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Social Honour

From Status Groups to Status Beliefs and Recognition Gaps

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Global Handbook of Inequality

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Abstract

Though social status is reckoned as a central dimension of social stratification, its conceptualization and operationalization are demanding given the polysemic use of the term. This chapter locates the conceptual roots of social status with Weber’s canonical distinction between class and status. Social status processes are salient in the most ordinary events of social life. They are at the basis of the legitimization of the social order and at the root of its contestations, while also providing ground for the social closure of social groups. Status is indeed a central issue for social stratification, as a mechanism at the foundation of inequalities but also as a dimension of these inequalities. Two empirical avenues for deepening our understanding of status processes are suggested: status inconsistencies and differences in status processes according to class, caste, race and gender. The study of social status thus calls for mixed methodological approaches in order to fully grasp its different strands.

I thank Jules Naudet, Marie Plessz and Olivier Roueff for giving me valuable feedback on this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Coulangeon (2021) also highlights the varying rates of educational expansion in the US and France, which may help account for the observed differences (notably, educational expansion occurred much earlier in the US compared to France).

  2. 2.

    That is if we put aside measures of occupational prestige or socioeconomic status à la Blau & Duncan (1967) or Ganzeboom et al. (1992), about which Sørensen (2001) recalls that they tend to measure “welfare” rather than prestige related to occupational positions. Besides, pointing that the scales are rated about the same by everyone at all time in many different countries, he argues that the indices do not capture the relationality of status groups.

  3. 3.

    Weber also draws a parallel between “pariah” (he gives the example of Jews) and Indian untouchable castes but he is cautious to remind that Jews cultivate their own sense of honour while caste is accompanied by a “vertical social gradation” that acknowledges consent of the higher honour of upper castes accepted by lower castes (Weber, 2010, p. 145). In doing so, he distinguishes caste from ethnic groups (which imply mutual rejection and disdain). This resonates with American academic debates dating back from the 1940s where some scholars advocated for the use of the term “caste” to qualify the American racial system (Myrdal & Bok, 1996 [1944]), which was later criticized (Cox, 1959). This controversial comparison was revived in recent years by the publication of Caste: The Origins of our discontents (Wilkerson, 2020) that was critically received by both race and caste scholars alike (notably for not sufficiently engaging with the contextual realities of caste and race, e.g., Desai, 2021).

  4. 4.

    The operationalization of status has been the subject of a special issue of The British Journal of Sociology in 2019 (Volume 70, issue 3).

  5. 5.

    Flemmen et al. (2019, p. 6) write: “Paradoxically, Chan and Goldthorpe seek to reinstate the distinction between class and status by appropriating a scale of differential association that was actually designed to achieve the opposite aim of fusing material and symbolic forms of inequality”.

  6. 6.

    In specific “fields” of the social space, symbolic capital may also be objectified by certain awards or titles which characterize a symbolic reputation among these agents, for instance among top CEOs and their participation in nonbusiness boards (Naudet et al., 2018).

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  1. Printemps Research Centre, Université Paris-Saclay (UVSQ), Paris, France

    Mathieu Ferry

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    Divya Vaid

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Ferry, M. (2024). Social Honour. In: Jodhka, S.S., Rehbein, B. (eds) Global Handbook of Inequality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97417-6_20-2

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    Social Honour
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    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97417-6_20-2

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