Status and role

1. Meaning of status

Status is the position a person occupies in a group or society, carrying certain rights and duties. Everyone holds several statuses at once: a woman may be a daughter, wife, mother, advocate and voter.

• Ralph Linton: “A status, in the abstract, is a position in a particular pattern”; it is “a collection of rights and duties”.
• MacIver and Page: status is the social position that determines for its possessor, apart from his personal attributes or social service, a degree of respect, prestige and influence.
• Ogburn and Nimkoff: status is the rank-order position assigned by a group to a role or set of roles.

2. Characteristics of status

1. It is a position in a social system, defined in relation to other positions (no “teacher” without “student”).
2. It carries rights and duties.
3. Each status has a role attached to it.
4. Statuses are ranked: they carry differing prestige.
5. A person holds many statuses — Merton’s status set.
6. One status usually dominates how others see the person — the master status (Everett Hughes), often occupation, or in a caste society, caste.
7. Status is determined by culture and differs from society to society.

3. Ascribed and achieved status

Ascribed status

A status assigned at birth or by the passage of time, regardless of ability or effort. Linton’s bases of ascription:

• Sex — the status of man or woman, with roles fixed by custom;
• Age — child, adult, elder; seniority in the joint family;
• Kinship — son, heir, member of a lineage;
• Caste, race and birth — Brahmin, Dalit; royalty;
• Physical features such as colour, in some societies.

Ascription dominates in traditional, closed societies. It gives stability and clear expectations, but denies opportunity on merit.

Achieved status

A status acquired by individual effort, ability and choice: doctor, judge, graduate, elected representative, even criminal. Its bases are education, occupation, wealth, marriage (as an act of choice), political and professional success.

Achievement dominates in modern, open societies with social mobility. In India the Constitution moved the formal basis of status from ascription to achievement: equality before law (Article 14), no discrimination on grounds of caste or sex (Article 15), equality of opportunity in public employment (Article 16) and abolition of untouchability (Article 17).

The two are not watertight. Achieving a status often depends on ascribed advantages such as family wealth or caste networks, and some ascribed statuses (a hereditary priest) need training to be performed.

4. Meaning of role

A role is the behaviour expected of a person who holds a particular status. Linton: role is “the dynamic aspect of a status”; when a person puts the rights and duties of a status into effect, he is performing a role. Status is occupied; role is played.

Elements and characteristics of role

1. Role expectation — what society expects of the occupant (a judge must be impartial).
2. Role performance — how the person actually behaves, which may fall short of expectation.
3. Learned through socialisation — roles are not inborn.
4. Culturally defined — the role of a wife differs between societies and over time.
5. Reciprocal — roles exist in pairs: doctor and patient, lawyer and client.
6. Sanctioned — good performance is rewarded, failure punished.
7. Differing importance — some roles are key roles (occupation), others general.

5. Role set, role conflict and role strain

• Role set (Robert K. Merton): the complement of role relationships attached to a single status. A medical student relates to teachers, other students, nurses, patients and technicians, with a different role towards each.
• Multiple roles: the roles that come from the many statuses a person holds.
• Role conflict: incompatible demands of two or more roles. A working woman is expected to be a full-time professional and a full-time homemaker; a police officer must arrest a relative.
• Role strain (William Goode): tension within a single role, as when a teacher must be friendly with students yet a strict examiner.
• Role taking and role playing (Mead): children learn by imagining themselves in the roles of others.

6. Relation between status and role

They are two sides of the same coin. There is no role without a status and no status without a role. Status is static and positional; role is dynamic and behavioural. Status tells us who a person is in the group; role tells us what he does because of it.

How this is examined

For the 16-mark question, define status with Linton and MacIver, list the characteristics, then treat ascribed and achieved status with bases, examples and a comparison table, ending with the constitutional shift in India. A short note on role needs Linton’s definition, the elements and role conflict with an example.