BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with
the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.
3.2. The Concepts of Social Status and Role
The first person who gives the definition to the concept of status
was R. Linton (1936). He defined status simply as a position in a social
system. Eventually one occupies the statuses son or daughter, playmate,
pupil, husband, mother bread-winner, cricket fan, and so on, one has as
many statuses as there are groups of which one is a member. For analytical
purposes, statuses are divided into two basic types: ascribed and achieved.
Ascribed statuses are those which are fixed for an individual at birth.
Ascribed statuses that exist in all societies include those based upon sex,
age, race, ethnic group and family background. Achieved statuses are
those which the individual acquires during his or her lifetime as a result of
the exercise of knowledge, ability, skill and/or perseverance. In other
words achieved status is when people are placed in the stratification
structure based on their individual merits or achievements. This status can
be achieved through education, occupation, and marital status. Their place
within the stratification structure is determined by society's bar, which
often judges them on success, success being financial, academic, and
political and so on. America most commonly uses this form of status with
jobs. The higher you are in rank the better off you are and the more control
you have over your co-workers.
Societies vary in both the number of statuses that are ascribed and
achieved and in the rigidity with which such definitions are held. Both
ascribed and achieved statuses exist in all societies and these are directly
related to the stratification of society that describes the way people are
placed in society. It is associated with the ability of individuals to live up
to some set of ideals or principles regarded as important by the society or
some social group within it. The German sociologist Max Weber
developed a theory proposing that stratification is based on three factors
that have become known as "the three p's of stratification": property (i.e.
material possessions), prestige (respect) and power (i.e. ability to do what
one wants, regardless of the will of others). These factors all together or
one by one can show the position of a person in the society. For example, a
teacher may have a high status because of the prestige of the profession
while having no propriety or power.
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