Status

To understand social status, one needs to understand Max Weber's distinction between class and status. For Weber, status and class are related but distinct forms of social stratification, which could be linked “in the most varied ways” (Weber 1968, 932). In their work, Tak Wing Chan and John Goldthorpe argue that the Weberian distinction is not only conceptually cogent but also empirically useful. Class and status have differing explanatory power in different areas of social life. Following Weber, Chan and Goldthorpe understand the status order as a set of hierarchical relations that express perceived and typically accepted social superiority, equality, or inferiority of a quite generalized kind attaching not to the qualities of particular individuals but rather to social positions that they hold or to ...