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 certain of their ascribed attributes, for example, birth or ethnicity. In contrast, Chan and Goldthorpe see the class structure as being grounded specifically, and quite objectively, in the social relations of economic life, that is, in the social relations of labor markets and production units. Although typically generating differential, and often extreme, advantages and disadvantages, a class structure does not necessarily take on the consistently hierarchical form that is inherent to a status order.

Social status in the Weberian sense has particular relevance for understanding consumption. Given the notions of perceived social superiority, equality, and inferiority, individuals' position in the status order constitutes an important part of their social identity. To signal status is to lay claim to group membership: to whom one has affiliations and from whom one is different. Indeed, cultural consumption often takes on symbolic significance of this kind. When asked why they do not go to pop concerts or classical music concerts, people might say, “I do not feel comfortable in that setting” or “It is not for people like me.” Such replies would suggest a status concern in the classical Weberian sense. Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood make a similar claim in relation to material consumption: “goods are neutral, their uses are social; they can be used as fences or bridges” (1979, 12).

But the term social status has also been used in a less precise manner to mean simply a hierarchy in which occupations or social groups could be ranked. But what is the precise nature of this hierarchy? Just what is being ranked? And how do we operationalize the ranking? This confusing state of affairs can be seen from the plethora of terms that have been used as synonyms of social status: honor, esteem, occupational prestige, and socioeconomic status.