Status group

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The German sociologist Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification that defines status group^[1] (also status class and status estate)^[2] as a group of people who, within a society, can be differentiated on the basis of non-economic qualities such as honour, prestige, and religion.^[3] The German terms are Stand (status group) and Stände (status groups).

Since the time of Max Weber, the matter of “status incongruence” has been much studied in post-industrial societies, and especially in under-developed countries because of the intervening social factor that is religion.^[4]

Weber said that status groups emerge from "the house of honor", and that such status-honor is in contrast with:

• social class, based on economically determined relationship in the house of the marketplace.

• political party, based on affiliations in the political domain, or the house of power.

These are the constituent concepts of the Three-component theory of stratification. Discussion of the relationships among status groups, social class, and political parties is in the essay "Class, Status, Party", written before the First World War (1914–18); the first translation to English, by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, was published in the 1940s. A newer English translation of the essay, titled “The Distribution of Power within the Community: Classes, Stände, Parties” (2010), was by Dagmar Waters and colleagues, and published in the “Journal of Classical Sociology”; the title of the new English-language translation includes the German word “Stände” (status groups) in place of the English term.^[5][6]

See also

• Social stratification
• Castes
• Kinship
• Cultural capital
• Symbolic capital
• Charismatic authority

References