I: Social StatusOverview: The ways we choose to present ourselves to other people also give clues asto our social status, which is the position we occupy in a particular setting. Some statuses carry more prestige and power than others.A: STATUS SYMBOLS1: Sometimes we wear status symbols, or signs or symbols of a respective status. a. Professors wear academic regalia to identify their status within the collegiate setting. b. Successful businesspeople may drive luxurious cars or wear expensive clothing or jewelry to indicate a high financial status within the community. i. A wedding ring is also an example of a status symbol in our culture, as it communicates the message that the wearer is married.2: Not all status symbols are positive. In some states, an individual who has been convicted of driving a car while intoxicated must put a bumper sticker saying “DUI” (Driving under the Influence) or “Convicted DUI” on their car. a. The bumper sticker indicates a status that is generally looked down on in our society.B: STATUS INCONSISTENCY1: We tend to have more than one status at any given point in our lives, and mostof the time there is consistency among our various statuses. 2: Status inconsistency results when a person occupies one or more statuses that do not ordinarily coincide in the same person. a. A seventy-five-year-old grandmother who is a college freshman and a cab driver who is a classically trained Shakespearean actor both exhibit status inconsistency.C: MASTER STATUS1: A master status overrides all other statuses and becomes the one by which weare first known to others. 2: For many people, their occupation is their master status, since it conveys so much about their income, education, skills, and interests. 3: People who differ from the rest of society in some way may have a different master status. 4: For many people who are homosexual, their sexual orientation becomes their master status, and others think of it when they hear those people’s names. 5: Their statuses as professionals, athletes, family members, and community leaders are secondary to their status as homosexuals.D: STIGMAS1: Some of the traits we possess are actually stigmas. a. A stigma is a trait or characteristic we possess that causes us to lose prestige in the eyes of others. b. A disfigured face might be a stigma, as someone whose face is severely disfigured is likely to have lost prestige among his or herpeers and coworkers. c. Many would also consider homosexuality to be a stigmatizing characteristic. i. Because of widespread homophobia, many people would think less of a person they knew to be homosexual.E: DEGRADATION CEREMONIES1: If an individual’s identity is spoiled beyond redemption, some times the groups to which he or she belongs must decide how to handle his or her new identity. a. One way to deal with individuals whose identities have been spoiled is through a degradation ceremony. b. A degradation ceremony is a ritual designed to expel a person from a group and to strip this person of his or her identity as a group member.2: There are several elements of a successful degradation ceremony:a. The individual’s stigma or transgression must be made known to the entire group.b. An authority figure must make the individual’s stigma known to the group. Group members cannot denounce one another.c. The group must believe that the authority figure is acting out of concern for the whole group. If the group believes that the leader is denouncing an individual because of a personal feud or vendetta, the degradation ceremony will not be successful.d. The transgressor must be criticized in public, before the entire group. This serves to further humiliate the guilty party and reinforce the boundaries of behavior to the rest of the group. By publicly denouncing a group member, the leader is also telling everyone what kinds of behavior will and will not be tolerated.e. The offending individual must be evicted from the group. If the group leader allows the transgressor to remain in the group, he or she is communicating to theother members that bearing a stigma, or breaking the rules, will be tolerated.II: Status and Roles:Overview: Most people associate status with the prestige of a person’s life style, 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.A: ROLE CONFLICT:1: Role conflict results from the competing demands of two or more roles that vie for our time and energy. a. The more statuses we have, and the more roles we take on, the more likely we are to experience role conflict.2: A member of a non-industrialized society generally has just a few statuses, such as spouse, parent, and villager. a. A typical middle class American woman, meanwhile, probably hasmany statuses, and therefore many roles. She may be a mother, wife, and neighbor, member of the PTA, employee, boss, town council president, and part-time student. b. Because people in modernized societies have so many roles, they are more likely than people in non-industrialized societies to experience role conflict.III: Social Institutions• Economy• Government• Family• Religion• Education• MedicineOverview: To sociologists an institution isn’t a building; an institution is what goes on inside the building. An institution is a set of norms surrounding the carrying out of a function necessary for the survival of a society.- People in every society must fulfill certain functions in order to survive. - They must set up processes for rearing and educating children. - They must develop a system for maintaining order and managing relations with other societies. - They must agree on methods for producing and exchanging goods and services. - Societies differ in how they carry out these functions, but they all must somehow accomplish the same tasks in order to survive as a social unit. - Institutions may seem abstract, but they are part of a world that is very real.A: EconomyOverview: The economy is the institution that provides for the production and distribution of goods and services, which people in every