Why Status Matters for Inequality

ASR79110.1177/0003122413515997American Sociological ReviewRidgeway 5159972013 2013 Presidential Address American Sociological Review 2014, Vol. 79(1) 1 –16 Why Status Matters for © American Sociological Association 2013 DOI: 10.1177/0003122413515997 Inequality http://asr.sagepub.com Cecilia L. Ridgewaya Abstract To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside those based on resources and power. As a micro motive for behavior, status is as significant as money and power. At a macro level, status stabilizes resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions of inequality that generate material advantages due to group membership itself. Acting through micro- level social relations in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere, status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, race, and class-based life style into organizational structures of resources and power, creating durable inequality. Status is thus a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences. Keywords social status, interpersonal relations, inequality, gender, race, class Sociologists want to do more than describe show how status acts as an independent force social inequality. We want to understand the in the making of inequality based on gender, deeper problem of how inequality is made race, and class. and, therefore, could potentially be unmade. What are the mechanisms? How do we uncover them? To do this more effectively, I aStanford University argue that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of a relatively neglected Corresponding Author: Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Stanford University, form of social inequality—social status— Department of Sociology, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg. alongside effects based on resources and 120, Stanford, CA 94305 power. To make my case, I will attempt to E-mail: [email protected] Downloaded from asr.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on January 30, 2014 2 American Sociological Review 79(1) At a broader level, I will argue that, in the least causally significant of Weber’s three search for mechanisms, we need to open up bases of inequality. That is, in contrast to the traditional study of inequality in two key resources and power, status is not seen as an ways. First, we need to more thoroughly independent mechanism by which inequality interrogate the nature of inequality itself to between individuals and groups is made. take into account its multidimensional com- This, I argue, is a major misjudgment that plexity—that is, to examine its cultural as greatly limits our ability to understand how well as material dimensions and to incorpo- stratification actually works in an advanced rate group-based inequality, such as race and industrial society like our own. At a micro gender inequality, along with socioeconomic level, it limits our understanding of what is at inequality. Second, we need to look across stake in social inequality. When we think of levels of analysis from the individual and inequality as merely a structural struggle for interpersonal to the organizational to the power and resources, we forget how much peo- macro-structural and cultural to discover how ple care about their sense of being valued by inequality processes at each level interpene- others and the society to which they belong— trate one another to create and sustain pat- how much they care about public acknowl- terns of resource inequality. In my view, the edgement of their worth (Goode 1978). This is most important mechanisms, the ones that status. People care about status quite as have the most obdurate power to sustain intensely as they do money and power. Indeed, broad patterns of inequality, often emerge people often want money as much for the status from the systematic interaction of processes it brings as for its exchange value. An airport at multiple levels (see DiTomaso 2013; shoe-shine man once asked me what I did. Reskin 2012; Ridgeway 2011). If we con- When I told him, he said, “My daughter wants strain our analyses to inequality processes at to go to Stanford and be a physician. What I do one level at a time, these multi-level mecha- is just for her; I want her to be someone.” Now, nisms will continually elude our grasp. In what was that about? Power? Not so much. what follows, we will see that an examination Money? Yes, a bit. But above all it is about of the significance of social status for ine- public recognition of his daughter’s social quality illustrates each of these issues: the worth. It is about social status. Clearly, we can- need to incorporate cultural as well as mate- not understand the fundamental human motiva- rial processes, to take into account group tions that enter into the struggle for precedence difference-based inequality, and to link micro that lies behind inequality if we do not also take and macro processes. into account status. We are all familiar with Weber’s ([1918] At a more macro level, treating status as a 1968) classic analysis of three different but side topic limits our ability to understand how interrelated bases for inequality in industrial status-based social differences, such as gen- societies: resources, power, and status. Con- der and race, are woven into organizations of temporary accounts of stratification in U.S. resources and power. It even limits our ability sociology focus primarily on resources and to fully understand how class itself is repro- power. Control over resources and access to duced through organizations of resources and positions of power in organizations that pro- power (cf. Sayer 2005). I will focus here on duce and distribute resources are closely this more macro aspect of why status matters, related processes that provide the material but as I do so, I want to keep in mind the representation of inequality in society. But micro aspect of how important status is as a what about social status, which is inequality motivation for individuals. based on differences in honor, esteem, and I believe there are two reasons why status respect (Weber [1918] 1968)? Status is often processes have been difficult to digest for treated as a side topic in U.S. sociology, pos- standard sociological accounts of stratifica- sibly because it is seen as the “weakest,” or tion. One is that status, in contrast to resources Downloaded from asr.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on January 30, 2014 Ridgeway 3 and power, is based primarily in cultural contrasting categories or “types” of people— beliefs rather than directly on material matter for inequality? There are three funda- arrangements. That is, status is based on mental reasons. First, as Tilly (1998) pointed widely shared beliefs about the social catego- out, inequality based purely on organizational ries or “types” of people that are ranked by control of resources and power is inherently society as more esteemed and respected com- unstable. It gives rise to a constant struggle pared to others (Berger et al. 1977; Jackson between dominant and subdominant individu- 1998).1 Second, these cultural status beliefs als. To persist, that is, for inequality to work their effects on inequality primarily at become durable inequality, control over the social relational level by shaping people’s resources and power has to be consolidated expectations for themselves and others and with a categorical difference between people their consequent actions in social contexts such as race, gender, or life style. (Berger et al. 1977; Ridgeway and Nakagawa Why does this consolidation stabilize ine- forthcoming). Both the culturalist and the quality? It does so because it transforms the micro-level aspects of status processes con- situational control over resources and power trast with the materialist and structural level into a status difference between “types” of perspectives of most analyses of stratifica- people that are evaluatively ranked in terms of tion, which typically focus on income, wealth, how diffusely “better” they are. Research occupational structures, social mobility, and shows that status beliefs develop quickly so on. Yet, to understand how patterns of among people under conditions in which cat- inequality persist in an obdurate way, despite egorical difference is at least partially consoli- ongoing economic, technological, and social dated with material inequality. Specifically, change, we have to understand the relation- status construction studies show that when ships between cultural status beliefs on the control over resources in a social setting is one hand and material organizations of correlated with a salient categorical difference resources and power on the other hand. This (e.g., race), people quickly link the appear- is a problem that my own research on status ance of mastery in the situation that the and the resilience of gender inequality forced resources create with the associated difference me to confront (Ridgeway 2011). between types of people (Ridgeway et al. In what follows, I first outline three broad 2009; Ridgeway et al. 1998; Ridgeway and reasons why status processes matter for the Erickson 2000). In this way, among others, larger structure of inequality. I then shift to people form status beliefs that the “type” of how status matters by describing three micro- people who have more resources (e.g., whites) level processes through which status indepen- are “better” than the “types” with fewer dently creates material inequalities between resources.

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