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.

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…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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.