GregoryP.Stonen/an/an/an/a
and WilliamH.Formn/an/an/an/a
Instabilities in Status: The Problem of Hierarchy in the
Community Study of Status Arrangements1
During the last decade, many objections have been raised
against existing conceptions of social stratification.…
Specifically, this paper questions: (1) the adequacy of conceiving
status groups as comprising the basic units of the social order; (2)
the fruitfulness of conceiving status groupings as hierarchically
arranged in the structural analysis of status stratification; and (3) the
appropriateness of a hierarchical conception of status arrangement
for facilitating the study of social process.
This is not to say that the long and, at times, heated discussion
has gone for naught, because it has served to isolate the principal areas
of methodological confusion confronting sociological investigation into
problems of social stratification. These have been summarized and commented
upon elsewhere, but three of them need to be spelled out here, for they
designate areas within which the methodological decisions circumscribing
the applicability of the observation that follow have been made.
(1) Levels of analysis. …It becomes clear that the study
of social stratification may proceed upon any of four levels of analysis:
that of the larger society, the community, institutions, or the
interpersonal level. This inquiry is primarily focused upon the level of
community organization, although, from time to time, comments will be made
concerning the implications of social status both for the larger social
organization and special institutions. It would seem, too, that our
discussion is particularly appropriate for the study of status arrangements
in modern urban communities. Hopefully our observations will have ultimate
bearing on the larger sociological problem of urban life, viz., how
consensus and communication are achieved in situations which foster
social heterogeneity.
(2) Dimensions of analysis. Although some researchers in the
area of social stratification still regard that phenomenon as a pervasive,
integrating, and inclusive structure with respect to community
organization, there seems to be a growing agreement among sociologists that
social stratifications may be apprehended as co-existing in community
organization along the lines suggested by Max Weber’s proposed social,
economic, and political orders. Such a multi-dimensional view of social
stratification is especially appropriate for the study of social structure
in urban communities. This view is accepted here. In addition, the
discussion is limited to considerations of the social order, i.e.,
social status.
(3) Conceptions of social stratification. Many
sociologists who have turned their attention to the study of social
stratification have distinguished between
its subjective and objective conceptualization.…
Both objective and subjective
aspects of social status are explored in this paper.
In short, this paper is primarily concerned with the study of
social status in its subjective and objective aspects on the level of
community organization.
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
By status, we refer to social honor as its signs and symbols are
differentially
distributed among the social groups and aggregates which constitute the
social organization of a community. According to this view, then, there are
both status groups and status aggregates (and the former term
is not satisfactory for depicting all of the social units of status order).
A status group is an exclusive unit composed of a number of individuals
enjoying approximately the same amount and kind of honor (as indicated by
symbols, the deference patterns of others, and a reflected sense of dignity
or personal worth) on the basis of their social position in a community.
Such groups are communal in nature, and, consequently, their members are in
relatively frequent social contact with one another. A status aggregate
is an inclusive category referring to a number of individuals enjoying
approximately the same honor in a community, but who are in potential,
capricious, occasional, or sporadic social contact. Probably, the smaller
the community, the greater the proportion of its members included in status
groups; the larger the community, the greater the proportion of its members
included in status aggregates.
Four considerations that have been employed previously in the discussion
of status groups are useful for distinguishing the characteristics of such
groups from status aggregates.
(1) Social closure or exclusiveness. Only status groups are
characterized by their intrinsic tendency toward social closure
particularly as manifested in connubial and commensal exclusiveness. Such
exclusiveness may be largely understood as a response on the part of groups
of relatively high status to the emulation directed toward them by members
of groups enjoying relatively lower social status. Exclusion and emulation
are primary modes of relationship among coordinated status groupings in
most status arrangements. Whereas social closure is intrinsically generated
by status groups, status aggregates can achieve only a limited degree of
closure in this manner.…
(2) Monopolization of appropriate symbols. By diligent
application, one can "pass himself off" as a member of a status aggregate
to which he does not objectively belong, but seldom as a member of
another status group. This is because there is a characteristic difference
in the control over status symbols exercised by each grouping. Status
groups may exercise a virtual monopoly over many symbols of their status
through the application or the objective presence of various restrictions.
Status aggregates may be (often imprecisely) recognized by the appropriate
symbols, but their members are limited in the means available to them for
their use. As a result, status symbols are more often adequate "tests of
status" for status groups than for status aggregates where, on the
contrary, status symbols are seldom adequate "tests of status."
(3) Life-style. The life styles of these groupings differ greatly
in the matter of specificity. In the case of status groups, the relevant
life styles are rather closely circumscribed by elaborated moral codes.
Too, the status group restricts knowledge of its characteristic life
style to its membership by virtue of an intricate and secretive educational
process. As over and against this, knowledge of the life style shared by
the members of a status aggregate is often public. Frequently the members
of status aggregates are educated into their life style by the mass media
of communication. As a result, the relevant nuances of living become
diffused and lacking in specificity.
(4) Solidarity and dignity. The members of both status groups and
aggregates derive a certain solidarity-producing sense of dignity from
the way in which they respond to either their positive or negative honor in
a community or to the status arrangement as a whole. However, the specific
sense of dignity that membership
in a status group entails is reserved to the membership: not so
in the case of membership in a status aggregate. The dignity of a
particular status aggregate may be "borrowed" in anonymous situations by
persons of objectively different status.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
…This paper proposes that status groups are variously arranged with
reference to one another in different communities, and that status
arrangements are often characterized by typical instabilities that
cannot be conceptualized adequately by the application of the
"hierarchy-construct." Instabilities in status may, in fact, be the rule in
urban communities rather than the exception. Status arrangements may
approach closure as in the case of structural systems, they may coexist, or
they may not exist as structural systems at all. Status groups may
be ranked or unranked in community status structures. Some members of
communities may be accorded social honor and yet not belong to status
groups at all. These seeming "anomalies" in the socially structured
distribution of status were suggested by persistent obstacles which faced
the research team in a community study.
STATUS ARRANGEMENT IN A SMALL MICHIGAN CITY
Research into the social aspects of clothing has been carried on at this
institution [Michigan State University] since the summer of 1950. The
locale of the study is a small city of approximately 10,000 residents which
we shall call Vans-burg. A central postulate of the research asserted that
clothing functions in social life as a symbol of social status. Since the
study was carried on in a community context, schedules were constructed on
the expectation that the residents of Vansburg had arranged themselves with
respect to differences in social status along the lines suggested by the
Warner studies. These schedules were pre-tested in a small city of the same
size as Vansburg and were found to be adequate, i.e., the responses "made
sense" in terms of Warner’s schema. When, however, the schedules were
applied to Vansburg, the responses elicited were often incongruous and
elusive of ready explanation in the conventional status terminology. This
was eventually traced to the fact that our conception of status groups as
arranged hierarchically in the organization of community life was
erroneous. Status arrangement in Vansburg could be described as a
unidimensional "system of rank." Many conditions were responsible for this,
but four will be singled out here, since similar conditions may apply in
other cities of the same size.
(1) Status arrangement not clearly reflected in community ecology.
The topography of Vansburg is unusually regular and devoid of those
"natural barriers" and irregularities of terrain which, as has been
observed so frequently in the literature, shape the spatial arrangement
of social groupings. One area of town was not especially "more
desirable" than another. The juxtaposition of "good" and "bad" housing
seemed to be the dominant pattern of the town. Although the houses of the
"old families" had, at one time, clustered along the outer reaches of the
main street, with the conversion of that street into a principal east-west
highway, many residences had been abandoned and converted into tourist
homes. The spatial response of the "old families" who had been displaced in
the process had been accomplished without any clear pattern. As a result,
the status arrangements of the community were not clearly reflected in its
ecological composition. Probably, this had the further effect of rendering
status arrangements less visible to residents.
(2) Lack of adequate "status reputation" for a sizeable segment of
the community. Vansburg had a relatively high proportion of truckers
in its male population.
Since truckers spent much of their time out of town, there was a
considerable number of families, the heads of whose households were more
often away than at home. Consequently, the "status reputations" of these
families were vaguely conceived by the other members of the
community.
(3) Consensus on status extremes and disagreement in the middle
range. In our effort to adjust occupational rating so that Warner’s
Index of Status Characteristics could be used to stratify our sample of
the Vansburg population, we selected ten long-term residents of the city
from different social levels to rate on a seven point scale the
eighty-eight occupations in which the males in the sample were engaged.
Assuming that the rating of these judges did, in fact, represent a
community estimate of the social honor accorded the occupations in
question, there was some evidence to suggest that more agreement existed in
the matter of rating the very high and very low occupations, while less
agreement characterized the ratings of the occupations in the middle range.
The evidence is best presented by illustration. The physician, for example,
was an occupation accorded the highest rank by all of the judges.
Similarly, the county judge was placed in the highest category by nine of
the ten raters. Although agreement on such negatively esteemed occupations
as street cleaner, foundry laborer, and truck loader was somewhat less than
that for highly esteemed occupation, it was still considerable. All of
these occupations were placed in either the sixth or seventh rank by the
judges. The disagreement on the matter of occupations receiving a medium
average rating stands in sharp contrast. For example, the foundry foreman
was assigned ranks two to six. This lack of consensus on occupations in the
middle range of status may partly account for the lack of any clear line of
demarcation between the so-called "lower-middle" and "upper-lower" status
groupings in the city.
(4) Invasion of the "cosmopolites." Certain national
manufacturers had singled out Vansburg—a source of low-cost labor—as a
site for the location of decentralized assembly plants and warehouses.
Managerial personnel employed by these concerns and by various state
departments and agencies which had located their district offices in
Vansburg, the county seat, had taken up residence in the city. Thus,
managerial personnel in significant numbers had been recruited into the
community. They came principally from outlying metropolitan and other large
urban centers. Other persons had also come into the community from larger
cities. For example, a wealthy urbanite had purchased the local newspaper
and established his residence in town. These people did not accept either
the conventional symbols or the conventional norms of status held by the
members of the community prior to their arrival.
It is this invasion of the "cosmopolites," together with the lack of
community consensus about the ascription of social honor, that commands the
major focus of our interest. The "cosmopolites" were oriented in their life
style primarily to the sophisticated, blasé, and busy life of the
metropolis. Immediately these people joined together and made status claims
that called into question the status of the "old families" of the
community. Rather than attempting to achieve social honor by emulating the
life style of the entrenched "upper classes," the members of this group
imposed their own symbols upon the social life of Vansburg and established
themselves as a separate status group. They appeared publicly in casual
sport clothes, exploited images of "bigness" in their conversations with
established local businessmen, retired late, and slept late. With all the
aspects of a coup they "took over" the clubs and associations of the
"old families." The Country Club, for example, has undergone a complete
alteration of character. Once the scene of
relatively staid dinners, polite drinking, and occasional dignified
balls, the Country Club is now the setting for the "businessman’s lunch,"
intimate drinking, and frequent parties where the former standards of moral
propriety are often somewhat relaxed for the evening. Most "old families"
have let their memberships in the club lapse. Moreover, in the attempt to
consolidate their appropriated status, a group of the "cosmopolite set" has
purchased a large section of land just outside the city and reserved it for
restricted housing.
The result of this status contest has been a cleavage in the
status structure of Vansburg which extends from the top of the social order
down to what Warner would term the "upper-lower class." The cleavage has
been conceptualized by many members of the community as a difference
between "drinkers" and "nondrinkers." Frequently, when our interviewers
inquired of the residents of Vansburg whether or not there were any
different "social classes" in town, replies would be prefaced with
reference to the "drinking" and the "non-drinking" groups. It was only
after several interviews had been taken that the terms were found to refer
to a vertical cleavage in the status arrangement and not to different
horizontal strata. The difference between the two opposed groups, it should
be added, were age-graded, with the young adult group more likely to
dedicate its status allegiances to the "cosmopolites" and the older adult
group more likely to extend its fealty to the "old families."
Such a vertical cleavage in the status structure of a community may be
viewed as an instance of unstable status arrangement which may have
structural counterparts in many communities throughout the nation. There
were also certain consequences for status arrangement, to be discussed
later, which derived from the lack of agreement among the residents of the
community about the ascription of social honor to occupational symbols in
the middle range. These, together with the vertical cleavage we have
described, stand in need of at least preliminary conceptualization.
MODES OF STATUS INSTABILITY
It is not the purpose of this section to present a logically derived
typology of structured instabilities in status. Instead, three concrete
modes of unstable status arrangement on the level of community organization
are considered. It is quite likely that these modes may characterize the
relationship of status groupings to one another in many other American
communities. Before considering them, it should be observed that, in our
view, status arrangements may be said to "range" from amorphous highly
unstable aggregation of status groups, related to one another, if at all,
by their physical propinquity, to a purely hierarchical stable system of
ranked groupings. We choose not to be concerned with either of these
limiting cases in this paper. Instead, it is proposed to consider some
intermediate common modes of unstable status arrangement.
(1) Arrangement of status opposition. The first type of status
arrangement is the case in which two or more status groupings are engaged
in an indecisive contest for status and consequently exist in a
horizontal or oblique relationship to each other rather than in the more
frequently observed hierarchical relationship. This type was suggested by
the Vansburg study. As we have pointed out, a number of local managers who
had been sent to the town by large metropolitan business and government
agencies retained their own status symbols and engaged the indigenous high
status groups in a contest for status. This situation set the stage for
other members of the community to mobilize themselves around alternative sets
of symbols, with the result that their status loyalties were divided
between the "old families" and the contesting group of "cosmopolites." The
impact of this contest extended downward through the middle status
groupings which also became divided in their allegiances. In this case the
opposition of status groups occurred at a relatively high level in the
community structure and extended downward.
It may well be that such opposition and cleavage also occurs at lower
status levels of community organization.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The case of Vansburg affords concrete evidence of the horizontal and
oblique opposition of status groups at either extreme of the social order.
Whether there is evidence of clearly dichotomized opposition in the middle
ranges of status in community organization, however, remains an open
question for further research. Yet this possibility may be evident in the
opposition of the "new" and "old" middle-classes on the level of the larger
society.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Another dimension to this struggle is suggested by the phenomenon of
occupational mobility. One of the more potent factors making for the
increase in the number and heterogeneity of the American "middle-class" is
the relative success of organized labor in the power arena. Among the
consequences of this new power definition of labor unions has been the
guarantee of status mobility as well as economic gains to its membership.…
Perhaps the opposition of status arrangements in the middle range
does not manifest itself as a clear total opposition of two competing
status groups but as a highly atomized series of status contests among
diverse social and economic groups vying for social honor. If this is the
case, a different model of status relations may result which we have called
"vertical polarization." This is a point to which we shall return.
It would seem that the opposition of relatively equivalent status groups
in community settings, as described above, may represent a phase of
status accommodation to at least two coexisting social forces, viz.,
immigration from other communities of distinctly different moral
characters; and economic instability reflected, for one thing, in the
emergence, disappearance, and mobility of occupations. With reference to
migration, events referred to here should, ideally, be distinguished from
those that accompany the acculturation of ethnic groups. In the latter
case, the newly arrived ethnic group is set apart from the status
arrangement of the "host" community in the sense that it commands no status
allegiance from the native residents. In pure instances of status
opposition, the allegiances of the community itself become divided. There
is a point, however, at which the influence of ethnicity upon the character
of community status arrangements is difficult to isolate. Whether the
southern hill-billy may be best regarded as a status or ethnic group is
most difficult to decide.…
(2) Arrangement of vertical polarization. One of the logical and
methodological difficulties in locating genuine instances of horizontal
opposition among the middle status groups of a community derives from the
fact that where such cases are found they verge over into another mode of
status arrangement: that of vertical polarization. Vertical polarization of
status arrangements in local communities may exist when status groups have
been precipitated out at the extremes and have become separated by a
somewhat amorphous aggregation of persons or atomized social circles
sometimes referred to as the "middle-class." Consensus on the boundaries of
status at the extremes of the social order and disagreement upon
the status limits in the middle reaches of that order are not unique to
Vansburg.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It is of course the so-called "middle-class" and those who aspire to
membership in it, or who identify with it, that have given students of
social stratification the greatest difficulty as far as theoretically
adequate conceptualization is concerned. Although the life style and social
character of the "old" and the "new" middle-class may stand in sharp
contrast to each other, yet both are "middle-class"—the nominal bailiwick
of the lawyer and the filing clerk, the manager and the machinist, the
school teacher and the typist. The "middle-class" represents a veritable
medley of social positions certainly not characterized by easily specified
shared symbols or by consensually integrated roles, and certainly not by
tight social closure. Yet the "middle-class" is symbolically
distinguishable by both the laymen and the sociologist, and a source of
self-esteem and dignity to many. If it has no other attribute, it serves as
a locus of status achievement and contest which makes the extremes more
stable and visible.
Whatever the "middle-class" is, it cannot in most American communities
be called a status group. It is, rather, a status aggregate. Membership in
it is accessible to many within a single generation of effort. Moreover,
there is practically no general agreement on the "tests of status" which
unambiguously designate a person’s identification with it. Instead, an
individual may be identified as "middle-class" because he is not something
else, or because he is like everybody else, or because he is like
"me."
To complicate the problem further, institutions have emerged in
relatively large urban centers specifically dedicated to the task of making
it possible for individuals to affect membership in the "middle-class"
without actually belonging to status groupings which are recognized as
such. Thus, in communities large enough to guarantee relative anonymity to
their members in the city center, the cocktail lounge offers a stage par
excellence where the actors may play roles which, in their estimate,
connote a higher social status than their family, occupation, or education
warrant. Department stores and other service establishments perform a
similar function. The "middle-class" may in fact be regarded as a large
heterogeneous mass. In this respect, certainly one of the chief functions
of fashion in our society is to facilitate among large segments of the
population a subjective sense of upward mobility which is
independent of objective mobility.
(3) Unranked Status Groups. The arrangements of status opposition
and vertical polarization are complicated by the existence of what may be
designated as "unranked status groups." Unranked status groups owe their
distinctive character to the fact that they are not an integral part of
the community status structure, whatever that type happens to be. Yet
their presence is vital to explain some of the mechanisms of change which
occur in the status structure of the community. The unranked status group
is always a group, but is unique because its members have rejected in
greater or lesser degree the values, symbols, and norms of the larger
social order, supplanting them with values, symbols, and norms of their
own. Moreover, there is no consensus on the part of all segments of the
community on the status location of such groups. Members of unranked
status groups may be recruited from any status level of the community and
there remains a vast discrepancy between community evaluation of such
groups and their self evaluation. Social types which often identify
unranked status groups are intellectuals, artists, revolutionists,
Bohemians, and such "isolated" occupational groups as career women,
politicians, and others. Such groups abound in the metropolis, and to include
their members in the recognized strata of the larger community (e.g., by
placing the intellectual in the "middle-class") is not only to obscure
their function in the larger status order but also to neglect an important
source of social change.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In this sense unranked status groups are at once in and out of the
larger social order, but they need not arise only in response to the
negative social honor they are accorded in the community. In fact,
as Hughes has pointed out, protesting groups may arise in response to any
status dilemma—to any situation of crucial marginality where dignity is at
stake.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hence, wherever there is the objective opportunity for incompatibilities
in social position, or, subjectively, pervasive moral dilemmas which
threaten personal dignity, unranked status groups may be expected to
emerge. We may cite, for example, the disparity that often arises between
economic interests and status sentiments. The "enlightened
middle-class" college student, becoming imbued with the interests of the
working class and noting their irreconcilability with the sentiments of the
status grouping from which he originates, will often seek membership in
"Bohemian" and arty campus groups. And is not the disparity between his
wealth and social status in a sense responsible for the separate social
world of the racketeer? Thus, isolation and alienation are other
characteristics of the unranked status groups.
These examples are enough to underscore the difficulty involved in
detecting and isolating unranked status groups by means of the usual
criteria of community deference patterns. At best, the deference received
by members of unranked status groups is of a highly segmentalized nature.
Thus, avant-garde writers are respected by their peculiar audiences
which, incidentally, are not included in similar status categories. Such
respect is seldom appreciated. For example, the jazz musician is accorded
the tireless and for him tiresome respect of his audience. Rather, the
crucial criterion for detecting the unranked status group would seem to be
the fact that the solidarity and dignity of the membership is independent
of the deference paid it by the out-group. In the unranked status group,
solidarity and dignity is self-contained and, consequently, the group is
characterized by an extremely high degree of social closure.
Closure here is most effectively guaranteed by the monopolization of a
body of distinctive symbols. The mechanisms by which this monopoly is
assured need at least passing comment. Unlike the case of status groupings
in the larger "established" social order, the members of unranked status
groups seek out symbols that do not necessarily excite the envy of
outsiders. Whereas the status of persons caught up in the conventional
"social whirl" is in large part dependent upon their ability to display
symbols sufficiently exoteric to be understood by large segments
of the community, the status of persons in the unranked groups hinges in
large part upon their ability to employ symbols sufficiently esoteric
to be understood only by the members of their own social circle. One
guarantee of the esotericism rests in the fact that such symbols have, in
the past, failed to "catch on" in the larger society or have largely been
discarded by conventional status groupings. This is one way in which the
works of obscure poets or musical forms that have "run their course" find
their way into the symbolic repertoire of the unranked status group.
Another reason that the group adopts such obscure objects arises from the
fact that its members place greater stress on the intrinsic value of
expressive symbols. When the "masterwork" is too scarce or too expensive
for
them to acquire, they may seek out less known, less expensive, but, for
themselves, comparably valuable objects. In such a way "taste" is
cultivated to a high degree among the members of many unranked status
groups. The cultivation of taste acts as another guarantee of symbolic
exclusiveness depending upon the ability of members of unranked status
groups to maintain an artistic taste somewhat "in advance" of the
taste of the larger community.
In a certain sense, this latter guarantee is a stimulus to the
creativity so often characteristic of the unranked status group. For the
"democratization of taste" continually robs the group of its distinctive
symbols. This fact also affords an important insight into the function of
many unranked status groups in contemporary society. They provide the
symbols which conventional status groupings utilize to maintain their
(relatively high) social positions or which competing groups use to wage
their status contests. Thus, they are often related to the larger social
order by patronage. Moreover, those unranked groups that function to
provide others with symbols of social honor are placed in a peculiarly
vulnerable position during such periods of great social instability as
revolution. Struggling power groupings coerce the artist and enlist his
support to symbolize their particular ideologies. Nor is his role to be
viewed merely as that of the propaganda technician. It is much more. The
artist by representing, for example, an ascendant power group to the
society as a whole helps it to secure its newly won position by the
embellishments of social honor.
These types do not, of course, exhaust all of the possibilities and are
not mutually exclusive. Each may be found to exist with one or both of the
others. Probably the status arrangements found in the metropolis will
manifest something of every pattern that has been discussed here.… This
presentation of three modes of status arrangement which have been observed
to exist in diverse communities provides a tentative formulation of
variations in status arrangements.
CONCLUSIONS
Although Max Weber’s theory of social stratification is admittedly
fragmentary and incomplete, students of stratification have often proceeded
on the assumption that the concept of "status group" adequately and
exhaustively apprehends the units of the social order. Status groups are
communal in nature, but there appear to be other status groupings in modern
urban communities which are not characterized by communality. It is
suggested that there are stratification aspects to all types of social
categories. Specifically, the term "status aggregate" can facilitate the
comprehension of urban status problems. It is proposed that status
groupings, especially in the middle ranges of social honor, have a mass
aspect that must be taken into account in the stratification
literature.
One of the reasons for the gaps in status theory may be traced to the
theoretical constrictions intrinsic to the concept of stratification. The
conception of status groupings as hierarchically arranged limits the
application of general sociological theory in this area. This paper
proposes that the notion of status, class, and power arrangements be
substituted for analogous hierarchical conceptions. Several empirical and
hypothetical models of status arrangements have been suggested as an aid
for understanding the structure and process of status phenomena in the
urban community. These models have been subsumed under the category
instabilities in status. Consequently, their application in research
demands that the investigator attend to the social processes they promote
or engender.
The implications of the above theory and research are manifold.
Theoretical
models of status arrangements on the community, institutional, and
societal levels must be carefully constructed. Empirical research dedicated
to explore conditions under which such models are approached must be
carefully designed. By analyzing the interplay between the theoretical
types and the empirical realities of status arrangement, the investigator
will be able to formulate new propositions to explain the processes by
which such status arrangements emerge and change.
The study of the social processes inherent in stratification phenomena
constitutes at the same time a serious lag and a great opportunity for
the development of sociological theory. Such a development must of
necessity bring into focus certain aspects of the social structure
heretofore considered to be of only tangential relevance for stratification
theory. Studies of change within the context of social stratification have
usually been limited to the matter of whether class lines have become more
or less sharply defined over a given period of time. To pose this question
is to obscure more than its answer can possibly reveal, for the significant
problem may concern the nature of the "class lines" themselves or the modes
of arrangement of stratification groupings. Besides, the structural
origins of such changes cannot be adequately discerned by studying such a
problem. The necessity of bringing our knowledge of collective behavior to
bear on the study of social stratification is patent.
Although this article has limited itself to the study of status
arrangements on the community level, its implications have bearing upon
other orders of stratification. Certainly sociological theory is
circumscribed by hierarchical conceptions of the economic and political
orders. The analysis arrangement in these spheres promises even a more
fertile field of inquiry. After a preliminary theory of class, status, and
power arrangements has been derived which embraces some of the
considerations discussed in this paper, the discipline will be ready to
attack the major problem of the relationship among stratification
arrangements on the community and societal levels.
1 From , 1953, 18:149–162. By permission.