Turner - Status

Turner, Bryan S

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Status

Concepts in Social Thought

Series Editor: Frank Parkin Magdalen College, Oxford

Democracy

Bureaucracy

Socialism

Liberalism

Ideology

Conservatism

Property

Anthony Arblaster David Beetham Bernard Crick John Gray David McLellan Robert Nisbet Alan Ryan Bryan S. Turner

Status

Concepts in Social Thought

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis

Copyright 1988 Bryan S. Turner

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis MN 55414 Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Markham.

Printed in Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Number

88-27717

ISBN 0-8166-1722-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 0-8166-1723-6 (pbk.)

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

To working-class academics

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Preface ix

1 The Controversy over Status: Marx and Weber 1

2 From Status to Contract: Historical Change and Social

Stratification 17

3 Status Politics in Contemporary Society: Citizenship and

Inequality 42

4 Mass Culture, Distinction and Lifestyle 65

Bibliography 79

Index 89

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This study of status was written during a period of study at the University of Bielefeld (West Germany) where I was a guest professor in the Sociology Faculty from 1987 to 1988. This period of research in West Germany was made possible by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which was generous in its support of my research activity. I am particularly grateful to my hosts in the Sociology Faculty, especially Georg Stauth, Claus Offe and Johannes Berger. The ideas represented in this study however derive from a much longer period of academic research and teaching in a variety of universities, namely Aberdeen, Lancaster and Flinders. Aspects of this study are also derived from collaborative scholarship with Nicholas Abercrombie and Stephen Hill. Many of the historical and analytical features of this study result from debates with my former colleague Robert Holton. A version of chapter two was originally presented at the Max Weber Colloquium at William Paterson College, New Jersey where Professor Ronald Glassman acted as host and organizer. A version of chapter three was originally given as a seminar at the State University of Utrecht; I am grateful to Professor David Ingleby and Dr Chris Baks for their critical commentary. I would also like to thank Mike Featherstone of Teesside Polytechnic who, as Editor of Theory, Culture and Society, first forced me to confront and come to terms with the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, whose analysis of distinction has played an important part in the development of this book. Some features of the final chapter were explored at the Pierre Bourdieu conference at Vlotho, Westfalen in 1987. My new colleagues in the Faculty of Social Science at the State University of Utrecht also provided support for an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of social stratification. I am particularly grateful to Dr Lieteke van

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Vucht Tijssen for her help during my transition to Utrecht and for her boundless intellectual enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Professor Roland Robertson, University of Pittsburgh, who gently but persistently persuaded me to focus on culture as a crucial feature of sociological understanding. Frank Parkin offered insightful and sharp criticism of the original proposal which proved invaluable in reorganizing this inquiry. Finally I would like to thank my wife (another working-class academic) for her incalculable intellectual and emotional contribution to my work.

Bryan S. Turner

Any student starting a course on sociology will quickly encounter the concept of status, alongside many applications of the notion such as status inconsistency, status crystallization, status group and status panic. The student will also discover that a great deal of controversy surrounds the notion of status stratification, that the very concept of status is vague, and furthermore that in the view of some sociologists the concept of status has little or no real analytical value. The situation is further confounded by the fact that there is hardly any textbook available in contemporary sociology on the notion of status and status hierarchies. This book has been written with the intention of clarifying the notion of status, demonstrating the historical and analytical importance of the concept and restoring the concept of status to its proper place in sociology as a major perspective on the more general issues of social stratification.