Download Achieved Status www.AssignmentPoint.com Achieved status is a

Achieved Status
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Achieved status is a concept developed by the anthropologist Ralph
Linton denoting a social position that a person can acquire on the
basis of merit; it is a position that is earned or chosen. It is the
opposite of ascribed status. It reflects personal skills, abilities, and
efforts. Examples of achieved status are being an Olympic athlete,
being a criminal, or being a college professor.
Status is important sociologically because it comes with a set of
rights, obligations, behaviors, and duties that people occupying a
certain position are expected or encouraged to perform. These
expectations are referred to as roles. For instance, the role of a
"professor" includes teaching students, answering their questions,
being impartial, appropriately.
Ascribed status is a position assigned to individuals or groups based
on traits beyond their control, such as sex, race, or parental social
status. This is usually associated with "closed" societies. Achieved
status is distinguished from ascribed status by virtue of being earned.
Many positions are a mixture of achievement and ascription; for
instance, a person who has achieved the status of being a physician is
more likely to have the ascribed status of being born into a wealthy
family. This is usually associated with "open" societies or "social"
class societies.
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Social mobility refers to one's ability to move their status either up or
down within the social stratification system, as compared with their
family’s status in early life. Some people with achieved status have
improved their position within the social system via their own merit
and achievements.
Someone may also have achieved status that decreases their position
within the social system, such as by becoming a notorious criminal. In
a society that one's position in that society can change due to their
actions, either increase or decrease, that society can be referred to as
an Open System. A Closed System society would not allow Social
mobility as easily as an Open System.
Cultural capital is a concept, developed by sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu, that can refer to both achieved and ascribed characteristics.
They are desirable qualities (either material or symbolic) that
contribute to one's social status; any advantages a person has which
give him/her a higher status in society. It may include high
expectations, forms of knowledge, skill, and education, among other
things.
Parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and
knowledge that make the educational system a comfortable familiar
place in which they can succeed easily. There are other types of
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capital as well; Social capital refers to ones membership in groups,
relationships, and networks. It too can have a significant impact on
achievement level.
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