Focused and Distributed Status Affinity

Autor: Fredrick Koenig, John M. Roberts
Rok vydání: 1968
Předmět:
Zdroj: The Sociological Quarterly. 9:150-157
ISSN: 1533-8525
0038-0253
DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1968.tb01107.x
Popis: OFTEN ENOUGH members of one social class have been viewed as struggling with members of other classes, as excluding others from membership in their own class, or as aspiring to become members of higher social classes. Whatever the precise formulation of the situation, the general tone of descriptions of interclass relationships has often been one of competition, antagonism, exclusion, tension, or conflict. Yet ordinary experience suggests that most individuals direct some positive affect toward social classes other than their own in any functioning and enduring system of social stratification. This paper is concerned with a measure of part of this affect (here termed status affinity),' and it offers a description of some of the antecedent conditions contributing to different affect distributions. No member of a complex, stratified society carries a cognitive map of the full social system in his head, but surely he always has some general understanding of his own social position in relation to the positions of others. At the very least he will be aware of categories of statuses which are roughly higher, lower, or equal to his own. Again, at a realistic level, his conscious preference for his own or some other status may be perfectly clear to him and to others. Yet at the same time his affective attitudes toward status positions within the array of positions known to him may not be so clear. A consideration of these often more ambiguous affective attitudes is our concern here. The attraction felt by people for various social positions can be termed "status affinity." If a person is primarily and strongly attracted to a specific status or set of statuses, his status affinity may be said to be "focused," but if his primary attraction to a specific position is relatively weak and if he allocates positive affect to other positions as well, his status affinity may be described as "distributed."2
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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