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Article: Social Status
- Article from:
- International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
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Social Status
HISTORICAL PREVALENCE
THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH
SOCIAL STATUS MEASUREMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Social status has been used throughout history to differentiate individuals and groups of people in order to maintain hierarchical systems of inequality between and among people and to enforce the idea that certain groups of people are, by nature, born to a certain level of existence.
Social status is often described as one
’
s
“
standing
”
in society; the word
status
is derived from the Latin
statum
, meaning
“
stand.
”
In a narrow sense, the term refers to one
’
s legal or professional standing within a group; in a broader sense, it means one