Is There a Status Order in Contemporary British Society?: Evidence from the Occupational Structure of Friendship

Abstract

This paper considers whether it is still possible to identify a status order in contemporary Britain. We analyse the occupational structure of friendship and present empirical results which show that there is one dimension of this structure that can be plausibly interpreted as reflecting a hierarchy of status. This status hierarchy is gender-neutral, and displays clear continuities with that depicted for the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries in historical and earlier sociological research. We further show that the correlation between social status and both income and education is only rather modest. As regards status and class, we find that while some classes show a rather high degree of status homogeneity; in other classes status stratification is quite extensive. Our results suggest that the Weberian distinction between social status and social class remains valid and fruitful. By keeping this distinction in social stratification research, a range of questions on the articulation of the class structure and the status order, on lifestyle and consumption, etc. are opened up.

Class and Status: The Conceptual Distinction and its Empirical Relevance

“…Preliminary analyses indicate a high degree of cross-national commonality in the ordering of occupations on these scales. 6 When the status scale is regressed on income and education, the coefficient for income turns out to be insignificant (Chan and Goldthorpe 2004, …”

Stratification and Mortality--A Comparison of Education, Class, Status, and Income

“…Recently, a similar occupationally based stratification dimension has been described as a "status order" different from the class structure (Chan and Goldthorpe 2007a;Chan and Goldthorpe 2004); status reflects social equality, inferiority or superiority, while class is grounded in employment relations. Status, in this sense, cannot be seen as a mere combination of education and income (Chan and Goldthorpe 2007a).…”

Welfare states and social inequality: Key issues in contemporary cross-national research on social stratification and mobility

“…As argued by Luijkx (2004a, 2004b, p. 391): "Theories of mobility or fluidity are concerned with how this association [between parent's and child's class] arises through the interaction of resources possessed by families and children and the demands of 42 The past and present focus on social network, as well as on status groups, could be interpreted into a relational and reciprocal framework, since these perspectives emphasize mutual relationships between people who are bound together in various forms of family and friendship networks. For instance, in their operationalization of social status groups Chan and Goldthorpe (2004) use information about the individuals' closest friends; a relationship which could be expected to be dominated by trust and reciprocity, as well as other motivations. See also Boudon (2006), Gambetta's work on trust (2006), and Bowles and Gintis (1998) who have launched the concept of Homo reciprocans as an addition to Homo economicus.…”