Social Status, Self-Respect, and Opportunity

2021 ◽  
pp. 162-196
Author(s):  
Christian Schemmel
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Status Hierarchy ◽  
Social Opportunities ◽  
Threats To Self

This chapter extends the requirements of liberal relational egalitarianism by way of an account of esteem-based norms of social status, analysing three kinds of injustices that such norms can engender or constitute. First, they can enable or aggravate domination. Second, they can harm self-respect. However, a closer analysis of self-respect and its crucial role for individual autonomy reveals that not all inegalitarian status norms can be classified as threats to self-respect without threatening precisely that role. Third, they can be unjust simply by depriving individuals of significant social opportunities, because losing such opportunities due to norm-coordinated, self-sustaining disesteem by others is a threat to one’s equal standing in social cooperation not present when they are foreclosed in other ways. This is an independent rationale for combating these norms which is fully accessible to liberals, and does better at capturing the distinct evil of status hierarchy than rival views.

Justice and Egalitarian Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Schemmel
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
Social Opportunities ◽  
Status Inequality ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Health Justice ◽  
Political Value

Why does equality matter, as a social and political value, and what does it require? Relational egalitarians argue that it does not primarily require that people receive equal distributive shares of some good, but that they relate as equals. This book develops a liberal conception of relational equality, which understands relations of non-domination and egalitarian norms of social status as stringent demands of social justice. First, it argues that expressing respect for the freedom and equality of individuals in social cooperation requires stringent protections against domination; develops a substantive, liberal conception of non-domination; and argues that non-domination is a particularly important, but not the only, concern of social justice. These features set it apart from, and provide it with crucial advantages over, neo-republican accounts of non-domination. Second, the book develops an account of the wrongness of inegalitarian norms of social status, which shows how status-induced foreclosure of important social opportunities is a social injustice in its own right, over and above the role of status inequality in enabling domination, and the threats it poses to individuals’ self-respect. Finally, it works out the implications of liberal relational egalitarianism for political, economic, and health justice, showing that it demands, in practice, far-reaching forms of equality in all three domains. In so doing, the book draws on, and brings together, several different literatures: on social justice and liberalism, distributive and relational equality, the distinct value of social equality, and neo-republicanism and non-domination.

scholarly journals Who Belongs? How Status Influences the Experience of Gemeinschaft

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Cary Beckwith
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
High Status ◽  
Cumulative Advantage ◽  
Status Hierarchy ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Group Life ◽  
Using Data

Belonging is a central human aspiration, one that has drawn attention from sociologists and social psychologists alike. Who is likely to realize this aspiration? This paper addresses that question by examining how “we-feeling”—the experience of gemeinschaft—is distributed within small groups. Previous research has argued that the feeling of belonging is positively related to a person’s social status through a cumulative advantage process. But high status can recast the responsibilities of group life as burdens if a person regards them as incongruent with his or her rank, and this can dim one’s feelings toward the group. This paper proposes that a “high-status penalty” diminishes we-feeling for high-ranking individuals, thereby concentrating we-feeling in the middle of a status hierarchy. It tests this theory using data from the Urban Communes Project, a survey of 60 naturally occurring communities. The findings suggest that status-incongruent responsibilities can suppress the benefits of status at the top of a hierarchy.

Neural representations of social status hierarchy in human inferior parietal cortex

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 354-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Y. Chiao ◽  
Tokiko Harada ◽  
Emily R. Oby ◽  
Zhang Li ◽  
Todd Parrish ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Status Hierarchy ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Inferior Parietal Cortex

scholarly journals “A Refugee Pastor in a Refugee Church”

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
Karen Lauterbach
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Church Member ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Hybrid Forms

This article discusses “refugee-refugee hosting” in a faith-based context. It looks particularly at Congolese churches in Kampala, Uganda, that play a crucial role for Congolese refugees seeking refuge and protection. The article analyzes hybrid forms of hosting in a faith-based context and discusses the implications of this for how guest and host categories are perceived. Four different patterns of refugee-refugee hosting are explored in which the relationship between host and guest as well as pastor and church member differ. The article argues that social status and hierarchies are important for how hosting is practiced. Moreover, religious ideas of gift giving, sacrifice, and reciprocity also influence hosting in this context.

Neural Basis of Social Status Hierarchy

2014 ◽  
pp. 303-323
Author(s):  
Narun Pornpattananangkul ◽  
Caroline F. Zink ◽  
Joan Y. Chiao
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Status Hierarchy

A Short History of the Cross-Class Coalition

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
Yael Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Short History ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter begins with narrating the creation of a cross-class coalition to offer all citizens a set of valuable goods and opportunities. It notes that nationalism started as a project of the elites, and in order to materialize it, they had to gather the support of the people. The chapter emphasizes that for social cooperation to prevail, participants need not attain identical goods and benefits; it is sufficient that they secure for themselves significant benefits they could not have otherwise acquired. It argues that membership in the nation became the relevant criteria for inclusion (and exclusion). Wealth, education, skills, and social status were still relevant for the distribution of power but could not be used as benchmarks for participation in the political game. The chapter also examines how the nation-state gave members of all classes a reason to participate in a collective effort to form a national political unit that would benefit (albeit in different ways and to a different extent) all its members. Ultimately, the chapter investigates why the emergence of the modern nation-state paved the way for inclusive social policies.

scholarly journals The dynamics of men's cooperation and social status in a small-scale society

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1908) ◽  
pp. 20191367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. von Rueden ◽  
Daniel Redhead ◽  
Rick O'Gorman ◽  
Hillard Kaplan ◽  
Michael Gurven
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Longitudinal Studies ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Status Hierarchy ◽  
Preindustrial Society ◽  
Cooperation Partners ◽  
Over Time

We propose that networks of cooperation and allocation of social status co-emerge in human groups. We substantiate this hypothesis with one of the first longitudinal studies of cooperation in a preindustrial society, spanning 8 years. Using longitudinal social network analysis of cooperation among men, we find large effects of kinship, reciprocity and transitivity in the nomination of cooperation partners over time. Independent of these effects, we show that (i) higher-status individuals gain more cooperation partners, and (ii) individuals gain status by cooperating with individuals of higher status than themselves. We posit that human hierarchies are more egalitarian relative to other primates species, owing in part to greater interdependence between cooperation and status hierarchy.

Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in non-Muslim Liberal Democracies

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW F. MARCH
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
Political Traditions

In this article I take up John Rawls's invitation to investigate the capacity of a given comprehensive ethical doctrine to endorse on principled grounds the liberal terms of social cooperation. In the case of Islamic political ethics, however, far more is at stake in affirming citizenship in a (non-Muslim) liberal democracy than state neutrality and individual autonomy. Islamic legal and political traditions have traditionally held that submission to non-Muslim political authority and bonds of loyalty and solidarity with non-Muslim societies are to be avoided. In this article, I examine the Islamic foundations for affirming on principled grounds residence, political obligation, and loyalty to a non-Muslim state. My research shows not only that such grounds exist even in classical Islamic legal discourses, but also that the concerns of Islamic scholars vindicate political liberalism's claim to successfully accommodate the adherents of certain nonliberal doctrines by refraining from proclaiming controversial metaphysical truthclaims.

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