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Sociology: Status and Role: Social Positions, Status and Role, Characteristics and Types of Role

Social Positions

  • Whether a norm in the society is applicable to a particular person is depended on the social position he has in the society. The content of a social position that is its complex of rights and obligations is entirely normative. According to Johnson, a social position has two parts viz: obligations and rights. A person is said to occupy a social position if he has a certain set of obligation and enjoys certain rights with in the social system. This obligation is the role and rights are the status. Thus , social position is a status – role entity.
  • Social position is the social identity a person has in a given group or society. It may vary in nature or may be much more specific.

Status and Role

The concept is simplified by Ralph Linton as ‘you occupy a status, but you play a role. They are two sides of the same coin.’ They are the initial tools for the analysis of the social structure. in a society an individual may be having multiple statuses, but the status which we call as his master status defines the person socially. In the world of modern sociology, the concept of status has been broadened to encompass all culturally prescribed rights and duties inherent in social positions.

Social Status

  • A status in the abstract is a position in a particular pattern. It represents the individual՚s position with relation to the total society. Simply, it is a collection of rights and duties. Broadly it has two meanings in sociology,
  • Relational Term: Most sociologists define status as a position occupied by an individual in a social system. Status is purely a rational term, which means that each status exists only through its relation to one or more other statuses.
  • Participatory Status: Since statuses are positions in social systems, they exist independently of the particular individuals who occupy them. Indeed, a status can exist even though there is no person occupying the status at the current period. People are associated with status only through their participation in social system that includes them.
  • Status Is The Social Honour Or Prestige Which A Particular Group Is Accorded By Other Members Of A Society. It Involves Distinct Life Styles Which Are The Patterns The People Follow.

Characteristics of Status

Illustration: Characteristics of Status

Types of Status

Ascribed and Achieved StatusAscribed and Achieved Status
Ascribed StatusAchieved Status
  1. Assigned at birth
  2. Usually permanent in nature
  3. E. g. : status given because of born to a particular caste.
  1. Acquired through one՚s own effort
  2. Achieved as a result of a person՚s action
  3. E. g. : getting married to someone and achieving the status of husband.

Social Role

Role is the dynamic or behavioural aspect of status. And is a combination of both rights and duties. Roles are socially defined expectations which a person in a given status or social position fulfils. Role is what an individual does in the status him occupies. When all the roles associated with occupying a particular status are combined, the result is role set. And mostly, there happens role conflicts and variety of responses emerges. The 1st response is to select which role is more effective and violate others. The second response may be of leaving one of the conflicting statuses. Third response is to engage in role segregation and the fourth is to maintain a role distance.

Characteristics of Role

Illustration: Characteristics of Role

Types of Role

Illustration: Types of Role