SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Status
and Roles
Most people associate
status with the prestige of a person’s lifestyle, education, or vocation.
According to sociologists, status describes the position a
person occupies in a particular setting. We all occupy several statuses and
play the roles that may be associated with them. A role is the
set of norms, values, behaviors, and personality characteristics attached to a
status. An individual may occupy the statuses of student, employee,
and club president and play one or more roles with each one.
Example: Status
as student
Role 1: Classroom:
Attending class, taking notes, and communicating with the professor
Role 2: Fellow student:
Participating in study groups, sharing ideas, quizzing other students
Status as employee
Role 1: Warehouse:
Unloading boxes, labeling products, restocking shelves
Role 2: Customer service:
Answering questions, solving problems, researching information
Status as club president
Role 1: Administrative:
Running club meetings, delegating tasks to club members
Role 2: Public: Distributing
flyers, answering questions, planning community volunteer activities
At any given time, the
individual described above can also occupy the statuses of athlete, date,
confidant, or a number of others, depending on the setting. With each change of
status, the individual plays a different role or roles.
Society’s Definition of
“Roles”
Societies decide what is
considered appropriate role behavior for different statuses. For example, every
society has the “mother” status. However, some societies consider it inappropriate
for a mother to assume the role of authority in the family. Other societies
ascribe lots of power to the status of mother. In some societies, students are
expected to be completely obedient to teachers. In American society, the
student role involves asking the teacher questions and even challenging the
teacher’s statements.
Role
Conflict
Role conflict results
from the competing demands of two or more roles that vie for our time and
energy. The more statuses we have, and the more roles we take on, the more
likely we are to experience role conflict.
A member of a
nonindustrialized society generally has just a few statuses, such as spouse,
parent, and villager. A typical middle-class American woman, meanwhile,
probably has many statuses, and therefore many roles. She may be a mother,
wife, neighbor, member of the PTA, employee, boss, town council president, and
part-time student. Because people in modernized societies have so many roles,
they are more likely than people in nonindustrialized societies to experience
role conflict.
Example: A
working father is expected at work on time but is late because one of his
children is sick. His roles as father and employee are then in conflict. A role
for his father status dictates that he care for his sick child, while a role
for his employee status demands that he arrive at work on time.
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