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Each status in society has certain obligations, expectations, duties, rights, and functions that go with them. College students are obligated to pay for their education, expected to do the reading and write the papers that have been assigned, required to come to class and complete the coursework satisfactorily in order to earn a passing grade, study hard, be treated with dignity and respect, and graduate. However, as we all know, some people fail to adequately fill their status.

Social roles

A social role is the way we fill the various statuses we occupy. You have probably heard someone say that someone else is just taking up space, meaning that they are not doing their job or fulfilling the obligations, expectations, duties, rights, and functions that go with a specific status. They are not playing the role. We have all seen people in school plays who were wrong for a particular part, or who couldn’t remember their lines or their position on the stage, or who was simply bad at acting. That person (status=actor) is not playing satisfactorily the part (role=part). All of the various aspects of our Master Status, (the primary social positions we occupy), and sometimes the way we play our social roles, can and do effect our ranking on the stratification hierarchy.

Stratification redux

Because every society has some level of stratification—even in the least complex hunter-gatherer cultures, men have authority over women and the old have authority over the young—our position in our society is based on our Master Statuses. The stratification hierarchy is the layers or levels of any social structure—it is the way people classify or categorize themselves and others. The American stratification hierarchy is evident to all even though we tend to be relatively oblivious to it.

For example, the majority of Americans think of themselves as middle class whether they make $25,000 per year or $250,000. Clearly, a vast difference in definitions of middle class is required in order for people with such disparate incomes to include themselves in this largest layer or social category. Even President George H. Bush, who comes from a very wealthy family and is worth several millions of dollars, spoke of himself as middle class during his abortive run for a second term in 1992. The media often referred to former President and Mrs. Bill Clinton as middle class even though they were worth nearly three million dollars in 2000. President George W. Bush and his wife Laura also referred to themselves as middle class and yet they are also worth several million dollars.

Our ability to enjoy such resources as personal autonomy—control of our own lives, health, physical comfort, creature comforts, education, employment opportunities in a high paying and satisfying job, the respect of others, and a long life span are all related to our position in the stratification hierarchy. How we live, where we live, the things with which we surround ourselves, the kind of food we eat, the style and quality of the clothes we wear and the other forms of body adornment we use, the music we listen to, the way we dance, our patterns of speech, virtually everything about us—is determined in greater or lesser extent by our social class, our position on the stratification hierarchy. The way we treat others and the way we classify others is also largely based on our perceptions of where they are located on the stratification hierarchy.

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