand the position that a person (or social group) occupies in society. Since each person is a member of different ones, he is the owner of many statuses (i.e., the bearer of a certain status set). Each of the available statuses is associated with a set of rights that determine what the status holder can afford, and responsibilities that prescribe the performance of specific actions. In general, status can be defined as the position of an individual in the social structure of society, connected with other positions through a system of rights, duties and responsibilities.

Man does not exist outside of society. We interact with other people and enter into various relationships with them. To indicate a person’s position among his own kind and the characteristics of an individual’s behavior in certain situations, scientists introduced the concepts of “social status” and “social role.”

About social status

The social status of an individual is not only a person’s place in the system of social relations, but also the rights and responsibilities dictated by his position. Thus, the status of a doctor gives the right to diagnose and treat patients, but at the same time obliges the doctor to observe labor discipline and conscientiously perform his work.

The concept of social status was first proposed by the American anthropologist R. Linton. The scientist made a great contribution to the study of the problems of personality and its interaction with other members of society.

Statuses exist in an enterprise, in a family, in a political party, in a kindergarten, in a school, in a university, in a word, wherever an organized group of people is engaged in socially significant activities and members of the group have certain relationships with each other.

A person is in several statuses at the same time. For example, a middle-aged man acts as a son, father, husband, engineer at a factory, member of a sports club, holder of an academic degree, author of scientific publications, patient in a clinic, etc. The number of statuses depends on the connections and relationships into which the individual enters.

There are several classifications of statuses:

1. Personal and social. A person occupies a personal status in a family or other small group in accordance with the assessment of his personal qualities. Social status (examples: teacher, worker, manager) is determined by the actions performed by the individual for society.
2. Main and episodic. Primary status is associated with the main functions in a person's life. Most often, the main statuses are family man and worker. Episodic are associated with a moment in time during which a citizen performs certain actions: a pedestrian, a reader in a library, a course student, a theater viewer, etc.
3. Prescribed, achieved and mixed. The prescribed status does not depend on the desires and capabilities of the individual, as it is given at birth (nationality, place of birth, class). What is achieved is acquired as a result of the efforts made (level of education, profession, achievements in science, art, sports). Mixed combines the features of the prescribed and achieved statuses (a person who has received a disability).
4. Socio-economic status is determined by the amount of income received and the position that an individual occupies in accordance with his well-being.

The set of all available statuses is called a status set.

Hierarchy

Society constantly evaluates the significance of this or that status and, on the basis of this, builds a hierarchy of positions.

Assessments depend on the benefits of the business in which a person is engaged, and on the system of values ​​​​accepted in the culture. Prestigious social status (examples: businessman, director) is highly appreciated. At the top of the hierarchy is the general status, which determines not only a person’s life, but also the position of people close to him (president, patriarch, academician).

If some statuses are unreasonably low, while others, on the contrary, are excessively high, then they speak of a violation of status balance. The trend towards its loss threatens the normal functioning of society.

The hierarchy of statuses can also be subjective. A person himself determines what is more important to him, in what status he feels better, what benefits he derives from being in one position or another.

Social status cannot be something unchanging, since people's lives are not static. The movement of a person from one social group to another is called social mobility, which is divided into vertical and horizontal.

Vertical mobility is spoken of when the social status of an individual increases or decreases (a worker becomes an engineer, a department head becomes an ordinary employee, etc.). With horizontal mobility, a person maintains his position, but changes his profession (to one of equal status), place of residence (becomes an emigrant).

Intergenerational and intragenerational mobility are also distinguished. The first determines how much children have increased or decreased their status in relation to the status of their parents, and the second determines how successful the social career of representatives of one generation is (types of social status are taken into account).

The channels of social mobility are school, family, church, army, public organizations and political parties. Education is a social elevator that helps a person achieve the desired status.

A high social status acquired by an individual or a decrease in it indicates individual mobility. If the status of a certain community of people changes (for example, as a result of a revolution), then group mobility takes place.

Social roles

While in one status or another, a person performs actions, communicates with other people, that is, plays a role. Social status and social role are closely interrelated, but differ from each other. Status is position, and role is socially expected behavior determined by status. If a doctor is rude and swears, and a teacher abuses alcohol, then this does not correspond to the status he holds.

The term “role” was borrowed from theater to emphasize the stereotypical behavior of people of similar social groups. A person cannot do as he wants. The behavior of an individual is determined by the rules and norms characteristic of a particular social group and society as a whole.

Unlike status, a role is dynamic and closely related to a person’s character traits and moral attitudes. Sometimes role behavior is adhered to only in public, as if putting on a mask. But it also happens that the mask fuses with its wearer, and the person ceases to distinguish between himself and his role. Depending on the situation, this state of affairs has both positive and negative consequences.

Social status and social role are two sides of the same coin.

Diversity of social roles

Since there are many people in the world and each person is an individual, it is unlikely that there will be two identical roles. Some role models require emotional restraint and self-control (lawyer, surgeon, funeral director), while for other roles (actor, teacher, mother, grandmother) emotions are very much in demand.

Some roles drive a person into strict frameworks (job descriptions, regulations, etc.), others have no framework (parents are fully responsible for the behavior of their children).

The performance of roles is closely related to motives, which are also different. Everything is determined by social status in society and personal motives. An official is concerned with promotion, a financier is concerned with profit, and a scientist is concerned with the search for truth.

Role set

A role set is understood as a set of roles characteristic of a particular status. Thus, a doctor of science is in the role of a researcher, teacher, mentor, supervisor, consultant, etc. Each role implies its own ways of communicating with others. The same teacher behaves differently with colleagues, students, and the rector of the university.

The concept of “role set” describes the whole variety of social roles inherent in a particular status. No role is strictly assigned to its bearer. For example, one of the spouses remains unemployed and for some time (and perhaps forever) loses the roles of colleague, subordinate, manager, and becomes a housewife (householder).

In many families, social roles are symmetrical: both husband and wife equally act as breadwinners, masters of the house and educators of children. In such a situation, it is important to adhere to the golden mean: excessive passion for one role (company director, businesswoman) leads to a lack of energy and time for others (father, mother).

Role Expectations

The difference between social roles and mental states and personality traits is that roles represent a certain historically developed standard of behavior. There are requirements for the bearer of a particular role. Thus, a child must certainly be obedient, a schoolboy or student must study well, a worker must observe labor discipline, etc. Social status and social role oblige one to act one way and not another. The system of requirements is also called expectations.

Role expectations act as an intermediate link between status and role. Only behavior that corresponds to status is considered role-playing. If a teacher, instead of giving a lecture on higher mathematics, starts singing with a guitar, then students will be surprised, because they expect other behavioral reactions from an associate professor or professor.

Role expectations consist of actions and qualities. Taking care of the child, playing with him, putting the baby to bed, the mother performs actions, and kindness, responsiveness, empathy, and moderate severity contribute to the successful implementation of actions.

Compliance with the role being performed is important not only to others, but also to the person himself. A subordinate strives to earn the respect of his superior and receives moral satisfaction from a high assessment of the results of his work. The athlete trains hard to set a record. The writer is working on creating a bestseller. A person’s social status obliges him to be at his best. If an individual's expectations do not meet the expectations of others, then internal and external conflicts arise.

Role conflict

Contradictions between role holders arise either due to inconsistency with expectations, or due to the fact that one role completely excludes another. The young man more or less successfully plays the roles of son and friend. But the guy's friends invite him to a disco, and his parents demand that he stay at home. The emergency doctor's child falls ill, and the doctor is urgently called to the hospital because a natural disaster has occurred. The husband wants to go to the dacha to help his parents, and the wife books a trip to the sea to improve the health of the children.

Resolving role conflicts is not an easy task. Participants in the confrontation have to decide which role is more important, but in most cases compromises are more appropriate. The teenager returns from the party early, the doctor leaves his child with his mother, grandmother or nanny, and the spouses negotiate the timing of participation in dacha work and travel time for the whole family.

Sometimes the solution to the conflict is leaving the role: changing jobs, going to university, getting a divorce. Most often, a person understands that he has outgrown this or that role or that it has become a burden to him. A change of roles is inevitable as the child grows and develops: infant, toddler, preschooler, primary school student, teenager, young man, adult. The transition to a new age level is ensured by internal and external contradictions.

Socialization

From birth, a person learns the norms, patterns of behavior and cultural values ​​characteristic of a particular society. This is how socialization occurs and the individual’s social status is acquired. Without socialization, a person cannot become a full-fledged individual. Socialization is influenced by the media, cultural traditions of the people, social institutions (family, school, work collectives, public associations, etc.).

Purposeful socialization occurs as a result of training and upbringing, but the efforts of parents and teachers are adjusted by the street, the economic and political situation in the country, television, the Internet and other factors.

The further development of society depends on the effectiveness of socialization. Children grow up and occupy the status of their parents, taking on certain roles. If the family and the state do not pay enough attention to the upbringing of the younger generation, then degradation and stagnation occur in public life.

Members of society coordinate their behavior with certain standards. These may be prescribed norms (laws, regulations, rules) or unspoken expectations. Any non-compliance with standards is considered a deviation, or deviation. Examples of deviation are drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism, pedophilia, etc. Deviation can be individual, when one person deviates from the norm, and group (informal groups).

Socialization occurs as a result of two interrelated processes: internalization and social adaptation. A person adapts to social conditions, masters the rules of the game, which are mandatory for all members of society. Over time, norms, values, attitudes, ideas about what is good and what is bad become part of the inner world of the individual.

People are socialized throughout their lives, and at each age stage, statuses are acquired and lost, new roles are learned, conflicts arise and are resolved. This is how personality development occurs.

Lecture 23. The concept of social status. Types of statuses

The founders of the status-role theoretical approach were American scientists George Herbert Mead and Ralph Linton. At the center of it are two interconnected concepts - status and role.

Social statuscharacterizes a person’s position in society, connected with other positions through a system of rights and responsibilities. Possession of status allows an individual to expect and demand a certain attitude from other people. In any society, its representatives can occupy different positions: high and low. Moreover, each of them can be characterized by a “status set” (a teacher, for example, is a man, a father, a husband, a candidate of sciences, a representative of the middle generation, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party). This concept was introduced into sociological science by the American sociologist Robert Merton. He called the totality of all statuses occupied by one person a status set. In the status set there will definitely be a main one. As a rule, they refer to the status that is associated with a position, place of work or place of residence.

Any person holds several positions as he participates in various groups and organizations. For example, Mr. N. is a middle-aged man, a teacher, a candidate of sciences, a department head, a trade union member, an Orthodox Christian, a husband, a father, etc. Each person is thus characterized by status set. (The term was introduced by R. Merton). Status set – the totality of all statuses occupied by a given individual.

In the multitude of statuses that a person has in the system of social connections, a special role is played by general(universal) statuses. The first is the status of a person, his rights and obligations. Another general status is the status of a member of a given society, state (citizen). General statuses are the foundation of a person’s status position. The remaining statuses refer to special, i.e. differentiating a particular society.

Statuses can also be formalized or unformalized, which depends on whether within the framework of formalized or informal social institutions and more broadly – ​​social interactions – this or that function is performed (for example, the statuses of a plant director and a leader of a company of close comrades). The plurality of statuses does not mean their equivalence. They are in a certain hierarchy according to the degree of importance of the social institution within which this status is formed. Of course, in all cases, the individual’s status associated with work and profession is of particular importance. Although it should be noted that the status hierarchy may change. Apparently, one should distinguish between the main, general hierarchy of statuses of a given personality, which works in most cases, as well as in decisive areas of life, and the specific one, which manifests itself in special conditions. For example, the main general hierarchy of statuses will always highlight statuses associated with property status, profession, ethnic characteristics, etc. as the main ones. But these statuses may be of little significance in an informal group of friends; leadership will be more important here.

The concept of social status characterizes the place of an individual in the system of social relations, his activities in the main spheres of life, and, finally, the assessment of an individual’s activities by society, expressed in certain quantitative and qualitative indicators (salary, bonuses, awards, titles, privileges), as well as self-esteem, which may or may not coincide with the assessment of society or a social group. Related to this is the difficulty of identifying the main status of a person, which defines and self-determines a person socially. The status that society identifies as the main one in a given person does not always coincide with the status that the individual herself singles out as the main one. On this basis, many dramatic contradictions arise in the inner world of the individual, who inadequately represents his place in society, in public opinion.

In a set of statuses, there is always a main one (the most characteristic for a given individual, by which others distinguish him or with which he is identified). The main status determines the way of life and the circle of acquaintances. manner of behavior, etc. Main statuses can be considered those statuses that a person achieves himself, through his own actions, for example, professional status, educational status, etc.

Social status is the position a person automatically occupies as a representative of a large social group (professional, class, national). Blacks in the United States and South Africa were once considered lower in social status than whites. As a result, any black person - talented or not, virtuous or evil - was treated with disdain. Personal qualities receded into the background. Nationals are at the forefront. On the contrary, the merits and advantages of a white person were exaggerated in advance: when meeting someone or finding a job, they trusted him more. Another example: prejudice against women. There is an opinion that she will cope with leadership work worse than a man just because she is a woman.

Personal status- the position that a person occupies in a small (or primary) group, depending on how he is assessed by his individual qualities. It has been noticed that social status plays a dominant role among strangers, and personal status among familiar people. But acquaintances constitute the primary, small group. When introducing ourselves to strangers, especially employees of any organization, institution, or enterprise, we usually name our place of work, social status and age. For people we know, it is not these characteristics that are important, but our personal qualities, i.e. informal authority.

Each of us has a set of social and personal statuses because we are involved in many large and small groups. The latter include family, circle of relatives and acquaintances, sports team, school class, student group, interest club, youth party, etc. In them you can have high, medium or low status, i.e. be a leader, independent , an outsider. Doctor N. has a high professional status, since his specialty is prestigious, but in the karate sports section, where he practices twice a week, he is treated as an outsider. Thus, social and personal statuses may or may not coincide.

Attributed status(also called ascriptive) is the status in which a person is born or which is assigned to him over time. The ascribed status does not coincide with the innate one. Only three social statuses are considered natural: gender, nationality, and race. Negro is an innate status that characterizes a race. Man is an innate status that characterizes gender. Russian is an innate status that determines nationality. Race, gender and nationality are given biologically; a person inherits them against his will and consciousness. It would seem that no one can change gender, race and nationality. However, it has recently been discovered that gender and skin color can be changed through surgery. The concepts of biological sex and socially acquired sex appeared. Surgery was necessary because the two genders were in conflict. A man who has played with dolls since childhood, dressed, felt, thought and acted like a girl, becomes a woman in adulthood through the efforts of doctors. He finds his true gender, to which he was psychologically predisposed, but which he did not receive biologically. Which gender - male or female - should be considered natural in such cases? A definite answer has not yet been found.
Recently, scientists have begun to doubt whether innate status exists at all if people change gender, race and nationality in individual cases. When parents are of different nationalities, it is difficult to determine what nationality the children should be. They often decide for themselves what to write in their passport.

Having left for another country forever, especially at a young age or in childhood, Russian emigrants (especially their children) often forgot old customs and radically changed their national habits, language, and style of behavior. They were no longer much different from the indigenous inhabitants of this country. Biological nationality was replaced by socially acquired nationality.

Age is a biologically determined trait, but it is not an innate status. During life, a person moves from one age to another. Society assigns to each age category certain rights and responsibilities that other categories do not have. People expect very specific behavior from a specific age category: from young people, for example, they expect respect for elders, from adults they expect care for children and the elderly.
After a certain age, the king's son inherits the crown from his father. King is an ascribed status. Only those born into the royal family can purchase it. If we take into account consanguinity, then the ascribed status can also be called innate, biological. In this sense, the noble titles of prince, count, baron, passed from father to son, are also innate. However, the king could deprive a person of his noble title for certain offenses. Therefore, it is more correct to talk about ascribed (assigned) rather than innate status.

The kinship system has a whole set of ascribed statuses. Only some of them are natural born. These include the statuses: “son”, “daughter”, “sister”, “brother”, “nephew”, “uncle”, “aunt”, “grandmother”, “grandfather”, “cousin” and some others expressing blood kinship In addition to them, there are non-blood relatives, the so-called. legal relatives. After marriage, all blood relatives of the wife become relatives of the husband. He gets a mother-in-law, father-in-law, etc. You can become a legal relative through marriage. You can also acquire the status of a blood relative through adoption. The statuses of stepdaughter and stepson (although they are called daughter and son), the statuses of godfather and godmother cannot be considered innate. Even ascribed, they should be called only to the extent that the person receiving such a status is not free to choose it; in other words, if the adoption occurs without the consent of the child.
Thus, the ascribed status is very similar to the innate one, but is not reducible to it. Natural is a biologically inherited status. Attributed is a socially acquired status, but identical in name to innate status. Thus, “son” can be both a natural and an ascribed status. In order to avoid confusion, sociologists have agreed to call both types of status in one word - ascribed status.

Consequently, ascribed (or ascriptive) is a position in society over which the individual has no control and/or which he occupies regardless of his will, desire, or efforts.

Achieved status. The achieved status differs significantly from the ascribed status. Achievable is a status that a person receives through his own efforts, desire, free choice, or is acquired through luck and fortune. If the ascribed status is not under the control of the individual, then the achieved status is under control. Any status that is not automatically given to a person by the very fact of birth is considered attainable.

A person acquires the profession of a driver or engineer through his own efforts, preparation and free choice. He also acquires the status of world champion, doctor of science or rock star thanks to his own efforts and enormous work. Statuses such as “student”, “buyer”, etc. are given with less difficulty.

The achieved status requires independent decisions and independent actions. The status of a husband is achievable: to get it, a man makes a decision, pays a visit to the bride's parents, makes an official proposal to his bride and performs a lot of other actions. Achieved status refers to positions that people occupy due to their efforts or merit. “Graduate student” is a status that university graduates achieve by competing with others and demonstrating outstanding academic achievement. You can become an honorary citizen, honorary citizen or honorary doctor of a foreign university thanks to past achievements, sometimes without specifically seeking this title.

The more dynamic a society is, the more cells in its social structure are designed for the achieved statuses. The more achieved statuses in a society, the more democratic it is. Having carried out a comparative historical analysis, scientists have established: earlier in European society there were more ascribed, but now there are more achieved statuses.

Mixed status. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine what type a particular status belongs to. For example, being unemployed is not a position that most people aspire to. On the contrary, they avoid him. Most often a person becomes unemployed against his will and desire. The reason is factors beyond his control: an economic crisis affecting an industry or society as a whole, mass layoffs, the ruin of a company, structural restructuring of production. Such processes are not under the control of an individual. It is in his power to make efforts to find a job or not to do so, accepting the situation.
Political upheavals, coups d'etat, social revolutions, wars can change (or even cancel) some statuses of huge masses of people against their will and desire. After the October Revolution of 1917, former nobles turned into emigrants, remained or became officials, engineers, workers, teachers, losing the ascribed status of a nobleman, which had disappeared from the social structure. In the early 80s, party committees were liquidated at enterprises and institutions, and thousands of people left the ranks of the Communist Party.

If socio-demographic restrictions are imposed on the occupation of a particular position, then it thereby ceases to act as an achieved status.

Status mismatch (status incompatibility). Each of us is involved in many groups - large and small - and holds many positions. Each group has its own hierarchy. If status is considered as a place in a hierarchy, it is called rank. The rank of status determines whether it is high, medium or low. The hierarchy and prestige of statuses depend, firstly, on the real significance of certain functions for the development of society, the reproduction of its basic structures and, secondly, on the system of values, the scale of preferences, taken into account in a given culture when “weighing” social functions. These two factors simultaneously and closely interact with each other and are relatively independent of each other. Often the importance of certain functions at the moment may be overestimated and may not correspond to social expediency. Often the prestige of this status is supported mainly only by the force of social inertia. A society in which there is an unreasonable prestige of some statuses, and, conversely, an unreasonable undervaluation of others, loses the state of balance of statuses and is unable to ensure its normal functioning.

A person who has reached the top of the hierarchy and therefore high status in one group may remain unknown in another. Mr. N. as a collector is valued very highly among stamp collectors, but his work colleagues consider him a very mediocre accountant, and in the family his wife and children even look down on him. It is clear that Mr. N. has three different statuses, having three different ranks: high, medium and low. Rarely does anyone manage to have a high status in all the groups to which he belongs. Status discrepancy is a discrepancy in status ranks or a contradiction in rights and obligations. Therefore, discrepancy occurs under two circumstances: 1) when an individual occupies a high position in one group and a low position in another; 2) when the rights and obligations of one status contradict or interfere with the exercise of the rights and obligations of another status.

Social role– a behavior model focused on this status. J. Mead considers roles as a system of prescriptions depending on status, since the social functions of an individual differ either horizontally or hierarchically (son - father - grandfather). According to his teaching, each role involves interaction with other roles and can be defined as expected behavior. This process of interaction means that people within the roles they play are always testing their ideas about the roles of other people.

Similar to the “status” set, R. Merton also identifies a role set, i.e. a set of roles associated with one status. For example, a teacher can perform the roles of a teacher, educator, researcher, examiner, etc. This raises the question: which roles are personally significant for a person, which ones are meaningless, and which ones he is simply trying to distance himself from? All this can lead to the emergence of role conflict, which is caused by a clash of demands of two or more incompatible roles arising from a given status.

In society or a separate social subsystem of society. It is determined by characteristics specific to a particular society, which may include national, age and other characteristics. Social status is characterized by specific skills, charisma, and education.

Concept

The concept was first used in a sociological sense by the English historian and lawyer Henry Maine.

Social status is the place or position of an individual, correlated with the position of other people; this is the place of the individual in a hierarchically organized social structure, his objective position in it; it is an inexhaustible human resource that gives a person the opportunity to influence society and through it obtain privileged positions in the system of power and distribution of material wealth. Each person occupies a number of positions in society, each of which involves a number of rights and responsibilities.

Social statuses are structural elements of the social organization of society, ensuring social connections between subjects of social relations. Society not only creates social positions - statuses, but also provides social mechanisms for distributing members of society into these positions.

Social status is the place that an individual occupies in the social system (society) and which is characterized by a certain set of rights and responsibilities.

Types of statuses

Each person, as a rule, has not one, but several social statuses. Sociologists distinguish:

• natural status- the status received by a person at birth (gender, race, nationality, biological stratum). In some cases, birth status may change: the status of a member of the royal family is from birth and as long as the monarchy exists.
• acquired (achieved) status- the status that a person achieves thanks to his mental and physical efforts (work, connections, position, post).
• prescribed (attributed) status- a status that a person acquires regardless of his desire (age, status in the family); it can change over the course of his life. The prescribed status is either innate or acquired.

Criteria for social status

Most sociologists adhere to a multidimensional approach, taking into account such features as:

1. own
2. income level
3. Lifestyle
4. relations between people in the system of social division of labor
5. distribution relations
6. consumption relations
7. a person's place in the hierarchy of the political system
8. the level of education
9. ethnic origin, etc.

In addition, in sociology there is a so-called main status, that is, the most characteristic status for a given individual, with which he identifies himself or with which other people identify him. It determines the style, lifestyle, circle of acquaintances, and behavior. For representatives of modern society, the main status is most often associated with professional activity.

Status incompatibility

Status incompatibility occurs only under two circumstances:

• when an individual occupies a high rank in one group and a low rank in the second;
• when the rights and obligations of one status of a person contradict or interfere with the fulfillment of the rights and obligations of another status.

History of social statuses in Russia

In the Russian Empire, the following main social statuses were identified, enshrined in documents and indicated as “rank”:

• peasant
• tradesman
• personal honorary citizen
• hereditary honorary citizen
• personal nobleman
• hereditary nobleman

Moreover, if there was any rank, then instead of the indicated categories of the population, it was the rank that was indicated.

In the Soviet Union, the following main social statuses were identified, enshrined in documents and indicated as “social status”:

• peasant
• worker
• employee

The category of employees included everyone who had a higher education or graduated from a technical school. The category of workers included everyone who did not have the specified education. The category of peasants included residents of rural settlements engaged in agriculture who did not have the above education.

When entering a job (service), a “personal personnel registration sheet” was filled out, which included a column (No. 6) “Social origin”. Usually this column was filled in with one of the following options: “from peasants”, “from workers”, “from employees”. As a rule, the social status of the head of the family was indicated.

Notes

Literature

• Warner W. L., Heker M., Cells K. Social Class in America. A Manual co Procedure for Measurement of Social Status. Chicago, 1949
• Linton R. The Study of Man. N.Y., 1936

• 2.2. Social statuses and roles(P. 54-59) // Shkaratan O. I. Sociology of inequality. Theory and reality / Nat. research university "

Status - it is a specific position in the social structure of a group or society, connected to other positions through a system of rights and responsibilities.

Sociologists distinguish two types of status: personal and acquired. Personal status is the position of a person that he occupies in the so-called small, or primary, group, depending on how his individual qualities are assessed in it. On the other hand, in the process of interaction with other individuals, each person performs certain social functions that determine his social status.

Social status is the general position of an individual or social group in society, associated with a certain set of rights and obligations. Social statuses can be prescribed and acquired (achieved). The first category includes nationality, place of birth, social origin, etc., the second - profession, education, etc.

In any society there is a certain hierarchy of statuses, which represents the basis of its stratification. Certain statuses are prestigious, others are the opposite. Prestige is society’s assessment of the social significance of a particular status, enshrined in culture and public opinion. This hierarchy is formed under the influence of two factors:

a) the real usefulness of the social functions that a person performs;

b) a value system characteristic of a given society.

If the prestige of any statuses is unreasonably overestimated or, conversely, underestimated, it is usually said that there is a loss of balance of statuses. A society in which there is a similar tendency to lose this balance is unable to ensure its normal functioning. Authority must be distinguished from prestige. Authority is the degree to which society recognizes the dignity of an individual, a particular person.

The social status of an individual primarily influences his behavior. Knowing the social status of a person, you can easily determine most of the qualities that he possesses, as well as predict the actions that he will carry out. Such expected behavior of a person, associated with the status that he has, is usually called a social role. A social role actually represents a certain pattern of behavior recognized as appropriate for people of a given status in a given society. In fact, the role provides a model showing exactly how an individual should act in a given situation. Roles vary in degree of formalization: some are very clearly defined, for example in military organizations, others are very vague. A social role can be assigned to a person either formally (for example, in a legislative act), or it can also be of an informal nature.

Any individual is a reflection of the totality of social relations of his era. Therefore, each person has not one but a whole set of social roles that he plays in society. Their combination is called the role system. Such a variety of social roles can cause internal conflict of the individual (if some of the social roles contradict each other).

Scientists offer various classifications of social roles. Among the latter, as a rule, there are the so-called main (basic) social roles. These include:

a) the role of a worker;

b) the role of the owner;

c) the role of the consumer;

d) the role of a citizen;

d) the role of a family member.

However, despite the fact that the behavior of an individual is largely determined by the status that he occupies and the roles that he plays in society, he (the individual) nevertheless retains his autonomy and has a certain freedom of choice. And although in modern society there is a tendency towards the unification and standardization of personality, its complete leveling, fortunately, does not occur. An individual has the opportunity to choose from a variety of social statuses and roles offered to him by society, those that allow him to better realize his plans and use his abilities as effectively as possible. A person’s acceptance of a particular social role is influenced by both social conditions and his biological and personal characteristics (health status, gender, age, temperament, etc.). Any role prescription outlines only a general pattern of human behavior, offering the choice of ways for the individual to carry it out.

In the process of achieving a certain status and fulfilling the corresponding social role, a so-called role conflict may arise. Role conflict is a situation in which a person is faced with the need to satisfy the demands of two or more incompatible roles.