The social status of the individual. Types of Social Status

Status - it is a certain position in the social structure of a group or society, associated with other positions through a system of rights and obligations.

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 evaluated 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 a social group in society, associated with a specific set of rights and obligations.   Social statuses are 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 hierarchy of statuses, which is the basis of its stratification. Certain statuses are prestigious, others are the other way around. Prestige is a 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 those social functions that a person performs;

b) the value system characteristic of a given society.

If the prestige of any status is unreasonably high or, on the contrary, underestimated, it is usually said that there is a loss of balance of status. A society in which a similar tendency towards the loss of this balance is observed is unable to ensure its normal functioning. Authority must be distinguished from prestige. Authority is the degree to which society recognizes the dignity of a person, a specific person.

The social status of the individual primarily affects its behavior. Knowing the social status of a person, one can easily determine most of the qualities that he possesses, as well as predict the actions that he will carry out. Such expected human behavior, associated with the status that he has, is usually called a social role. The social role is actually a certain pattern of behavior recognized as appropriate for people of a given status in a given society.   In fact, the role is given by a model showing how the individual should act in a given situation. Roles differ in the degree of formalization: some of them are defined very clearly, for example, in military organizations, others are very vague. A social role can be assigned to a person both formally (for example, in a legislative act) and be informal in 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 a role system. Such a variety of social roles can cause internal conflict of the individual (in the event that some of the social roles contradict each other).

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

a) the role of the worker;

b) the role of the owner;

c) the role of the consumer;

d) the role of the citizen;

e) the role of a family member.

However, despite the fact that the personality’s behavior is largely determined by the status that it occupies and the roles that it plays in society, it (the individual) nevertheless retains its autonomy and has a certain freedom of choice. And although in modern society there is a tendency toward unification and standardization of the personality, fortunately, it does not completely level out. An individual has the opportunity to choose from the many social statuses and roles that society offers him, those that allow him to better realize his plans, and to use his abilities as efficiently as possible. The adoption of a particular social role by a person is influenced by both social conditions and his biological and personal characteristics (state of health, gender, age, temperament, etc.). Any role prescription outlines only a general scheme of human behavior, offering to make a choice of the ways of his performance of the personality itself.

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

What is a "society", and what are its main features? - The word "society" is often used by us in everyday life. By it we mean a certain group of people who are united by a common goal.

This may be a society characterized by a certain nationality or a group of people who at first glance are completely different, but at the same time, the interests of the people who participate in it may coincide. With the advent of democracy, much more different societies appeared in the world, and here we are not talking about society as the people of a certain country, not at all. Society does not imply the unification of people necessarily on several grounds, such as the concept of "nationality". It is enough for one person to find a group of like-minded people, as a result of which they can be called a small society of interests. Today, the concept has a fairly wide scope. In each speech of the politician you can repeatedly hear how this concept is used in a variety of senses. It acts as a tool that positively affects people.

Society is a developing society. Everything in our world has a cyclical character and society can also develop cyclically. With each new day, new factors appear that affect the formation of society and society as a whole. If in the ancient world societies were tribal tribes, today the concept of society has a broader meaning. Today it is quite possible to form a society in society, which indicates that society is constantly acquiring new qualities. Today, society is not perceived as a single whole - it is primarily a collection of individuals, which can be united according to one or more signs.

Often people can unite in society in order to achieve a certain goal together - this can be done if, for example, qip 2005 is downloaded to your computer for free and you start gathering people from around the world around you. Sometimes the strength of one person is not enough, so the leader tries to attract as many supporters as possible, who will go side by side with him toward his goal. Not infrequently, such societies grow and become more influential. But if a society has no prospects, it will lose its relevance in the early stages of formation. It must be remembered that any society is primarily a collection of people who can change their mind as a result of certain events, so the breakup of a group can be inevitable.

There are many interpretations of the concept of "society":
  Durkheim regarded society as a supra-individual spiritual reality based on collective representations.
  According to Weber, society is the interaction of people who are social products, i.e. focused on other people, action.
  Parsons defined society as a system of relations between people, the connecting principle of which are norms and values.
  From the point of view of Marx, society is a historically developing set of relations between people that takes shape in the process of their joint activity.
  Comte tried to imagine the social structure (static in his terminology) as a complex organism, in which special connections are established from the family to the system of religion and the state.
  Spencer, noting that society as a complex organism has a specific organ for each need or function, and the development of societies takes place through the differentiation or division of existing organs. But development takes place not only by dividing existing social institutions, but also by dying off some and the emergence of completely new social institutions.

In general, this characteristic is valid today. Any society, and especially modern, is complexly structured, but it is a holistic system of elements. This approach to the concept of society is called systemic.
  The main task of a systematic approach in the study of society is to combine various knowledge about society into a holistic system that could become a theory of society. A system is in a certain way an ordered set of elements interconnected and forming some integral unity. The material basis of any system is its elements, which are a complex hierarchy of subsystems with complex relationships and interactions. It is necessary for society that these connections and interactions be sustainable and reproduced in the historical process, passing from generation to generation, then society as a system acquires systemic qualities: when society is not just a sum of elements, but a stable system. There are several interpretations of the structure of society, depending on the point of view on the relationship of the elements and on what is taken as the initial elements:
Since the initial element of any society is a person, or rather a certain number of people united by family, economic, ethnic, religious, political and other ties, the structure of society can be represented as a system of groups, classes, communities and status-role units. All these elements do not exist on their own (scattered), but are connected into a social system - a holistic education, the main element of which are people, their connections, interactions and relationships.
  In addition, in society as a system, subsystems or spheres are distinguished. Those are the econ., Polit. and social subsystems. There is a tradition of dividing society into the material and spiritual spheres of human life. Each subsystem is made up of its own blocks or institutions that perform their functions in the structure of a holistic social organism, most often these functions are associated with the realization of certain social needs.

In modern society, it is customary to single out 4 areas following Parsons, within which certain public institutions function:
  The economic sphere or sphere of the economy. Within this sphere, there are institutions of money, securities, banks. In the econ. the sphere is the production of material goods, the market. The main content is econ. scope is the production, exchange and consumption of material goods.
  The political or political field within which such polit. institutions like the institute of parliamentarism, the institution of the presidency, government, the bureaucratic apparatus, local government, polit. parties, public organizations and movements. The main content, the meaning of watered. relations favors power, i.e. a way to influence the behavior of other people in polit. sphere. A condition that ensures the power of some people over others is the law that gives different job categories different rights in the system of state and political. management.
  The sphere of public life is culture, the main element of which is education, science, religion, art, morality, values \u200b\u200band ideals.
  The area where family deliveries and family relationships take place. The main institutions of this sphere are the institution of marriage and divorce.

In different societies, all these areas have significant differences: power, and the economy, and culture, and the family have a different structure, have different qualities. Marxist theory is close to this, highlighting: economic, political, cultural and social. But regardless of the elements allocated, the main thing is that society - is an integral system with qualities that none of the elements included in it have.

Based on the theory of social stratification, the social structure is interpreted as a set of hierarchical interconnected social groups, which are characterized by vertical and horizontal decency:
  1. they occupy different positions in the system of social inequality of a given society according to basic social criteria (power, income, prestige, property);
  2. they are interconnected by economic, political and cultural relations;
  3. they are subjects of the functioning of all social institutions of a given society, and especially economic ones.

5 Social status   (from lat. status - position, condition) - the position of a person in society, occupied by him in accordance with age, gender, origin, profession, marital status and other indicators and involving certain rights and obligations. Any person occupies several positions in society.
  The word "status" came to sociology from the Latin language. In ancient Rome, it denoted the state, legal status of a legal entity. However, at the end of the 19th century, the English historian Maine gave it a sociological sound.
Status Set   - the totality of all statuses occupied by this individual.
Social recruitment   (Robert Merton) \u003d social status + status set.
13.2 . Types (classifications) of statuses:
13.2.1. Statuses determined by the position of an individual in a group:
1) social status   - a person’s position in society, which he occupies as a representative of a large social group (profession, class, nationality, gender, age, religion).
Professional and job status   - the basic status of the person, fixes the social, economic and industrial-technical situation of a person (banker, engineer, lawyer, etc.).
2) Personal status   - the position that a person occupies in a small group, depending on how he is evaluated according to his individual qualities.
  Personal status plays a leading role among familiar people. For acquaintances, it’s important not the characteristics where you work and your social status, but our personal qualities.
3) Main status   - the status by which the individual is distinguished by others determines the lifestyle, circle of acquaintances, the behavior with which other people identify or with whom he identifies himself. For men, most often - the status associated with work, profession, for women - a housewife, mother. Although other options are possible.

The main status is relative: it is not uniquely associated with gender, profession, race. The main thing is the status, which determines the style and lifestyle, circle of acquaintances, manner of behavior.
13.2.2. Statuses acquired due to the presence or absence of free choice:
  Ralph Linton: 1) ascriptive status (prescribed, attributed, inborn status); 2) achieved status (achieved, achieved, acquired status).

Prescribed Status   - imposed by society, regardless of the efforts and merits of the individual (ethnic origin, place of birth, etc.).
1) Assigned Status   - the social status with which a person is born (natural, natural status is determined by race, gender, nationality), or which will be assigned to him over time (inheritance of title, condition, etc.).
Natural status   - the essential and most stable characteristics of a person (men and women, childhood, adolescence, maturity, etc.).
!!!   The attributed status does not coincide with the natural one. Only three social statuses are considered natural: gender, nationality, race (i.e., biologically inherited); (Negro - born, characterizing the race; man - born, describing gender; Russian - born, showing nationality).
2) Achievable   (acquired) status - a social status that is achieved as a result of a person’s own efforts to desire, free choice, or is acquired through luck and luck.
3) Mixed Status   possesses signs of prescribed and achieved, but achieved !!! not at the request of man: disabled person, refugee, unemployed, emperor, Chinese of American descent.
  Political upheavals, coups, social revolutions, wars can change or even cancel some of the statuses of huge masses of people in addition to their will and desire.
  The title of academician is at first achievable, but later it becomes attributed, because considered lifelong.
13.3 . Status hierarchy:
  An intergroup hierarchy takes place between status groups; intragroup - between the statuses of individuals within one group.
Status rank   - place in the status hierarchy: high, medium, low.
13.4 . Status mismatch occurs: 1) when an individual is in a high position in one group and low in another; 2) when the rights and obligations of one status contradict or impede the exercise of rights and the fulfillment of duties of another status.
13.5 . Elements (components) of social status:
13.5.1. status role   - a model of behavior focused on a specific status;
13.5.2. status rights and obligations   determine what the holder of this status can do and what he should do;
13.5.3. status range   - boundaries within which status rights and obligations are exercised; a free manner of behavior, suggesting behaviors in the implementation of a status role;
13.5.4. status symbols   - external insignia, allowing to distinguish holders of different statuses: uniforms, insignia, clothing style, housing, language, gestures, behavior;
13.5.5. status image   (from english. image - image, image) - a set of ideas that have developed in public opinion about how a person should behave in accordance with his status, how his rights and obligations should relate;
Image   - a widespread or purposefully formed idea of \u200b\u200bthe nature of an object (person, profession, product, etc.).
13.5.6. status identification   - identification of oneself with one’s status and status image. The higher the status rank, the stronger the identification with it. The lower the personal status, the more often the benefits of social status are emphasized.
13.5.7. status vision of the world   - Features of the vision of the world, social attitudes, established in accordance with the status.

Social status and its types.

The basis of social inequality in psychological terms is the social statuses of individuals, social groups, strata.

Social status: 1) congenital and attributed 2) earned 3) earned

P. Sorokin emphasizes that the status should be deserved and always be proved by the assessment of others, which is very important for a person’s self-esteem. Evaluation of others in one way or another confirms the status of a person, or vice versa, destroys.

Sociologists distinguish:

1)prescribed   - imposed by society, regardless of the efforts and merits of the individual. It depends on the place of birth, ethnicity.

2) acquired (achieved)) - is determined by the efforts of the person himself.

Allocate: -the natural status of the individual - implies stable personality traits; - professionally official - it fixes the socio-economic and production situation of a person (accountant, teacher).

A person can have several statuses at once - integral status. Socialstatus is expressed by complex relationships between subjects of public relations.

7 The social role is associated with status; these are the norms of behavior of a person holding a certain status.

Role behavior is the specific use by a person of a social role. His personal characteristics are reflected here.

He proposed the concept of the social role of George Herbert Mead in the late XIX - XX centuries. A person becomes a person when he acquires the ability to enter the role of another person.

Any role has the structure:

The model of human behavior on the part of society.

The system for representing a person how he should behave.

The actual observed behavior of a person holding this status.

In the case of a mismatch of these components, a role conflict occurs.

1. Inter-role conflict. A person is a performer of many roles, the requirements of which are not compatible or he does not have the strength, time to fulfill these roles is good. The basis of this conflict is illusion.

2. Intra-role conflict. When different requirements are presented to the performance of one role by different representatives of social groups. Staying inside a role conflict is very dangerous for a person.

The social role is the fixing of a certain position, which this or that individual occupies in the system of social relations. A role is understood as “a function, a normatively approved pattern of behavior expected from everyone holding a given position” (Cohn). These expectations do not depend on the consciousness and behavior of a particular individual; their subject is not an individual, but society. What is significant here is not only and not so much the fixation of rights and obligations as the connection of the social role with certain types of social activity of the individual. The social role is "a socially necessary type of social activity and a way of individual behavior" (Bueva, 1967, 14). The social role always bears the stamp of public assessment: society can either approve or disapprove of certain social roles, sometimes approval or disapproval can be differentiated among different social groups, role assessment can take on completely different meanings in accordance with the social experience of a particular social group .

In reality, each individual performs not one, but several social roles: he can be an accountant, father, union member, etc. A number of roles are prescribed to a person at birth, others are acquired in vivo. However, the role itself does not determine the Activity and the behavior of each specific carrier in detail: it all depends on how much the individual learns and internalizes the role. The act of internalization is determined by a number of individual psychological characteristics of each specific carrier of this role. Therefore, social relations, although they are essentially role-playing, impersonal relations, in reality, in their concrete manifestation, acquire a certain "personality coloring". Each social role does not mean the absolute presetting of patterns of behavior; it always leaves a certain “range of possibilities” for its performer, which can be conditionally called a certain “style of performing the role”.

Social differentiation is inherent in all forms of human existence. The behavior of the individual is explained by social inequality in society. It is influenced by social background; ethnicity; the level of education; position; prof. affiliation; power; income and wealth; lifestyle etc.

The fulfillment of the role is individual in nature, but due to socio-cultural.

Variety of roles:

Psychological or interpersonal (in the system of subjective interpersonal relationships). Categories: leaders, preferred, not accepted, outsiders;

Social (in the system of objective social relations). Categories: professional, demographic.

Active or actual - currently executing;

Latent (hidden) - a person is potentially a carrier, but not at the moment

Conventional (official);

Spontaneous, spontaneous - arise in a specific situation, not caused by requirements.

F. Zimbardo (1971) conducted an experiment (students and prison) and found that the role strongly affects human behavior. Role prescriptions shape human behavior. The phenomenon of deindividualization may occur - the phenomenon of absorption of personality by a social role. A person loses control over his personality (for example, jailers).

Role-based behavior — individual fulfillment of a social role — society sets the standard for behavior, and the fulfillment of a role bears a personal touch. The development of social roles is part of the process of socialization of the individual, an indispensable condition for the "growth" of the personality in a society of their own kind.

Jung identifies the concept of person and role (ego, shadow, self). During socialization, it is important not to merge with the "persona" so as not to lose the personal core (self).

The social role is the fixing of a certain position, which this or that individual occupies in the system of social relations. A number of roles are prescribed from birth (being a wife / husband). A social role always has a certain range of possibilities for its artist - the "style of performing roles." By assimilating social roles, a person adopts social standards of behavior, learns to evaluate himself from the outside and exercise self-control. The personality acts (is) the mechanism that allows you to integrate your "I" and your own life, to carry out a moral assessment of their actions, to find their place in life. It is necessary to use role-based behavior as a tool for adapting to certain social situations.

9 Socialization- this is the process (and result) of assimilation and active individual social experience, carried out in communication, activity and behavior, the experience of social life, the system of social connections and public relations.

Socialization   - this is the process of transforming an initially asocial subject into a social personality, i.e. a person who owns the models of behavior accepted in society, who perceives social norms and roles. Through socialization, people learn to live in society, to effectively interact with each other, especially in conditions of socially significant joint activity.

Socialization involves the active participation of the individual in the development of a culture of human relations, in the formation of certain social norms, roles and functions, in the acquisition of skills necessary for their successful implementation. Socialization includes a person’s knowledge of social reality, mastery of the skills of practical individual and group work. Of decisive importance for the processes of socialization is public education.

There are several sources of socialization of an individual.

Culture transfer   - it is carried out through such social institutions as the family, the system of education, training and upbringing.

Mutual influence of people   - it occurs in the process of communication and joint activities.

Primary experience   - he is associated with the period of early childhood, with the formation of basic mental functions and elementary forms of social behavior.

Self-regulation processes   - they correlate with the gradual replacement of the external control of individual behavior with internal self-control.

A system of self-regulation is also formed and developed in the process of internalization of social attitudes and values. Internalization is the formation of mental structures in an individual through the assimilation of ways of external social activity and behavior. Internalization is the transformation of interpsychological (interpersonal) relationships into intrapsychological (intrapersonal relationships with oneself). In development, such stages of internalization stand out.:

1) the adult acts on the child with a word, prompting him to do something;

2) the child adopts the method of treatment and begins to influence the adult in a word;

3) the child begins to influence the word with himself.

In general, the process of socialization can be characterized as:

Gradual expansion (as the individual gains social experience) of the sphere of his communication, activity and behavior;

The development of self-regulation and the formation of self-awareness and an active life position.

The institutions of socialization are the family, preschool institutions, schools, labor and other (for example, leisure) groups.

In the process of socialization, a person is enriched by social experience and individualized, becomes a person, acquires the opportunity and ability to be not only an object, but also a subject of social influences, to influence the socialization of other people.

The fundamental concept in the theory of socialization is the concept of the original asocial person (child). In this case, socialization looks like a process of transforming a subject, originally antisocial, into a social personality.

However, the literature does not particularly debate the question of whether a socially or socially born human baby is born. In principle, it is believed to be asocial. Although there are opposing points of view. It is sometimes said that a child’s sociality is reduced to a need for communication. That is, the child is initially asocial, but if we assume the presence of some minimal inborn sociality, then it is expressed in the need for communication. It seems that this thesis is not sufficiently correct. Nothing is known about the presence or absence of a child's need for communication, if there is no communication itself, if the experience of communication does not come to him from outside. After all, such situations are known: when children are fed up to a certain age by wild animals. Despite the decades of tireless work of psychologists, they were not able to humanize them in a certain sense of the word (the case of such observation and work has been described in the literature for more than twenty years), but this fact does not say anything about the need for communication as such.

There is reason to believe that the question of the correlation of the concepts of “socialization”, “training”, “education”, “personality development”, etc. is not resolved in one of the socio-psychological literature. One of the points of view is that the concept of “socialization” does not replace well-known in pedagogy and pedagogical psychology, the concepts of “training”, “education”, “personality development”, in other words, all these concepts are not synonyms.

The assimilation of social norms, skills, stereotypes;

The formation of social attitudes and beliefs;

The entry of the individual into the social environment;

The introduction of the individual to the system of social ties;

Self-actualization of the self;

Personal assimilation of social influences;

Social learning accepted in society forms of behavior and communication, life style options, joining groups and interacting with their members.

Without going into a discussion about the content of the concepts of “education”, “education”, “personality development”, we note that all of the above is also included in their scope. It turns out that these three concepts and the concept of “socialization” are, after all, synonyms.

It seems that the relationship between these concepts should not be sought in the plane of their content, but in their relationship with each other. And this connection is the same as between the concepts of “goal” and “means”. Socialization is the goal. It consists in getting an individual, firstly, adaptive to society, and secondly, adequate to him. Everything else is means: training, education, formation, development, etc.

Society does not care what the result of socialization will be. If this result is negative, did the individual socialize in this case or not? Yes, it did, but society does not like the degree of this solvency. It takes additional measures and efforts in order to obtain from the individual his adaptability and adequacy, and these additional efforts seem to continue the process of socialization. If this cannot be achieved at all, then society will localize the individual for life in a specially created environment for these purposes, and some societies will legitimately physically destroy such an individual.

The individual not only assimilates, but also actively reproduces the system of social ties, therefore, he simultaneously acts in the process of socialization and his object, and his subject.

The process of socialization can occur under the spontaneous impact on a person of various circumstances of life in society, as well as purposeful activities both on the part of society and on the part of the individual.